After reporter's subpoena, critics call Obama's leak-plugging efforts Bush-like

[Better Believe It]

After reporter's subpoena, critics call Obama's leak-plugging efforts Bush-like
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 30, 2010

The Justice Department's decision to subpoena a New York Times reporter this week has convinced some press advocates that President Obama's team is pursuing leaks with the same fervor as the Bush administration.

James Risen, who shared a Pulitzer Prize for disclosing President George W. Bush's domestic surveillance program, has refused to testify about the confidential sources he used for his 2006 book "State of War: The Secret History of the C.I.A. and the Bush Administration."

"The message they are sending to everyone is, 'You leak to the media, we will get you,' " said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. In the wake of the Bush administration's aggressive stance toward the press, she said, "as far as I can tell there is absolutely no difference, and the Obama administration seems to be paying more attention to it. This is going to get nasty."

Kurt Wimmer, a Washington lawyer who helped win White House approval for a proposed federal shield law, called the move against Risen "disappointing" after "we had positive discussions with the Obama administration" on the need to give journalists a legal foundation for protecting their sources in most cases.

In the Risen case, Attorney General Eric Holder had to approve the subpoena under Justice Department procedures. The subpoena, disclosed Thursday by the Times, comes two weeks after the administration obtained an indictment of a former top National Security Agency official, Thomas Drake, for allegedly providing classified information to a Baltimore Sun reporter.

Dalglish described the subpoena as "troublesome" and said defense attorneys have told her that several similar cases against alleged leakers are in the pipeline. The subpoena was first brought under Bush's last attorney general, Michael Mukasey, but the grand jury in the case expired without resolving the matter, prompting Holder's department to empanel a new grand jury. The Bush administration also launched a leak probe involving the Times story but no charges were brought.



Pulitzer Prize winner James Risen plans to fight his Justice Department subpoena

Read the full article at:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/29/AR2010042904656.html?hpid=features1&hpv=local


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More Obama DOJ attacks on whistle-blowers
By Glenn Greenwald
April 29, 2010

In February, 2008, the Bush DOJ issued a subpoena to The New York Times' James Risen, demanding the identity of his source(s) for one chapter in Risen's best-selling book, State of War. The chapter in question described a painfully inept and counter-productive CIA effort to infiltrate the Iranian nuclear program, but which ended up instead passing on valuable information to the Iranians about how to build a bomb. At the time that subpoena was issued, I wrote that it was a serious and "dangerous" escalation of the ongoing effort by Bush officials to intimidate journalists and their sources in order to choke off whistle-blowing disclosures, "the sole remaining avenue for a country plagued by a supine, slothful, vapid press and an indescribably submissive Congress." I don't recall a single progressive or Democrat -- not one -- defending that subpoena.

It should surprise absolutely nobody that, as Charlie Savage reports, the Obama DOJ has now re-issued the same subpoena to Risen. As DOJ rules require , any such subpoenas (to journalists) require the personal approval of the Attorney General, and Savage reports that this subpoena was approved by Eric Holder. The reason such subpoenas are so dangerous is because journalists are duty-bound to their sources to refuse to comply, and will likely end up in prison if they don't. Few things, if anything, are greater threats to the journalist-source relationship than DOJ subpoenas of this type.

This subpoena is being issued in the wake of the Obama DOJ's disgusting indictment of NSA whistle-blower Thomas Drake, who also exposed serious official ineptitude (along with corruption and illegality). Indeed, Holder has assigned the same Prosecutor in charge of that prosecution to Risen's Subpoena. Many of the key points write themselves. As John Cole says, this is yet another instance clarifying that Obama's Look Forward, Not Backward protective decree applies only to lawbreaking Bush officials, not to those who expose government wrongdoing or to anyone else (as Cole asks: "can't Risen just claim he tortured someone to get the information, but destroyed the tapes?"; he'd surely be granted immunity then).

Just as was true with the Drake prosecution, this highlights the real priorities of the Obama administration. I'm not convinced that the real motive, as Horton suggests, is to conceal ineptitude. I think it's broader than that: to send a signal that the Greatest Crime one can commit is allowing breaches in the Absolute Wall of Secrecy that surrounds the public/private Surveillance and National Security State. If Obama has definitively demonstrated anything, it's his commitment to preserving and even fortifying this wall (that's what the promiscuous assertions of the State Secret privilege are about). One of the very few ways we learn about anything that happens in that realm is through conscientious whistle-blowers leaking what they know to journalists and others. Hence, the Obama DOJ wants to snuff out the possibility that any light will be shined on what is done through this method.

For any Democrat or progressive who wants to defend the issuance of this Subpoena, I have a question for you: when this controversy first arose in early 2008, did you defend the issuance of the very similar subpoena to Risen by the Gonzalez/Mukasey DOJ? If not, why not? What's the difference? "Pragmatism" is not an answer.

Read the full article at:

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/04/29/risen/index.html

[katandmoon]

1. Obama's DOJ protects the criminals, just like Bush's

[RandomThoughts]

2. Secrecy that has violated the trust of the people

Has lost its right to be secret. I also do not, nor ever believed in secrecy, because it opens things up for corruption without strong oversight.


Although since I have never worked for the government, and have a total lack of money to prove it LOL :)

I get to say what I want. I also never have, nor ever will take an oath of secrecy, and believe secrecy is a festering ground for corruption.


Correction, secrecy when it is promised, for reasons non harmful to society, mostly for personal stuff, is ok, or if used in an environment with oversight, like how combinations on safes are secrets to keep things safe.

But if used for bad, and they have a social impact, then they lose that secrecy privilege.

[Coyote_Bandit]

3. More of that promised transparency?

I don't believe shit that the President says. Or any other politician.

And I am considerably less than impressed by what this President has done.

Thus far the Obama administraiton has been nothing more than a lost opportunity.

[Bitwit1234]

4. The media are trying their best to blame Obama for this spill

HE SAID AT THE BEGINNING.......any thing that was asked for to contain this leak would be given. How can he be responsible.

[Better Believe It]

6. Stop the leaks! Oil leaks that is. :)

[truebrit71]

5. They'll go after the reporters but not the torturers? "Change" my ARSE...

...I knew we were getting a centrist, but this is getting stupid...