Countdown: James Risen on the NSA Spying on Journalists

[BlueJessamine]

Run time: 05:01 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoUCRuS3iUo   Posted on YouTube: January 23, 2009 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: January 23, 2009 By DU Member: BlueJessamine Views on DU: 587

 
Via Think Progress:

Olbermann yesterday hosted Pulitzer-Prize winning New York Times reporter James Risen, who famously angered the Bush administration by revealing the government’s domestic wiretapping program and its secret snooping on the financial records of thousands of Americans allegedly linked to terrorists.

Since that time, the Bush Justice Department had been trying to identify Risen’s sources for his book on the nation’s spy agencies, called State of War. In April, the New York Times reported that former government officials had been called before a grand jury and confronted with phone records documenting their calls with Risen. Neither Risen nor the New York Times had received a subpoena for those records.

Risen told Olbermann that in light of Tice’s revelations, he believes he may have been a target of the NSA’s journalist-spying program:

OLBERMANN: Do you believe you have been a target of this NSA wiretap program?

RISEN: What I know for a fact is that the Bush administration got my phone records. Whether that was obtained by the FBI or the NSA, my lawyers and I have been trying to investigate that. We’re not sure. But we know for a fact that they showed my phone records to other people in the federal grand jury. And we have asked the court to investigate that.

Risen added that he believes the purpose of the NSA’s efforts was to “have a chilling effect on potential whistle blowers in the government, to make them realize that there is a big brother out there that will get them if they step out of line.”

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/01/23/risen-spying/#comments