Author and New York Times reporter James Risen says he doesn’t believe his new book, “Pay Any Price: Greed, Power and Endless War,” will inspire the Department of Justice to open a leak probe.

“I don’t think so – it’s pretty funny to think about though,” says Risen, who is in the midst of a high-profile reporters’ rights standoff that may land him in jail.

Federal prosecutors want the Pulitzer Prize winner to finger ex-CIA employee Jeffrey Sterling as his source for information about a mismanaged plot to give Iran flawed nuclear bomb blueprints, which Risen reported in his 2006 book “State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration."

The reporter says he won’t comply, and earlier this year his lawyers unsuccessfully asked the Supreme Court to consider if reporters have either a constitutional or common law privilege protecting communications with sources.

Press freedom advocates, including 14 fellow Pulitzer Prize winners and two Nobel Peace Prize winners, have called on the Obama administration to back down. But Assistant U.S. Attorney James Trump hinted Friday the government still intends to subpoena Risen, according to The Washington Post.

Risen’s latest book is a wide-ranging look at consequences of the so-called war on terror and includes stories of shocking thievery during the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

The book reports that a bunker in rural Lebanon is believed to store up to $200 million in gold and $1.6 billion in $100 bills airlifted from the U.S. to Iraq shortly after the 2003 American invasion, before being stolen and smuggled out of the country.

The stash is believed to be controlled by powerful Iraqi political factions and used to buy arms.

Risen tells U.S. News he doesn’t know if the bunker is located in a border region vulnerable to Syria-based Islamic State fighters or in turf controlled by the militant Hezbollah organization.

“I’m not sure of the exact location," he says. " I haven’t been there, I haven’t seen it.”

Risen writes that he first learned of the lair from a former CIA officer who reportedly had heard of it from a Syrian intelligence contact. The author later learned of a substantial investigation by former Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Stuart Bowen, who confirmed the probe for the first time to Risen.

Bowen’s team was reportedly stymied by U.S. diplomatic personnel in Lebanon and by that country’s top prosecutor, who reportedly expressed interest in helping recover the money before backtracking.

The Lebanese Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment on Risen’s reporting.

The money reportedly hidden in Lebanon belongs to the Iraqi government and was among the billions of dollars rapidly transported from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s cash storage facility in New Jersey to Baghdad after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Immediately after the 2003 invasion, $1.7 billion in frozen Iraqi assets was returned to Iraq’s government. Risen quotes a former Treasury Department official as saying that should have been sufficient to stabilize the country’s monetary system. But Paul Bremer, the Coalition Provisional Authority leader, helped repatriate with little oversight a further $20 billion in cash from the Development Fund of Iraq – oil money stored in the U.S. for Iraq’s new government.

“Today, at least $11.7 billion of the approximately $20 billion the CPA ordered sent to Iraq from New York is either unaccounted for or has simply disappeared,” Risen writes.

Poor record keeping or intentional destruction of documents makes much of the money impossible to track, but Risen goes through a shocking rundown of thievery small and large – including up to $1.3 billion embezzled by a former Iraqi defense minister and another $1.6 billion possibly taken by Kurdish leaders after an unsolicited money transfer.

Risen says "Pay Any Price" presents readers an opportunity to re-evaluate the war on terror – a collection of government policies and priorities he says President Barack Obama has made permanent.

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Risen is also hopeful chapters on a former U.S. interrogator now suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and about ex-congressional staffer Diane Roark, who was investigated by the government for raising internal concerns about mass surveillance, will leave lasting impressions.