The Invisible Man: Jeffrey Sterling, CIA Whistleblower

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47. strange to present yourself as an authority on Sterling's defense, while working to discredit him

...observers of the trail know well why Risen didn't testify.

In pre-trial arguments, Risen said, definitively, that he wouldn't reveal his sources. The defense didn't see any value in demanding Risen appear on the stand, and felt that it might actually hurt their client. That's their judgment. You've used that as proof of Sterling's guilt. That's so outlandish that it appears to be a deliberate attempt to obfuscate from the facts in the case (beyond the indictment that you're so fond of citing). I'm not game for it, msanthrope, and I hope others recognize your efforts for what they are; an attempt to throw whatever garbage you can raise up in the air and hope it diverts from the facts in this case.


for anyone actually interested in the facts surrounding Risen testifying, or not, here's a good account (as pointed to by riderinthestorm) :


Defense lawyer Edward MacMahon said Risen wasn’t truly unavailable, but had essentially been excused from testifying as a result of a decision by the government.

“He’s not unavailable in a legal sense,” MacMahon declared at a court hearing Monday. “The government did not even ask him questions about the identity of his source. It’s politically unavailable is what it is.”

MacMahon said the government had made a series of decisions to blinder their investigation of Risen and those unexplored possibilities are fair game for the defense. “Why didn’t they subpoena Mr. Risen’s e-mails? Why didn’t they subpoena Mr. Risen’s phone calls?” the defense lawyer asked, calling it “really unfair and unconstitutional” to preclude the defense from bringing up such issues.

(Judge) Brinkema said the situation was not entirely akin to most in which a witness refuses to testify.

“This is a little bit different,….This is not a person claiming the Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate one’s self. Part of the issue is a policy decision,” she said, noting Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to bar prosecutors from asking Risen directly about his confidential sources, or even where or when he met them or obtained certain information.

The judge noted that a federal appeals court agreed with the government that it could seek to force Risen to testify, but now Holder is electing not to.

Brinkema said Sterling’s lawyers should be permitted, at a minimum, to tell jurors that Risen said at last week’s hearing that he had multiple sources for the chapter at issue from his book. “He did say some things in his testimony that were not irrelevant to this case,” the judge said.

read: http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/01/13/government-declares-monopoly-right-call-james-risen-witness