James Risen
Encyclopedia
James Risen is a Pulitzer Prize
-winning American
journalist
for The New York Times
who previously worked for the Los Angeles Times
. He has written or co-written many articles concerning U.S. government
activities and is the author or co-author of two books about the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) and a book about the American public debate about abortion
.
in 1977, and received a master's degree in journalism at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism
in 1978. He is now an investigative reporter for The New York Times
, where he has worked since 1998.
Risen is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. He won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2006 for his stories about President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program.
He was also a member of The New York Times reporting team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for coverage of of 9/11 and terrorism.
Risen has written three books: Wrath of Angels: The American Abortion War (Basic Books) (Judy Thomas, co-author) 1998; The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA’s Final Showdown with the KGB (Random House) (Milt Bearden, co-author) 2003; and State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration (The Free Press) 2006. State of War was a New York Times bestseller.
In 2007, Risen was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
were awarded the Pulitzer Prize
for National Reporting in 2006 for a series of controversial investigative reports that they co-wrote about the National Security Agency
's surveillance of international communications originating or terminating in the United States codenamed "Stellar Wind"
and about a government program called Terrorist Finance Tracking Program
designed to detect terrorist financiers, which involved searches of money transfer records in the international SWIFT
database. The Associated Press reported on May 24,2011 that Risen is being called as a witness in the Jeffrey Sterling trial for alleged leaks of classified information.
The White House Press Office issued a statement on August 6, 2007 that the New York Times article on the Congressional and Presidential approval of a six-month extension of terrorism monitoring in the United States was misleading.
(January 2006). The book makes numerous allegations about Central Intelligence Agency
activities. It alleges that the CIA carried out an operation in 2000 (Operation Merlin
) intended to delay Iran's nuclear weapons program
by feeding it flawed blueprints for key missing components - which backfired and may actually have aided Iran, as the flaw was likely detected and corrected by a former Soviet nuclear scientist the operation used to make the delivery.
While doing research for the book, Risen's email and phone connections with former CIA Operations Officer Jeffrey Alexander Sterling
were monitored by the US federal government. The US federal government also obtained Risen's credit and bank records.
The CIA Public Affairs Office issued a press release indicating that Risen's book contains serious errors in every chapter.
Risen writes in State of War that, "Several of the Iranian [CIA] agents were arrested and jailed, while the fate of some of the others is still unknown", after a CIA official in 2004 sent an Iranian agent an encrypted electronic message, mistakenly including data that could potentially identify "virtually every spy the CIA had inside Iran". The Iranian was a double agent and handed over the information to Iranian intelligence. This also has been denied by an intelligence official. Risen also alleges that the Bush Administration is responsible for transformation of Afghanistan
into a "narco-state
", that provides a purported 80% of the world's heroin supply.
The publication of this book was expedited following the December 16, 2005 NSA leak story. The timing of The New York Times story after the Iraq election in mid December 2005 is a source of controversy since the story was delayed for over a year. The New York Times story appeared two days before a former NSA employee, dismissed in May 2005, requested permission to testify to two Congressional intelligence oversight committees. Byron Calame
, the Public Editor of The New York Times, wrote in early January 2006 that two senior Times officials refused to comment on the timing of the article. The Department of Justice
(DOJ) also conducted an investigation of the sources of the security leak involving the NSA. Risen says this book is based on information from a variety of anonymous sources, that he would protect.
The issue of journalists protecting their anonymous sources was widely discussed during this time period due to the Valerie Plame affair. In that case, former New York Times reporter Judith Miller
was jailed for refusing to reveal a source for a story of hers. The Attorney General hinted in a Washington Post article on May 22, 2006 that journalists may be charged for any disclosure of classified national security information. President George W. Bush
, in a June 25, 2006 news conference, was critical of the publication of information of classified programs by the New York Times.
was being investigated during the Bush administration. In 2010 he was indicted under the Espionage Act of 1917
, one of the few people in US history whose alleged contact with a journalist was punished under espionage law, part of Obama's crackdown on whistleblowers and "leaks".
Risen was subpoenaed in relation to the case in 2008. He fought the subpoena
, and it expired in the summer of 2009. In what the New York Times called "a rare step," the Obama
administration renewed the subpoena in 2010. In 2011 Risen wrote a detailed response to the subpoena, describing his reasons for refusing to reveal his sources, the public impact of his work, and his experiences with the Bush administration.
James Risen is a Pulitzer Prize
-winning American
journalist
for The New York Times
who previously worked for the Los Angeles Times
. He has written or co-written many articles concerning U.S. government
activities and is the author or co-author of two books about the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) and a book about the American public debate about abortion
.
in 1977, and received a master's degree in journalism at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism
in 1978. He is now an investigative reporter for The New York Times
, where he has worked since 1998.
Risen is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. He won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2006 for his stories about President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program.
He was also a member of The New York Times reporting team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for coverage of of 9/11 and terrorism.
Risen has written three books: Wrath of Angels: The American Abortion War (Basic Books) (Judy Thomas, co-author) 1998; The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA’s Final Showdown with the KGB (Random House) (Milt Bearden, co-author) 2003; and State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration (The Free Press) 2006. State of War was a New York Times bestseller.
In 2007, Risen was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
were awarded the Pulitzer Prize
for National Reporting in 2006 for a series of controversial investigative reports that they co-wrote about the National Security Agency
's surveillance of international communications originating or terminating in the United States codenamed "Stellar Wind"
and about a government program called Terrorist Finance Tracking Program
designed to detect terrorist financiers, which involved searches of money transfer records in the international SWIFT
database. The Associated Press reported on May 24,2011 that Risen is being called as a witness in the Jeffrey Sterling trial for alleged leaks of classified information.
The White House Press Office issued a statement on August 6, 2007 that the New York Times article on the Congressional and Presidential approval of a six-month extension of terrorism monitoring in the United States was misleading.
(January 2006). The book makes numerous allegations about Central Intelligence Agency
activities. It alleges that the CIA carried out an operation in 2000 (Operation Merlin
) intended to delay Iran's nuclear weapons program
by feeding it flawed blueprints for key missing components - which backfired and may actually have aided Iran, as the flaw was likely detected and corrected by a former Soviet nuclear scientist the operation used to make the delivery.
While doing research for the book, Risen's email and phone connections with former CIA Operations Officer Jeffrey Alexander Sterling
were monitored by the US federal government. The US federal government also obtained Risen's credit and bank records.
The CIA Public Affairs Office issued a press release indicating that Risen's book contains serious errors in every chapter.
Risen writes in State of War that, "Several of the Iranian [CIA] agents were arrested and jailed, while the fate of some of the others is still unknown", after a CIA official in 2004 sent an Iranian agent an encrypted electronic message, mistakenly including data that could potentially identify "virtually every spy the CIA had inside Iran". The Iranian was a double agent and handed over the information to Iranian intelligence. This also has been denied by an intelligence official. Risen also alleges that the Bush Administration is responsible for transformation of Afghanistan
into a "narco-state
", that provides a purported 80% of the world's heroin supply.
The publication of this book was expedited following the December 16, 2005 NSA leak story. The timing of The New York Times story after the Iraq election in mid December 2005 is a source of controversy since the story was delayed for over a year. The New York Times story appeared two days before a former NSA employee, dismissed in May 2005, requested permission to testify to two Congressional intelligence oversight committees. Byron Calame
, the Public Editor of The New York Times, wrote in early January 2006 that two senior Times officials refused to comment on the timing of the article. The Department of Justice
(DOJ) also conducted an investigation of the sources of the security leak involving the NSA. Risen says this book is based on information from a variety of anonymous sources, that he would protect.
The issue of journalists protecting their anonymous sources was widely discussed during this time period due to the Valerie Plame affair. In that case, former New York Times reporter Judith Miller
was jailed for refusing to reveal a source for a story of hers. The Attorney General hinted in a Washington Post article on May 22, 2006 that journalists may be charged for any disclosure of classified national security information. President George W. Bush
, in a June 25, 2006 news conference, was critical of the publication of information of classified programs by the New York Times.
was being investigated during the Bush administration. In 2010 he was indicted under the Espionage Act of 1917
, one of the few people in US history whose alleged contact with a journalist was punished under espionage law, part of Obama's crackdown on whistleblowers and "leaks".
Risen was subpoenaed in relation to the case in 2008. He fought the subpoena
, and it expired in the summer of 2009. In what the New York Times called "a rare step," the Obama
administration renewed the subpoena in 2010. In 2011 Risen wrote a detailed response to the subpoena, describing his reasons for refusing to reveal his sources, the public impact of his work, and his experiences with the Bush administration.
James Risen is a Pulitzer Prize
-winning American
journalist
for The New York Times
who previously worked for the Los Angeles Times
. He has written or co-written many articles concerning U.S. government
activities and is the author or co-author of two books about the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) and a book about the American public debate about abortion
.
in 1977, and received a master's degree in journalism at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism
in 1978. He is now an investigative reporter for The New York Times
, where he has worked since 1998.
Risen is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. He won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2006 for his stories about President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program.
He was also a member of The New York Times reporting team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for coverage of of 9/11 and terrorism.
Risen has written three books: Wrath of Angels: The American Abortion War (Basic Books) (Judy Thomas, co-author) 1998; The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA’s Final Showdown with the KGB (Random House) (Milt Bearden, co-author) 2003; and State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration (The Free Press) 2006. State of War was a New York Times bestseller.
In 2007, Risen was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
were awarded the Pulitzer Prize
for National Reporting in 2006 for a series of controversial investigative reports that they co-wrote about the National Security Agency
's surveillance of international communications originating or terminating in the United States codenamed "Stellar Wind"
and about a government program called Terrorist Finance Tracking Program
designed to detect terrorist financiers, which involved searches of money transfer records in the international SWIFT
database. The Associated Press reported on May 24,2011 that Risen is being called as a witness in the Jeffrey Sterling trial for alleged leaks of classified information.
The White House Press Office issued a statement on August 6, 2007 that the New York Times article on the Congressional and Presidential approval of a six-month extension of terrorism monitoring in the United States was misleading.
(January 2006). The book makes numerous allegations about Central Intelligence Agency
activities. It alleges that the CIA carried out an operation in 2000 (Operation Merlin
) intended to delay Iran's nuclear weapons program
by feeding it flawed blueprints for key missing components - which backfired and may actually have aided Iran, as the flaw was likely detected and corrected by a former Soviet nuclear scientist the operation used to make the delivery.
While doing research for the book, Risen's email and phone connections with former CIA Operations Officer Jeffrey Alexander Sterling
were monitored by the US federal government. The US federal government also obtained Risen's credit and bank records.
The CIA Public Affairs Office issued a press release indicating that Risen's book contains serious errors in every chapter.
Risen writes in State of War that, "Several of the Iranian [CIA] agents were arrested and jailed, while the fate of some of the others is still unknown", after a CIA official in 2004 sent an Iranian agent an encrypted electronic message, mistakenly including data that could potentially identify "virtually every spy the CIA had inside Iran". The Iranian was a double agent and handed over the information to Iranian intelligence. This also has been denied by an intelligence official. Risen also alleges that the Bush Administration is responsible for transformation of Afghanistan
into a "narco-state
", that provides a purported 80% of the world's heroin supply.
The publication of this book was expedited following the December 16, 2005 NSA leak story. The timing of The New York Times story after the Iraq election in mid December 2005 is a source of controversy since the story was delayed for over a year. The New York Times story appeared two days before a former NSA employee, dismissed in May 2005, requested permission to testify to two Congressional intelligence oversight committees. Byron Calame
, the Public Editor of The New York Times, wrote in early January 2006 that two senior Times officials refused to comment on the timing of the article. The Department of Justice
(DOJ) also conducted an investigation of the sources of the security leak involving the NSA. Risen says this book is based on information from a variety of anonymous sources, that he would protect.
The issue of journalists protecting their anonymous sources was widely discussed during this time period due to the Valerie Plame affair. In that case, former New York Times reporter Judith Miller
was jailed for refusing to reveal a source for a story of hers. The Attorney General hinted in a Washington Post article on May 22, 2006 that journalists may be charged for any disclosure of classified national security information. President George W. Bush
, in a June 25, 2006 news conference, was critical of the publication of information of classified programs by the New York Times.
was being investigated during the Bush administration. In 2010 he was indicted under the Espionage Act of 1917
, one of the few people in US history whose alleged contact with a journalist was punished under espionage law, part of Obama's crackdown on whistleblowers and "leaks".
Risen was subpoenaed in relation to the case in 2008. He fought the subpoena
, and it expired in the summer of 2009. In what the New York Times called "a rare step," the Obama
administration renewed the subpoena in 2010. In 2011 Risen wrote a detailed response to the subpoena, describing his reasons for refusing to reveal his sources, the public impact of his work, and his experiences with the Bush administration.Affidavit of James Risen, June 21, 2011 (with exhibits and attachments), Federation of American Scientsts, Sterling case files
that appeared on March 6, 1999, they allege that "a Los Alamos
computer scientist who is Chinese-American" had stolen nuclear secrets for China
.
The suspect, later identified as Dr. Wen Ho Lee
, pled guilty to a single charge of improper handling of national defense information, the 58 other counts against him were dropped, and he was released from jail . No espionage charges were ever proven. The judge apologized to Dr. Lee for believing the government and putting him in pretrial solitary confinement for months.
On September 26, 2000, the New York Times apologized for significant errors in reporting of the case. Dr Lee and Helen Zia would later write a book, My Country Versus Me, in which he described Risen and Garth's work as a "hatchet job on me, and a sloppy one at that". He points out numerous factual errors in Risen & Gerth's reporting.My Country Versus Me, Wen Ho Lee and Helen Zia, 129-132 The Times was one of five newspapers, including also the Los Angeles Times
, which jointly agreed to pay damages to settle a lawsuit concerning their coverage of the case and invasion of privacy.
s of long term KGB
efforts to promote the theory that there was a CIA conspiracy to assassinate President John Kennedy
, Risen writes, "The K.G.B.'s clumsy propaganda campaign never had much of an impact on the debate over the Kennedy assassination
in the United States."
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
-winning American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
for The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
who previously worked for the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
. He has written or co-written many articles concerning U.S. government
Federal government of the United States
The federal government of the United States is the national government of the constitutional republic of fifty states that is the United States of America. The federal government comprises three distinct branches of government: a legislative, an executive and a judiciary. These branches and...
activities and is the author or co-author of two books about the Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
(CIA) and a book about the American public debate about abortion
Abortion
Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...
.
Background
Risen grew up in Bethesda, Maryland, graduated from Brown UniversityBrown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
in 1977, and received a master's degree in journalism at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism
Medill School of Journalism
The Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications is a constituent school of Northwestern University which offers both undergraduate and graduate programs. It has consistently been one of the top-ranked schools in Journalism in the United States...
in 1978. He is now an investigative reporter for The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, where he has worked since 1998.
Risen is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. He won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2006 for his stories about President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program.
He was also a member of The New York Times reporting team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for coverage of of 9/11 and terrorism.
Risen has written three books: Wrath of Angels: The American Abortion War (Basic Books) (Judy Thomas, co-author) 1998; The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA’s Final Showdown with the KGB (Random House) (Milt Bearden, co-author) 2003; and State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration (The Free Press) 2006. State of War was a New York Times bestseller.
In 2007, Risen was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Reports on government surveillance programs
Risen and Eric LichtblauEric Lichtblau
Eric Lichtblau is an American journalist and Washington bureau reporter for The New York Times.-Life:Lichtblau joined The Times in September 2002 as a correspondent covering the Justice Department. Previously, Lichtblau worked at the Los Angeles Times for 15 years, where he also covered the Justice...
were awarded the Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
for National Reporting in 2006 for a series of controversial investigative reports that they co-wrote about the National Security Agency
National Security Agency
The National Security Agency/Central Security Service is a cryptologic intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the collection and analysis of foreign communications and foreign signals intelligence, as well as protecting U.S...
's surveillance of international communications originating or terminating in the United States codenamed "Stellar Wind"
Stellar wind (code name)
Stellar Wind is the open secret code name for certain information collection activities performed by the United States' National Security Agency and revealed by Thomas M. Tamm to New York Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau. The operation was approved by President George W...
and about a government program called Terrorist Finance Tracking Program
Terrorist Finance Tracking Program
The Terrorist Finance Tracking Program is a United States government program to access the SWIFT transaction database revealed by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Los Angeles Times in June 2006. It is part of the Bush administration's "Global War on Terrorism"...
designed to detect terrorist financiers, which involved searches of money transfer records in the international SWIFT
Swift
The swifts are a family, Apodidae, of highly aerial birds. They are superficially similar to swallows, but are actually not closely related to passerine species at all; swifts are in the separate order Apodiformes, which they share with hummingbirds...
database. The Associated Press reported on May 24,2011 that Risen is being called as a witness in the Jeffrey Sterling trial for alleged leaks of classified information.
The White House Press Office issued a statement on August 6, 2007 that the New York Times article on the Congressional and Presidential approval of a six-month extension of terrorism monitoring in the United States was misleading.
State of War
Risen is the author of the book State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush AdministrationState of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration
State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration is documentary review written by Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist for The New York Times James Risen...
(January 2006). The book makes numerous allegations about Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
activities. It alleges that the CIA carried out an operation in 2000 (Operation Merlin
Operation Merlin
Operation Merlin is an alleged United States covert operation under the Clinton Administration to provide Iran with a flawed design for building a nuclear weapon in order to delay the alleged Iranian nuclear weapons program.-History:...
) intended to delay Iran's nuclear weapons program
Iran and weapons of mass destruction
Iran is not known to currently possess weapons of mass destruction and has signed treaties repudiating the possession of weapons of mass destruction including the Biological Weapons Convention, the Chemical Weapons Convention, and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty...
by feeding it flawed blueprints for key missing components - which backfired and may actually have aided Iran, as the flaw was likely detected and corrected by a former Soviet nuclear scientist the operation used to make the delivery.
While doing research for the book, Risen's email and phone connections with former CIA Operations Officer Jeffrey Alexander Sterling
Jeffrey Alexander Sterling
Jeffrey Alexander Sterling is a former CIA employee, who was indicted and subsequently arrested under the Espionage Act for allegedly revealing details about Operation Merlin to journalist James Risen.-Education:...
were monitored by the US federal government. The US federal government also obtained Risen's credit and bank records.
The CIA Public Affairs Office issued a press release indicating that Risen's book contains serious errors in every chapter.
Risen writes in State of War that, "Several of the Iranian [CIA] agents were arrested and jailed, while the fate of some of the others is still unknown", after a CIA official in 2004 sent an Iranian agent an encrypted electronic message, mistakenly including data that could potentially identify "virtually every spy the CIA had inside Iran". The Iranian was a double agent and handed over the information to Iranian intelligence. This also has been denied by an intelligence official. Risen also alleges that the Bush Administration is responsible for transformation of Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
into a "narco-state
Narco-capitalism
Narco-capitalism is a pejorative neologism meant to express criticism of a state's policies and practices surrounding the international illegal drug trade. The terms narco-capitalism and narco-state currently have no formal definition in official use and are not in the Oxford English Dictionary...
", that provides a purported 80% of the world's heroin supply.
The publication of this book was expedited following the December 16, 2005 NSA leak story. The timing of The New York Times story after the Iraq election in mid December 2005 is a source of controversy since the story was delayed for over a year. The New York Times story appeared two days before a former NSA employee, dismissed in May 2005, requested permission to testify to two Congressional intelligence oversight committees. Byron Calame
Byron Calame
Byron Calame was the second public editor of the New York Times. He succeeded Daniel Okrent in this ombudsman-like position in 2005, and was followed by Clark Hoyt...
, the Public Editor of The New York Times, wrote in early January 2006 that two senior Times officials refused to comment on the timing of the article. The Department of Justice
United States Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...
(DOJ) also conducted an investigation of the sources of the security leak involving the NSA. Risen says this book is based on information from a variety of anonymous sources, that he would protect.
The issue of journalists protecting their anonymous sources was widely discussed during this time period due to the Valerie Plame affair. In that case, former New York Times reporter Judith Miller
Judith Miller (journalist)
Judith Miller is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist, formerly of the New York Times Washington bureau. Her coverage of Iraq's alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction program both before and after the 2003 invasion generated much controversy...
was jailed for refusing to reveal a source for a story of hers. The Attorney General hinted in a Washington Post article on May 22, 2006 that journalists may be charged for any disclosure of classified national security information. President George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
, in a June 25, 2006 news conference, was critical of the publication of information of classified programs by the New York Times.
United States v. Sterling
Jeffrey Alexander SterlingJeffrey Alexander Sterling
Jeffrey Alexander Sterling is a former CIA employee, who was indicted and subsequently arrested under the Espionage Act for allegedly revealing details about Operation Merlin to journalist James Risen.-Education:...
was being investigated during the Bush administration. In 2010 he was indicted under the Espionage Act of 1917
Espionage Act of 1917
The Espionage Act of 1917 is a United States federal law passed on June 15, 1917, shortly after the U.S. entry into World War I. It has been amended numerous times over the years. It was originally found in Title 50 of the U.S. Code but is now found under Title 18, Crime...
, one of the few people in US history whose alleged contact with a journalist was punished under espionage law, part of Obama's crackdown on whistleblowers and "leaks".
Risen was subpoenaed in relation to the case in 2008. He fought the subpoena
Subpoena
A subpoena is a writ by a government agency, most often a court, that has authority to compel testimony by a witness or production of evidence under a penalty for failure. There are two common types of subpoena:...
, and it expired in the summer of 2009. In what the New York Times called "a rare step," the Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
administration renewed the subpoena in 2010. In 2011 Risen wrote a detailed response to the subpoena, describing his reasons for refusing to reveal his sources, the public impact of his work, and his experiences with the Bush administration.
James Risen is a Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
-winning American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
for The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
who previously worked for the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
. He has written or co-written many articles concerning U.S. government
Federal government of the United States
The federal government of the United States is the national government of the constitutional republic of fifty states that is the United States of America. The federal government comprises three distinct branches of government: a legislative, an executive and a judiciary. These branches and...
activities and is the author or co-author of two books about the Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
(CIA) and a book about the American public debate about abortion
Abortion
Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...
.
Background
Risen grew up in Bethesda, Maryland, graduated from Brown UniversityBrown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
in 1977, and received a master's degree in journalism at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism
Medill School of Journalism
The Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications is a constituent school of Northwestern University which offers both undergraduate and graduate programs. It has consistently been one of the top-ranked schools in Journalism in the United States...
in 1978. He is now an investigative reporter for The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, where he has worked since 1998.
Risen is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. He won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2006 for his stories about President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program.
He was also a member of The New York Times reporting team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for coverage of of 9/11 and terrorism.
Risen has written three books: Wrath of Angels: The American Abortion War (Basic Books) (Judy Thomas, co-author) 1998; The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA’s Final Showdown with the KGB (Random House) (Milt Bearden, co-author) 2003; and State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration (The Free Press) 2006. State of War was a New York Times bestseller.
In 2007, Risen was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Reports on government surveillance programs
Risen and Eric LichtblauEric Lichtblau
Eric Lichtblau is an American journalist and Washington bureau reporter for The New York Times.-Life:Lichtblau joined The Times in September 2002 as a correspondent covering the Justice Department. Previously, Lichtblau worked at the Los Angeles Times for 15 years, where he also covered the Justice...
were awarded the Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
for National Reporting in 2006 for a series of controversial investigative reports that they co-wrote about the National Security Agency
National Security Agency
The National Security Agency/Central Security Service is a cryptologic intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the collection and analysis of foreign communications and foreign signals intelligence, as well as protecting U.S...
's surveillance of international communications originating or terminating in the United States codenamed "Stellar Wind"
Stellar wind (code name)
Stellar Wind is the open secret code name for certain information collection activities performed by the United States' National Security Agency and revealed by Thomas M. Tamm to New York Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau. The operation was approved by President George W...
and about a government program called Terrorist Finance Tracking Program
Terrorist Finance Tracking Program
The Terrorist Finance Tracking Program is a United States government program to access the SWIFT transaction database revealed by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Los Angeles Times in June 2006. It is part of the Bush administration's "Global War on Terrorism"...
designed to detect terrorist financiers, which involved searches of money transfer records in the international SWIFT
Swift
The swifts are a family, Apodidae, of highly aerial birds. They are superficially similar to swallows, but are actually not closely related to passerine species at all; swifts are in the separate order Apodiformes, which they share with hummingbirds...
database. The Associated Press reported on May 24,2011 that Risen is being called as a witness in the Jeffrey Sterling trial for alleged leaks of classified information.
The White House Press Office issued a statement on August 6, 2007 that the New York Times article on the Congressional and Presidential approval of a six-month extension of terrorism monitoring in the United States was misleading.
State of War
Risen is the author of the book State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush AdministrationState of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration
State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration is documentary review written by Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist for The New York Times James Risen...
(January 2006). The book makes numerous allegations about Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
activities. It alleges that the CIA carried out an operation in 2000 (Operation Merlin
Operation Merlin
Operation Merlin is an alleged United States covert operation under the Clinton Administration to provide Iran with a flawed design for building a nuclear weapon in order to delay the alleged Iranian nuclear weapons program.-History:...
) intended to delay Iran's nuclear weapons program
Iran and weapons of mass destruction
Iran is not known to currently possess weapons of mass destruction and has signed treaties repudiating the possession of weapons of mass destruction including the Biological Weapons Convention, the Chemical Weapons Convention, and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty...
by feeding it flawed blueprints for key missing components - which backfired and may actually have aided Iran, as the flaw was likely detected and corrected by a former Soviet nuclear scientist the operation used to make the delivery.
While doing research for the book, Risen's email and phone connections with former CIA Operations Officer Jeffrey Alexander Sterling
Jeffrey Alexander Sterling
Jeffrey Alexander Sterling is a former CIA employee, who was indicted and subsequently arrested under the Espionage Act for allegedly revealing details about Operation Merlin to journalist James Risen.-Education:...
were monitored by the US federal government. The US federal government also obtained Risen's credit and bank records.
The CIA Public Affairs Office issued a press release indicating that Risen's book contains serious errors in every chapter.
Risen writes in State of War that, "Several of the Iranian [CIA] agents were arrested and jailed, while the fate of some of the others is still unknown", after a CIA official in 2004 sent an Iranian agent an encrypted electronic message, mistakenly including data that could potentially identify "virtually every spy the CIA had inside Iran". The Iranian was a double agent and handed over the information to Iranian intelligence. This also has been denied by an intelligence official. Risen also alleges that the Bush Administration is responsible for transformation of Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
into a "narco-state
Narco-capitalism
Narco-capitalism is a pejorative neologism meant to express criticism of a state's policies and practices surrounding the international illegal drug trade. The terms narco-capitalism and narco-state currently have no formal definition in official use and are not in the Oxford English Dictionary...
", that provides a purported 80% of the world's heroin supply.
The publication of this book was expedited following the December 16, 2005 NSA leak story. The timing of The New York Times story after the Iraq election in mid December 2005 is a source of controversy since the story was delayed for over a year. The New York Times story appeared two days before a former NSA employee, dismissed in May 2005, requested permission to testify to two Congressional intelligence oversight committees. Byron Calame
Byron Calame
Byron Calame was the second public editor of the New York Times. He succeeded Daniel Okrent in this ombudsman-like position in 2005, and was followed by Clark Hoyt...
, the Public Editor of The New York Times, wrote in early January 2006 that two senior Times officials refused to comment on the timing of the article. The Department of Justice
United States Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...
(DOJ) also conducted an investigation of the sources of the security leak involving the NSA. Risen says this book is based on information from a variety of anonymous sources, that he would protect.
The issue of journalists protecting their anonymous sources was widely discussed during this time period due to the Valerie Plame affair. In that case, former New York Times reporter Judith Miller
Judith Miller (journalist)
Judith Miller is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist, formerly of the New York Times Washington bureau. Her coverage of Iraq's alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction program both before and after the 2003 invasion generated much controversy...
was jailed for refusing to reveal a source for a story of hers. The Attorney General hinted in a Washington Post article on May 22, 2006 that journalists may be charged for any disclosure of classified national security information. President George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
, in a June 25, 2006 news conference, was critical of the publication of information of classified programs by the New York Times.
United States v. Sterling
Jeffrey Alexander SterlingJeffrey Alexander Sterling
Jeffrey Alexander Sterling is a former CIA employee, who was indicted and subsequently arrested under the Espionage Act for allegedly revealing details about Operation Merlin to journalist James Risen.-Education:...
was being investigated during the Bush administration. In 2010 he was indicted under the Espionage Act of 1917
Espionage Act of 1917
The Espionage Act of 1917 is a United States federal law passed on June 15, 1917, shortly after the U.S. entry into World War I. It has been amended numerous times over the years. It was originally found in Title 50 of the U.S. Code but is now found under Title 18, Crime...
, one of the few people in US history whose alleged contact with a journalist was punished under espionage law, part of Obama's crackdown on whistleblowers and "leaks".
Risen was subpoenaed in relation to the case in 2008. He fought the subpoena
Subpoena
A subpoena is a writ by a government agency, most often a court, that has authority to compel testimony by a witness or production of evidence under a penalty for failure. There are two common types of subpoena:...
, and it expired in the summer of 2009. In what the New York Times called "a rare step," the Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
administration renewed the subpoena in 2010. In 2011 Risen wrote a detailed response to the subpoena, describing his reasons for refusing to reveal his sources, the public impact of his work, and his experiences with the Bush administration.
James Risen is a Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
-winning American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
for The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
who previously worked for the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
. He has written or co-written many articles concerning U.S. government
Federal government of the United States
The federal government of the United States is the national government of the constitutional republic of fifty states that is the United States of America. The federal government comprises three distinct branches of government: a legislative, an executive and a judiciary. These branches and...
activities and is the author or co-author of two books about the Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
(CIA) and a book about the American public debate about abortion
Abortion
Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...
.
Background
Risen grew up in Bethesda, Maryland, graduated from Brown UniversityBrown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
in 1977, and received a master's degree in journalism at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism
Medill School of Journalism
The Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications is a constituent school of Northwestern University which offers both undergraduate and graduate programs. It has consistently been one of the top-ranked schools in Journalism in the United States...
in 1978. He is now an investigative reporter for The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, where he has worked since 1998.
Risen is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. He won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2006 for his stories about President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program.
He was also a member of The New York Times reporting team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for coverage of of 9/11 and terrorism.
Risen has written three books: Wrath of Angels: The American Abortion War (Basic Books) (Judy Thomas, co-author) 1998; The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA’s Final Showdown with the KGB (Random House) (Milt Bearden, co-author) 2003; and State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration (The Free Press) 2006. State of War was a New York Times bestseller.
In 2007, Risen was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Reports on government surveillance programs
Risen and Eric LichtblauEric Lichtblau
Eric Lichtblau is an American journalist and Washington bureau reporter for The New York Times.-Life:Lichtblau joined The Times in September 2002 as a correspondent covering the Justice Department. Previously, Lichtblau worked at the Los Angeles Times for 15 years, where he also covered the Justice...
were awarded the Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
for National Reporting in 2006 for a series of controversial investigative reports that they co-wrote about the National Security Agency
National Security Agency
The National Security Agency/Central Security Service is a cryptologic intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the collection and analysis of foreign communications and foreign signals intelligence, as well as protecting U.S...
's surveillance of international communications originating or terminating in the United States codenamed "Stellar Wind"
Stellar wind (code name)
Stellar Wind is the open secret code name for certain information collection activities performed by the United States' National Security Agency and revealed by Thomas M. Tamm to New York Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau. The operation was approved by President George W...
and about a government program called Terrorist Finance Tracking Program
Terrorist Finance Tracking Program
The Terrorist Finance Tracking Program is a United States government program to access the SWIFT transaction database revealed by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Los Angeles Times in June 2006. It is part of the Bush administration's "Global War on Terrorism"...
designed to detect terrorist financiers, which involved searches of money transfer records in the international SWIFT
Swift
The swifts are a family, Apodidae, of highly aerial birds. They are superficially similar to swallows, but are actually not closely related to passerine species at all; swifts are in the separate order Apodiformes, which they share with hummingbirds...
database. The Associated Press reported on May 24,2011 that Risen is being called as a witness in the Jeffrey Sterling trial for alleged leaks of classified information.
The White House Press Office issued a statement on August 6, 2007 that the New York Times article on the Congressional and Presidential approval of a six-month extension of terrorism monitoring in the United States was misleading.
State of War
Risen is the author of the book State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush AdministrationState of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration
State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration is documentary review written by Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist for The New York Times James Risen...
(January 2006). The book makes numerous allegations about Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
activities. It alleges that the CIA carried out an operation in 2000 (Operation Merlin
Operation Merlin
Operation Merlin is an alleged United States covert operation under the Clinton Administration to provide Iran with a flawed design for building a nuclear weapon in order to delay the alleged Iranian nuclear weapons program.-History:...
) intended to delay Iran's nuclear weapons program
Iran and weapons of mass destruction
Iran is not known to currently possess weapons of mass destruction and has signed treaties repudiating the possession of weapons of mass destruction including the Biological Weapons Convention, the Chemical Weapons Convention, and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty...
by feeding it flawed blueprints for key missing components - which backfired and may actually have aided Iran, as the flaw was likely detected and corrected by a former Soviet nuclear scientist the operation used to make the delivery.
While doing research for the book, Risen's email and phone connections with former CIA Operations Officer Jeffrey Alexander Sterling
Jeffrey Alexander Sterling
Jeffrey Alexander Sterling is a former CIA employee, who was indicted and subsequently arrested under the Espionage Act for allegedly revealing details about Operation Merlin to journalist James Risen.-Education:...
were monitored by the US federal government. The US federal government also obtained Risen's credit and bank records.
The CIA Public Affairs Office issued a press release indicating that Risen's book contains serious errors in every chapter.
Risen writes in State of War that, "Several of the Iranian [CIA] agents were arrested and jailed, while the fate of some of the others is still unknown", after a CIA official in 2004 sent an Iranian agent an encrypted electronic message, mistakenly including data that could potentially identify "virtually every spy the CIA had inside Iran". The Iranian was a double agent and handed over the information to Iranian intelligence. This also has been denied by an intelligence official. Risen also alleges that the Bush Administration is responsible for transformation of Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
into a "narco-state
Narco-capitalism
Narco-capitalism is a pejorative neologism meant to express criticism of a state's policies and practices surrounding the international illegal drug trade. The terms narco-capitalism and narco-state currently have no formal definition in official use and are not in the Oxford English Dictionary...
", that provides a purported 80% of the world's heroin supply.
The publication of this book was expedited following the December 16, 2005 NSA leak story. The timing of The New York Times story after the Iraq election in mid December 2005 is a source of controversy since the story was delayed for over a year. The New York Times story appeared two days before a former NSA employee, dismissed in May 2005, requested permission to testify to two Congressional intelligence oversight committees. Byron Calame
Byron Calame
Byron Calame was the second public editor of the New York Times. He succeeded Daniel Okrent in this ombudsman-like position in 2005, and was followed by Clark Hoyt...
, the Public Editor of The New York Times, wrote in early January 2006 that two senior Times officials refused to comment on the timing of the article. The Department of Justice
United States Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...
(DOJ) also conducted an investigation of the sources of the security leak involving the NSA. Risen says this book is based on information from a variety of anonymous sources, that he would protect.
The issue of journalists protecting their anonymous sources was widely discussed during this time period due to the Valerie Plame affair. In that case, former New York Times reporter Judith Miller
Judith Miller (journalist)
Judith Miller is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist, formerly of the New York Times Washington bureau. Her coverage of Iraq's alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction program both before and after the 2003 invasion generated much controversy...
was jailed for refusing to reveal a source for a story of hers. The Attorney General hinted in a Washington Post article on May 22, 2006 that journalists may be charged for any disclosure of classified national security information. President George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
, in a June 25, 2006 news conference, was critical of the publication of information of classified programs by the New York Times.
United States v. Sterling
Jeffrey Alexander SterlingJeffrey Alexander Sterling
Jeffrey Alexander Sterling is a former CIA employee, who was indicted and subsequently arrested under the Espionage Act for allegedly revealing details about Operation Merlin to journalist James Risen.-Education:...
was being investigated during the Bush administration. In 2010 he was indicted under the Espionage Act of 1917
Espionage Act of 1917
The Espionage Act of 1917 is a United States federal law passed on June 15, 1917, shortly after the U.S. entry into World War I. It has been amended numerous times over the years. It was originally found in Title 50 of the U.S. Code but is now found under Title 18, Crime...
, one of the few people in US history whose alleged contact with a journalist was punished under espionage law, part of Obama's crackdown on whistleblowers and "leaks".
Risen was subpoenaed in relation to the case in 2008. He fought the subpoena
Subpoena
A subpoena is a writ by a government agency, most often a court, that has authority to compel testimony by a witness or production of evidence under a penalty for failure. There are two common types of subpoena:...
, and it expired in the summer of 2009. In what the New York Times called "a rare step," the Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
administration renewed the subpoena in 2010. In 2011 Risen wrote a detailed response to the subpoena, describing his reasons for refusing to reveal his sources, the public impact of his work, and his experiences with the Bush administration.Affidavit of James Risen, June 21, 2011 (with exhibits and attachments), Federation of American Scientsts, Sterling case files
Wen Ho Lee
In an article that Risen cowrote with Jeff Gerth for The New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
that appeared on March 6, 1999, they allege that "a Los Alamos
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory, managed and operated by Los Alamos National Security , located in Los Alamos, New Mexico...
computer scientist who is Chinese-American" had stolen nuclear secrets for China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
.
The suspect, later identified as Dr. Wen Ho Lee
Wen Ho Lee
Dr. Wen Ho Lee is a Taiwan-born Taiwanese American scientist who worked for the University of California at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He created simulations of nuclear explosions for the purposes of scientific inquiry, as well as for improving the safety and reliability of the US nuclear...
, pled guilty to a single charge of improper handling of national defense information, the 58 other counts against him were dropped, and he was released from jail . No espionage charges were ever proven. The judge apologized to Dr. Lee for believing the government and putting him in pretrial solitary confinement for months.
On September 26, 2000, the New York Times apologized for significant errors in reporting of the case. Dr Lee and Helen Zia would later write a book, My Country Versus Me, in which he described Risen and Garth's work as a "hatchet job on me, and a sloppy one at that". He points out numerous factual errors in Risen & Gerth's reporting.My Country Versus Me, Wen Ho Lee and Helen Zia, 129-132 The Times was one of five newspapers, including also the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
, which jointly agreed to pay damages to settle a lawsuit concerning their coverage of the case and invasion of privacy.
Views on KGB's involvement in JFK assassination debate
In a 1999 article in the New York Times, regarding revelations from the Mitrokhin ArchiveMitrokhin Archive
The Mitrokhin Archive is a collection of notes made secretly by KGB Major Vasili Mitrokhin during his thirty years as a KGB archivist in the foreign intelligence service and the First Chief Directorate...
s of long term KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
efforts to promote the theory that there was a CIA conspiracy to assassinate President John Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
, Risen writes, "The K.G.B.'s clumsy propaganda campaign never had much of an impact on the debate over the Kennedy assassination
John F. Kennedy assassination
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the thirty-fifth President of the United States, was assassinated at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas...
in the United States."
See also
- Wen Ho LeeWen Ho LeeDr. Wen Ho Lee is a Taiwan-born Taiwanese American scientist who worked for the University of California at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He created simulations of nuclear explosions for the purposes of scientific inquiry, as well as for improving the safety and reliability of the US nuclear...
- Chinese-American Los Alamos scientist accused of espionage - COINTELPROCOINTELPROCOINTELPRO was a series of covert, and often illegal, projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations.COINTELPRO tactics included discrediting targets through psychological...
- FBI counter-intelligence program investigating and disrupting dissident political organizations within the United States - ECHELONECHELONECHELON is a name used in global media and in popular culture to describe a signals intelligence collection and analysis network operated on behalf of the five signatory states to the UK–USA Security Agreement...
- secretive world-wide signals intelligence and analysis network run by the UKUSA Community, capturing radio and satellite communications, telephone calls, faxes and e-mails nearly anywhere in the world - CarnivoreCarnivore (FBI)Carnivore was a system implemented by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that was designed to monitor email and electronic communications. It used a customizable packet sniffer that can monitor all of a target user's Internet traffic...
- FBI wiretapping of e-mail and internet communications through proxy computers installed at Internet Service ProviderInternet service providerAn Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and host other people servers...
s - CALEACommunications Assistance for Law Enforcement ActThe Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act is a United States wiretapping law passed in 1994, during the presidency of Bill Clinton...
- to make clear a telecommunications carrier's duty to cooperate in the interception of communications for Law Enforcement purposes, and for other purposes - Operation MockingbirdOperation MockingbirdOperation Mockingbird was a secret Central Intelligence Agency campaign to influence foreign media beginning in the 1950s.The activities, extent and even the existence of the CIA project remain in dispute: the operation was first called Mockingbird in Deborah Davis' 1979 book, Katharine the Great:...
- alleged Central Intelligence Agency operation to influence domestic and foreign mediaNews mediaThe news media are those elements of the mass media that focus on delivering news to the general public or a target public.These include print media , broadcast news , and more recently the Internet .-Etymology:A medium is a carrier of something... - Espionage Act of 1917Espionage Act of 1917The Espionage Act of 1917 is a United States federal law passed on June 15, 1917, shortly after the U.S. entry into World War I. It has been amended numerous times over the years. It was originally found in Title 50 of the U.S. Code but is now found under Title 18, Crime...
- WWI law used in the 21st century to punish communication with journalists
External links
- James Risen – Index of articles published in The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, Times Topics. - "The 2006 Pulitzer Prize Winners: National Reporting: James Risen and Eric Lichtblau" – Biographies and photographs of these journalists for The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
hosted on the official Pulitzer PrizePulitzer PrizeThe Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
Website.