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In reply to the discussion: Jill Abramson: CONDI RICE Personally Asked Me to KILL CIA STORIES [View all]Ichingcarpenter
(36,988 posts)James Risens new book on war-on-terror abuses comes out tomorrow, and if you want to find a copy it shouldnt be hard to obtain. As natural as that seems, it almost wasnt the case with the Risens last book, State of War, published in 2006. Not only did U.S. government officials object to the publication of the book on national security grounds, it turns out they pressured Les Moonves, the CEO of CBS, to have it killed.
The campaign to stifle Risens national security reporting at the Times is already well-documented, but a 60 Minutes story last night provided a glimpse into how deeply these efforts extended into the publishing world, as well. After being blocked from reporting on the NSAs warrantless surveillance program for the paper of record, Risen looked into getting these revelations out through a book he was already under contract to write for Simon & Schuster, a book that would look at a wide range of intelligence missteps in the war on terror.
In response, it seems, the government once again went straight to the top in order to thwart him. As 60 Minutes reports:
The administration [reached] out to Leslie Moonves, head of CBS, whose Simon & Schuster division was the publisher of Risens book, in an unsuccessful attempt to stop its publication.
In an interview with The Intercept, Risen said he had been told the same story by Simon & Schuster a day or two before his book was published. He added he remembers feeling very happy that Moonves stood up for him.
It has been previously reported that the government considered asking the publisher or one of its parent companies to kill Risens book because it disclosed information on one or more secret and purportedly sensitive intelligence operations, including a botched attempt to feed secretly flawed blueprints for a nuclear bomb trigger to the Iranians. But in those accounts the request is never made because Risens book was already in stores or on delivery trucks by the time the White House became aware of its contents. The 60 Minutes report appears to mark the first disclosure such a request did, in fact, occur.
Another author, former Defense Intelligence Agency officer Anthony Shaffer, did not fare as well as Risen. In September 2010, the Defense Department bought the entire 10,000-copy first printing of his Afghan war memoir Operation Dark Heart, which publisher St. Martins Press, a Macmillan imprint, had already distributed to reviewers and at least some retailers. Three U.S. intelligence agencies said the book contained secrets, and a subsequent censored edition contained redactions on 250 of the books 320 pages.
When Risens State of War was released against the White Houses wishes in January 2006, it came to represent a watershed moment in the campaign to bring transparency to Americas post-9/11 national security state. It also became the flashpoint for an ongoing court battle in which the government has sought to identify and prosecute a Risen source. Despite the failure of government suppression efforts, it is nonetheless disturbing that White House officials would intervene not just to muzzle the Timess reporting, but also to pressure the publishing industry to kill the story as well. In its zeal to stifle critical journalism in the name of protecting national secrets, the campaign against Risens work appeared to border dangerously close to outright censorship.
Risen is now facing potential jail time for refusing to divulge his sources for classified information. Nonetheless, he is standing firm. As he told 60 Minutes:
It was the best story in my life, and I wasnt going to let anybody else write it
The whole global war on terror has been classified. If we today had only had information that was officially authorized from the U.S. government, we would know virtually nothing about the war on terror.
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/10/13/american-government-tried-kill-james-risens-last-book/