“I’m not going away”: James Risen unloads to Salon about his government foes

[unhappycamper]

http://www.salon.com/2014/10/18/im_not_going_away_james_risen_unloads_to_salon_about_his_government_foes/



In historic legal fight to protect sources, embattled reporter James Risen tells Salon how he plans to fight back

“I’m not going away”: James Risen unloads to Salon about his government foes
Elias Isquith
Saturday, Oct 18, 2014 09:15 AM EST

James Risen, the New York Times reporter responsible in part for the 2005 Times bombshell on the Bush administration’s use of warrantless surveillance — which is widely seen as one of the seminal pieces of journalism of its era — has plenty of experience when it comes to battling the federal government. Not only in his celebrated investigative reports but, perhaps more prominently, in the courts, where for years he’s held his ground in refusing government demands that he reveal a confidential source.

For Risen, in other words, fighting the post-9/11 national security state is a full-time job, albeit one for which he never truly applied. But while he may be at a profound disadvantage when it comes to defending himself (and, some would say, his profession) in our federal courts, “Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War,” his new exposé of the malfeasance and waste behind the war on terror, offers ample evidence that he’s still a Pulitzer Prize winner when it comes to combat on the page. Salon spoke with Risen this week to discuss his book, seeing counterterrorism from a broader perspective and how much history will blame President Obama for the war on terror and the damage it’s done. Our conversation is below and has been edited for clarity and length.

So here we are, more than a decade into the war on terror, and I’d guess that a lot of people think that at this point they know everything they need to know about how our government conducts counterterrorism and the growth of the national security state. But considering you wrote this book — which features a lot of new information — I’m guessing you’d disagree.

Yes. I felt like we had this whole period, 13 years now, where we essentially “took the gloves off,” in Dick Cheney’s famous words, in order to fight a global war on terror. And what Cheney meant by that was deregulating national security, and what that meant was eliminating or reducing or relaxing the rules that had been put in place for 30 years, from the post-Watergate era, which were governing the way in which we conducted national security.

[enough]

1. Just finished the book. I recommend it highly, even if you think you already

know it all. Fascinating, appalling, and very well-written.

[rhett o rick]

2. k&r. Thanks for posting. nm

[nashville_brook]

3. k and r