REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

President Barack Obama came into office in 2009 promising a new era of unprecedented transparency in his administration. But when he leaves office, reporters may remember him for an effort that has largely turned out to be the opposite — and for being what one affected reporter has called the "greatest enemy to press freedom in a generation."

At a time when journalists' roles in covering different, critical conflict zones have been under the microscope, renewed attention has come to the case involving James Risen. He is the New York Times journalist who has been fighting efforts by two different Departments of Justice — under Presidents Obama and George W. Bush — to compel him to identify sources from a 2006 book that reveals a secret CIA plan to sabotage Iran's budding nuclear program.

For the past five years, he has battled the Obama administration's Justice Department, which in 2009 took a rather unprecedented step of renewing a subpoena scheduled to expire that year. From his case and others the Obama administration has pursued, Risen told The Times' Maureen Dowd recently that Obama represented a fundamental obstacle for press freedom.

"It’s hypocritical," Risen said. "A lot of people still think this is some kind of game or signal or spin. They don’t want to believe that Obama wants to crack down on the press and whistleblowers. But he does. He’s the greatest enemy to press freedom in a generation."

Risen's Case



There's a perception, many observers of Risen's case say, that Obama is viewed by the public as different and as overtly friendly with the press. They think that perception is wrong.

They point to the Obama administration's use of the Espionage Act to prosecute government employees more than any other administration in history, saying it is borne out of a necessity to viciously control the flow of information. In 2009, when Risen's subpoena first expired, the Obama administration took the unusual step of renewing it and continuing to pursue the case.

"He promised to be a different kind of president," said Jerry Kammer, a former Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who now works at the Center for Immigration Studies. "But he has only suppressed efforts to disclose the government's misdeeds. His administration has been untransparent at so many levels."

Kammer was one of 14 Pulitzer Prize winners, spanning 1982 to 2014, who issued statements earlier this month in support of Risen. The group that put together the statements, Roots Action, also delivered a petition with more than 100,000 signatures to the Justice Department's Washington headquarters.

Earlier this summer, Risen failed in an attempt to have the Supreme Court review an order compelling him to testify about the sources in a book he published in 2006. He has vowed to fight on, but he has exhausted all legal options to halt the Justice Department's pursuit of him. He has vowed he is ready to go to jail, even telling his paper he has the books he will take with him already picked out. He could be the first reporter since The Times' Judith Miller in 2005 to go to jail for refusing to reveal the name of a source.

"The government likes to keep its house in order and likes to go after every possible leaker it can find," said Gregg Leslie, the legal defense director at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. "They really just don't believe in whistleblowers or leakers."

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James Risen could go to jail as soon as this fall.





In 2006, Risen published "State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration." One chapter in the book detailed a secret CIA plan — started under the administration of then-President Bill Clinton and supported by the Bush administration — to sabotage Iran's then-budding nuclear program. (You can read an excerpt of the chapter here at The Guardian.)

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