AMY GOODMAN: That was Jim Risen on Democracy Now! In court on Monday, he said, I am not going to provide the government with information that they seem to want to use to create a mosaic to prove or disprove certain facts. Matt, can you take our listeners and viewers back to why exactly Jim Risen has been pursued for seven years, beginning with the George W. Bush administration and then, to his shock, right through the two Obama administrations? MATT APUZZO: Sure. So, you know, I think this really starts around the time that Risen and Eric Lichtblau reported in the Times and also in Jim’s book about the NSA’s warrantless wiretap program. Obviously, that spurned a large investigation, so the government was clearly looking for their sources in that story in early 2006. You know, I think there’s—that may have morphed into this case, where now they’re looking at this chapter nine, where Risen writes in his book about this botched CIA operation in Iran where the CIA gave nuclear schematics to Iran that they had sort of—that they had introduced flaws, design flaws, to in hopes of setting back the nuclear program, but Jim’s book reveals that these flaws were easily spottable and that Iran probably just worked right around them, so we may have actually even helped advance the nuclear program. So, there’s this big leak investigation in John Rizzo’s book, the former CIA general counsel. He has this amazing scene where he describes where the CIA and the White House finally see this book, Risen’s book, and they’re—it’s New Year’s Eve, and they’re desperate to figure out how can they stop it from hitting the shelves, how can they stop State of War from hitting the shelves. And, you know, they’re working all night to see, you know, Can we get all the books recalled? And, I mean, finally, obviously, they realized that logistically that was impossible. So the book comes out, there’s a big leak investigation. And ultimately they focus on Jeffrey Sterling, who was a CIA officer involved in this Iran program. And Risen’s been fighting efforts to get—the government’s been trying to put him on the stand for years, first through Attorney General Mukasey and then ultimately through Attorney General Holder, have been trying to put him on the stand for years. And he’s been fighting for seven years.
Posted on: Wed, 07 Jan 2015 18:42:34 +0000
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