New York Times reporter James Risen stared down the Obama administration in a years-long fight against identifying his sources in a criminal case – and won. Now a civil lawsuit takes aim at the highly respected national security journalist over sourcing in his latest book.

This time, the case is brought by a businessman and alleged scam artist, Dennis Montgomery, who Risen profiled in the second chapter of last year's “Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War.”

Montgomery, Risen reported, “was the maestro behind what many current and former U.S. officials and others familiar with the case now believe was one of the most elaborate and dangerous hoaxes in American history.”

Risen wrote that Montgomery offered various dubious technologies to the U.S. military and intelligence agencies in the panicked aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks, including technology that purportedly could decipher hidden codes in broadcasts on Al Jazeera, an Arabic-language news network owned by the ruling family of Qatar that has a worldwide following.

Montgomery’s Al Jazeera analysis supposedly found hidden letters and numbers that, Risen reported, appeared to be coded messages about airline flights being targeted by terrorists. The information was piped by the CIA to President George W. Bush and resulted in the grounding of transatlantic flights around Christmas 2003 and led to White House discussion of using fighter jets to shoot down commercial aircraft.

The technology was discredited by a French firm’s analysis, Risen wrote, and the matter was quietly dropped while Montgomery continued to win government contracts and the officials responsible were promoted.

In February 2004, Montgomery’s company won a contract with Special Operations Command, Risen wrote, for target-recognition software to be used on video feeds from Predator drones. The command paid $9.6 million for the software before determining it didn’t meet their needs, the book says.

Risen’s reporting is attributed to many people who formerly worked with Montgomery and in proximity to his interactions with the government.

The book includes rebuttals from Montgomery that his technologies were no hoax and that he was not responsible for government interpretations of what he purportedly found in Al Jazeera clips.

But in his lawsuit the businessman says he’s been defamed and he seeks more than $450 million in damages from Risen and the book’s publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

“Montgomery is illegally used as a whipping boy,” the suit says. “Defendants’ actions have left Plaintiff in ruins.”

Risen and the publisher did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Risen won a Pulitzer Prize in 2006 for reporting on the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretaps, so it’s perhaps a surprise that Montgomery is represented by conservative legal activist Larry Klayman, who won the first and thus far only federal court ruling against the National Security Agency’s dragnet collection of U.S. phone records.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in southern Florida, publicly airs some new information about Montgomery’s activities with the government. It says, for example, that Montgomery “negotiated for the sale of his technology to the Government for the price of $100 million,” a cumulative dollar amount not included in Risen’s book.

The lawsuit also says Montgomery is an anti-mass surveillance whistleblower (Klayman says his activities on this were largely behind closed doors), and that Risen and his publisher were “used as tools by the CIA, NSA, and other Government agencies” to punish him.

“Defendant Risen and the other Defendants have misrepresented the truthful story of these events by faulting the wrong parties and thus defaming Plaintiff Montgomery,” it says. “Defendant Risen’s Government sources would bear the blame and legal consequences if they did not portray Plaintiff Montgomery as at fault.”

The lawsuit charges that Risen either possessed “classified national security and intelligence information from the Government and details of confidential private conversations and events within the Government (and falsified that information)” or invented accounts to sell books.

The lawsuit also suggests the French firm that reportedly discredited the Al Jazeera-scanning technology may have been politically motivated by opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

In a colorful passage, the lawsuit says, “The thesis of Defendant Risen’s and the other Defendants’ Book is that the war on terror is illegitimate and unnecessary, motivated by personal greed, irrational paranoia, or politics, and that the French government is wise and smart while our Government is stupid, foolish, greedy, incompetent and criminally-minded.”

In another, it says, “Defendants have subjected Plaintiff Montgomery to what is in effect a Fatwah, which is an open call that any and all militant Jihadi Muslims should kill Plaintiff Montgomery.”

Klayman declined to discuss details of the lawsuit in depth ahead of a Thursday morning press conference at the National Press Club featuring himself and Montgomery.