In the war on terror today we spend the hour with former New York Times reporter James rising who left the paper in August and joined the interests them where this week he published 815000 word story. Rising describes his struggles to publish major national security stories in the post $911.00 period and how both the government and his own paper the New York Times suppressed his reporting including on the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program for which he would later when the Pulitzer Prize for it was going to be in my book in the late summer of 2005 what they said was Ok we'll think about putting it in the in the paper but they were committed to it they wanted to negotiate again with the government and so there were a whole series of new meetings with the government and which was very frustrating to me James risin describes the Times editors meetings with top officials at the CIA and the White House his refusal to name a source would take him to the Supreme Court he almost wound up in jail until the Obama administration. Today James rising for the hour. Coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now Democracy Now dot org The War and Peace Report I'm Amy Goodman the Trump administration's proposed allowing offshore oil and gas drilling in nearly all of the United States' coastal waters the reversal of the Obama era restrictions would open more than a 1000000000 acres of water along the eastern seaboard and in the Arctic and allow oil companies to drill off the coast of California for the 1st time in decades the proposal faces opposition from environmental groups and the governors of New Jersey Delaware Maryland virgin. North and South Carolina California Oregon Washington and Florida the Trump ministrations proposal to expand offshore oil and gas drilling comes as scientists say climate change may be related to the devastatingly freezing weather currently engulfing wide swaths of the United States some scientists say the melting of the Arctic and the weakening of the jet stream could be allowing more cold air to escape the Arctic and engulf lower latitudes such as Europe and parts of North America a brutal cold is setting in across the East Coast and Midwest today with wind chill temperatures expected to dip as low as negative 15 degrees Fahrenheit in New York a negative 25 degrees Fahrenheit in Boston over the weekend the freeze comes after a winter storm dubbed a bombsite cologne dumped more than a foot of snow across 8 different states closing schools forcing the cancellation of thousands of flights and knocking out power for tens of thousands of people at least 17 people have died from the weather so far this week the National Guard has been mobilized in multiple states and Boston the blizzard not only blanketed the city in more than a foot of snow it also caused frigid water from the Boston Harbor to surge into Boston streets this is Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker speaking Thursday and it's sort of snow wasn't in the forecast predicts single digit temperatures to move in on Friday that means the snow from the storm will freeze quickly and better cold temperatures will return make sure you're prepared especially in the event you lose power and stay safe while the road crews and 1st responders work through the snowstorm the feud between President Trump and his former chief strategist Steve Bannon is escalating and it's the publication of a new tell. Book in which Bannon accuses Donald Trump Jr of treason and predicts Robert Miller's Russian investigation will find evidence of money laundering President Trump is trying frantically to stop the publication of the book fire and fury inside the Trump White House written by journalist Michael Wolff Trump's lawyers have sent cease and desist letters to Bannan author Michael Wolff and publisher Henry Holt trying to stop the book's publication and distribution but amidst the media firestorm publisher Henry Holt has moved up the book's publication date to today it had been slated to be published Tuesday the book has already reached number one on the Amazon best seller list in the book Steve Benen portrays his former boss as wholly unprepared for the presidency he accuses Donald Trump Jr of treason over a June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower with Russian officials the book says a spokesman for President Trump's legal team quit after Trump dictated a misleading statement while aboard Air Force One about his son's meeting the former Trump spokesman Mark Carollo told author Michael Wolff he feared the Air Force One meeting represented obstruction of justice in the book ban and also says Special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigation is about money laundering Bannan is quoted talking about Trump's son in law Jared Kushner's real estate empire saying quote It goes through your bank and all the questioner expletive the questioner expletive is greasy they're going to go right through that unquote Bannan is also quoted as saying quote They're going to crack down on Junior like an egg on national t.v. Also in reference to money laundering earlier this week the publication of excerpts of the book cost Trump to attack Bannon saying he lost his mind meanwhile Bannan himself is losing key allies including his billionaire backer Rebecca Murray. Who issued a statement Thursday saying quote I support President Trump and the platform upon which he was elected my family and I have not communicated with Steve Bannon in many months and have provided no financial support to his political agenda nor do we support his recent actions and statements unquote On Thursday President Trump responded to questions from reporters about Steve Bannon. You know you have these new changes to pretty quick thank you well. Let's just say this you know Thank you Attorney General Jeff Sessions has abruptly rescinded Obama era policies that discourage federal prosecutors from cracking down on marijuana in states where marijuana use and sale has been legalized at least 29 states and the District of Columbia have at least partially legalized marijuana including most recently California where it became legal on January 1st but marijuana remains illegal at the federal level Attorney General Jeff Sessions move to rescind the policy known as the Cole memorandum sparked widespread backlash and concern about a nationwide crackdown against the production sale distribution and use of marijuana this is Colorado's Republican Senator Cory Gardner speaking on the Senate floor Thursday without the coal memorandum legal businesses operating in accordance to states' rights states laws there are operating now under a cloud of uncertainty thousands of jobs at risk millions of dollars in revenue and certainly the question of constitutional states' rights very much at the core of this discussion. Because I believe what happened today was a trampling of Colorado's rights its voters and sure this was a heavily debated issue something that I have already said that I opposed but the people of Colorado spoke they spoke loudly and I believe in the same question were asked today. They even have more support for the decision they made back several years ago North Korea and South Korea have set a date for their 1st time I level talks in more than 2 years the talks are slated to be held January 9th the 2 countries are seeking to deescalate tensions on the Korean Peninsula largely sparked by President Trump's repeated nuclear threats against North Korea this is the spokesperson for South Korea's unification ministry . What it took to the North Korea accept our offer for talks at the Peace House and on January 9th the 2 sides decided to discuss working level issues for the talks by exchanging documents regarding the agenda both will discuss Chang's Winter Olympics and ways to improve ties between self and North Korea as the United States and South Korea have also agreed to delay plan military drills on the Korean peninsula until after the Winter Olympics which are being held in piano chunks South Korea about 60 miles south of the demilitarized zone the United States has suspended at least $900000000.00 in military aid to Pakistan after President Trump accused Pakistan of not doing enough to combat terrorists and this is State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert. Today we can confirm that we are suspending national a security Erik's excuse me we are suspending security assistance security assistance only to Pakistan at this time and still the Pakistani government takes decisive action against groups including the Afghan Taliban and Hakani network we consider them to be destabilizing the region and also targeting u.s. Personnel the United States will suspend that kind of security assistance to Pakistan in Afghanistan at least 20 people have been killed and dozens more were wounded in a suicide bomb attack in the capital Kabul on Thursday ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack. Struck a market where shopkeepers who are protesting against the police in Syria about 2 dozen civilians were reportedly killed by airstrikes in rebel held eastern outside Damascus Thursday the Syria civil defense also known as the white helmet says the airstrikes were carried out by the Russian military and that the victims included women and children Eastern and has been besieged by the Syrian military since 2013 food water and medicine are insurance supply in Russia at least 10 people were killed when a fire tour through a shoe factory in Siberia Thursday at least 7 of the victims were Chinese migrants who were working in the factory local media is reporting the fire may have been caused by workplace safety violations and back in the United States and Virginia Republicans have declared victory in a pivotal House of Delegates race after an election official randomly picked Republican incumbent David Yancey's name out of the bowl breaking a tie between him and his rival Democrat Shelley Simons But Simons refused to concede the race and suggest she may demand a 2nd recount the race decides control of the Virginia House of Delegates and those are some of the headlines This is Democracy Now Democracy Now dot org The War and Peace Report I mean the good men. Today we spend the hour with the veteran New York Times investigative reporter James risin who left the paper in August to join the intercept a senior National Security Correspondent this week he published 815000 word story headlined The biggest secret my life is a New York Times reporter in the shadow of the war on terror in the story risin gives a personal account of his struggles to publish significant stories involving national security in the post $911.00 period and how both the government and his top editors at The Times suppressed his reporting on stories including the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program for which he would ultimately when the Pulitzer Prize in 2006 risin describes how a story would have come out right before the 2004 presidential election of President Bush over John Kerry potentially changing the outcome of that election but under government pressure the New York Times you refused to publish the story for more than a year until risin was publishing a book that would have had the revelations in it 1st in his new piece for the intercept James rise and also describes meetings between top Times editors and officials at the CIA and the White House risin was pursued by both the Bush and then the Obama administrations as part of a 6 year leak investigation into his book State of War The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush administration. His refusal to name a source would take him to the Supreme Court he almost wound up in jail until the Obama administration blinked his answer to that saga was to write another book pay any price greed power and less war now in one of his 1st pieces for the n. Intercept he describes the biggest secret of my life is a New York Times reporter in the shadow of the war on terror Welcome back to Democracy Now and Jim rise and it's great to have you with us thanks for having me appreciate it so the story of what happened with your warrantless wiretapping story the story of the wiretapping of Americans throughout the country more than a decade before Ed Snowden. Revealed so much can you go back in time and tell us what you found before the election the 2nd election of President Bush we may not have read it in the New York Times at the time but you'd written it yeah well it was in the spring of 2004 I was meeting with us source who I was talking to this source and in the process of talking the source said. There's something that I know that I think is the biggest secret in the government. But I'm too frightened to tell you about it right now and I. Obviously took me aback and I. Kind of tried to. Convince the source to talk more about it but I couldn't I just decided to try to keep meeting with this source over the next few months and finally. Several months later. As I was leaving a meeting with this source I just turned to the source and I said you've got to tell me now what what it is that you're talking about and. Finally the source just kind of started talking about. It about what he knew what the source knew and eventually you know in the course of about 10 or 15 minutes told me the outlines of the N.S.A.'s domestic spying program that had begun under the Bush administration. Both the warrantless wiretapping and the. Broader effort to gather e-mail and phone records of Americans and it was the outlines of of this massive program that we later learned was code named Stellar Wind and. I then found other people who could confirm the story and also found that a reporter sitting next to me in the Washington bureau of The New York Times Eric Lichtblau was also hearing similar things and so we started working together and we had a story a draft of a story by that fall of 2004 and I decided to just go through the front door and call Michael Hayden the director of the n.s.a. And I called the The press was. A person at the n.s.a. And kind of bluff my way and said I need to talk to Hayden right away and to my surprise the bluff worked and he got on the phone and I started reading him the top of the draft of the story that Eric and I had written and he just let out this very audible gasp. And said Well whatever we're doing is legal in the effective in and operationally you know legitimate or something and then they got off the phone and that. I think pretty soon after that he called the Washington bureau chief for The New York Times Phil Taubman and that began a very long that that was kind of the beginning of the negotiations between the New York Times and. And the government over whether to publish the story and we had meetings started meetings in. The fall before the election had a meeting with the acting CIA director John McLaughlin and his chief of staff and me and felt Taubman who is the Washington bureau chief at the Old Executive Office Building where they were trying to convince us not to run the story although they kept saying it and saying not the real they kept refusing to admit that the story was true they just kept saying hypothetically if if this story if something like this was going on it be too important for the. Government for you to a newspaper report on it Jim before you continue just to get claim more fully when that exactly the u.s. Was doing this stellar wind program how exactly the u.s. Was spying on Americans and what it means the wire let the warrantless wiretapping story well there were a couple components of it there were several components of it there was. They had. What we later learned they had grabbed they they were the n.s.a. Was which was supposed to spy on foreigners overseas had been turned inward on the United States by the Bush administration and so they were spying on Americans when they were only supposed to spy on foreigners and they were getting they were listening into the phone conversations of Americans international phone calls with with foreigners without search warrants without any warrant from warrants from the secret Pfizer court the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court and they were also gathering the phone records logs and e-mail addresses and the messages of Americans throughout the country and so basically this was the what we what I was told about was the outlines of what we now know as all of the domestic spying that has been going on since $911.00 it's the same program that. Edward Snowden later Leaks documents about he provided greater. Detail and showed how it expanded beyond what. It started out as by the end of the Bush administration and it sure is this is right before the election and the issue of invasion of privacy of wiretapping Americans are very doing their e-mails and listening in on conversations. You know hits people across the political spectrum and could have a pivotal in this Kerry Bush presidential election yeah I've always wondered what it would have what the impact would have been if we had written the story before the election you know obviously I don't know what you wrote your boss or in the who had a fairly significant impact but what happened instead was you know we wrote the story we had a draft. And then we had meetings with the editors Eric and I and our editor Rebecca Corbett met went to New York to meet with Bill Keller and Jill Abramson and Phil Talban who was the bureau chief went up as well and Keller decided not to run it before the election and we had you know I described the meeting that meeting in my piece and it was a very tense tense meeting where we had some tense exchanges gun. And then afterwards. After the election Eric and I convinced the editors to let us try again and try to get it into the paper again in and in December of 2004 we you know had rewritten it and reported the story and they killed it again and I'm going Graham's about the same grounds that the Bush administration argued that it was too valuable for. For the counterterrorism programs the United States that it was the most Their argument was it was the crown jewel of counterterrorism programs it was the most important thing that the u.s. Was doing against. Al Qaida and that if we revealed it we would be responsible for you know. Hurting America's national security and so that was the basic argument and the editors agreed with that at the time and your argument. My argument was that we had we had sources saying. That it might be illegal or unconstitutional and that it clearly was they were clearly going around the system that had been put in place by Congress 30 years earlier you know in 1978 Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act which set in place a legal structure for the surveillance of Americans and others in the United States for purposes of national security and what it requires they set up a secret court called the Pfizer court and when the government wants to do the kind of spying that they were doing in this case they're supposed to go to that secret court and get a search warrant and what we found was that they weren't doing that they were they had decided to go around the Pfizer court ignore the Pfizer court and just start spying on a massive scale without telling anybody and it was you know the p.l.o. Lot of people who knew about it thought it was illegal and. You know our argument I think was you know terrorists know that the United States listens to their tries to listen to their conversations that wasn't the big secret the big secret was that the United States government was ignoring its own laws and so I thought that was the reason to publish the story then and later. But the national security argument from the Bush administration won out in those debates with the editors and what did the New York Times get in exchange for suppressing the story on behalf of President Bush man who might not have been president if he would actually publish the story before. And get anything you know we. I guess the only thing they got was they angered me and I decided after they had decided to kill it a 2nd time I took a book leave and I decided to put the story in a book because I thought that was the only way I could. Get the story out and I I felt there been a whole bunch of other stories that they had killed or held over the previous few years that I kind of detail and this piece and so this to me was like the final straw and I wasn't willing to do this anymore and I felt like if I didn't start you know if I didn't do something that I wouldn't be able to respect myself anymore I didn't feel like I could put on you know go along with these efforts to kill or suppress stories anymore and so. I put this and another story on failed CIA operation in Iran both in my book and after I wrote the book and had the manuscript ready to go and added. I told the editors of The New York Times that it was the stories are going to be in my book and that they should publish them and. I told them that like in the late summer early fall of 2005 when my in my book was scheduled to come out in January 2006 so I gave them I think quite a bit of time advance warning to publish the stories and . The. So that then when I told them that the stories were going to be in my book that they were very angry at me for fear eous And you know they thought I was being insubordinate. And. I didn't they didn't think I had the right to do it and so began a very lengthy series of very tense meetings between me and the editors. Over what to do next gen I wanted to go to a c.b.s. 60 Minutes report aired in 2014 when correspondent Lesley Stahl asked Bill Keller then the executive editor of The New York Times about the meeting he was summoned to at the White House that made Keller decide not to run your story the president said. You know if there's another attack like 911 you know we're going to be called up before Congress to explain how we let that happen and you should be sitting alongside us it was in effect you know you could have blood on your hands he was saying if anything goes wrong we're going to blame you right. So that's Bill Keller then the executive editor at The New York Times now he's actually that was actually a later me that with that was the final meeting. Where right before they published the story. There were other meetings earlier with the government that. That led to their decision not the decision to kill the story but that actually that meeting with the president was at the very end of the whole process so that was at the end of the process yeah and then they decided to run the story because you were doing it anyway yeah yeah yeah I mean they would argue and I there's some truth to it that that the story was much better by the time by the fall by the winter of 2005 it's true it was we had more information. And we had a lot. Stronger understanding of. Of the of the program at the pro the primary you know there were several reasons that I think in the end they decided to run the story you know my book started the whole process all over again I think the story was dead at the New York Times after the 2nd time they killed it in December 2004 and I think it's gotta say the only reason they reopened it the discussion was because I told him it was going to be in my book. Then you know and then there was a whole they they then started this whole series of new negotiations with the government. Throughout the fall of 2005 and a whole a whole series of meetings. And I was getting very anxious because I knew my book was coming out in January 2006 and then they kept having these very. Whole series of meetings that went on forever. And culminating in that meeting with Bush and Salzburg or. And then after that meeting with between Sulzberger and Bush the White House still wanted them. To meet with more people and I was at that point very concerned that you know they weren't going to make up their mind fast enough. And they seemed. Not to want to admit that they were facing a deadline and. Then fortunately Eric Lichtblau my colleague on the story. Came in with new information right at the end where he was told by a very good source that the Bush administration had considered getting a court ordered injunction against the New York Times to stop the publication of the story and that was the 1st time. Since the Pentagon Papers that the government had thought about doing that against the New York Times and so that immediately convinced the paper to publish the story that day that night and. So that was the final reason ultimately that it went in that night and. The color called the White House to tell them we were about to publish it and then we that the difference we had between. With the New York Times of the 1970 s. We had the Internet and so right after he called the White House and told them we were able to put it online earlier than normal and. Then. Have it in the paper the next day so it was a you know a process that lasted you know took up almost 2 years of my life really in the end and this is that piece for which you and Eric Lichtblau won the Pulitzer Prize Yes Yeah yeah no and then we did follow up stories and of course the Times one of the prizes Well right right right yeah it was a very you know difficult. Period for me because 1st we you know we I was kind of being thought of as being insubordinate and then we win the Pulitzer for the same thing so it was a it was this weird. Weird process for me of. You know fighting internally and then getting the. Praise externally and the Pulitzer committee wrote for their carefully sourced stories on secret domestic eavesdropping that stirred a national debate on the boundary line between fighting terrorism and protecting civil liberty when you win a Pulitzer the editors come out what you pop the champagne corks were they celebrating you and did they apologize to you behind the scenes. No they didn't apologize. They we had this celebration and I think I right in the story it was very odd for me because you know a few months earlier I had felt like they were I was about to get fired. If this story came out in my book 1st and the paper hadn't run it before it was in the book and now you know they were having this celebration and I remember thinking this is one of the most awkward moments in my life. But I just decided not to say anything about that and just you know I looked I remember I looked over a Kalar and souls were going just said well you know how tough this was and. It was . I felt like at that point I wasn't going to make a big deal out of it again so and of course it isn't about just apologizing to you it's about a thing to the American people or because it's a global paper to the world around the issue of what it means to publish a story that changes the landscape the politics of a country James arise and we have to break and when we come back you mentioned there were 2 stories that you were publishing in your book The Times had suppressed and I want to talk about the other as well and then what it meant to face jail for not revealing your source we're not just talking under the Bush administration now because though you thought it would all change under the Obama administration it only intensified where speaking with the twice Pulitzer Prize winning reporter James risin He's now the intercepts senior national security correspondent and bestselling author but before that he worked for The New York Times and he tells this story and a 15000 word article at the intercept dot com We will link to it at Democracy Now dot org Stay with us. 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Pressure drowned by the tits and made towels Yes as much of the country experiences the cologne or hyper vomit Genesis This is Democracy Now Democracy Now dot org The War and Peace Report I mean the good minutes we spend the hour with the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist James risin who was a long time reporter for The New York Times now with the intercept where this week he's published 815000 word piece headlined The biggest secret my life as a New York Times reporter in the shadow of the war on terror James rise and pursued by both the Bush and Obama administrations as part of a 6 year leak investigation into his book and articles his book State of War The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush administration has refused. To name a source would take him to the Supreme Court he almost wound up in jail until the Obama administration blanked now so Jim you talked about the warrantless wiretapping story what about the Iran story the other story that The Times ultimately would not publish that and could have ended you up in jail right I was in 2003 I got the story that showed that. The CIA had had this really. Flawed program to try to influence the Iranian nuclear program what they had done was they had taken some Russian nuclear blueprints that they had gotten from a defector and then had. American scientists embed flaws into the blueprints and then they had another Russian defect of another Russian who was supposed to go give these blueprints to. The Iranians and act like he was a greedy scientist who would who just wanted money. The problem was that you know in a letter the. Clearly the Russian was worried about what was going to happen the Russian because the Russian told the Americans as soon as he was told the CIA after he saw these blueprints you know I can eat can see the flaws in these things. And they still went ahead with the operation even though the flaws seemed fairly obvious. And he wrote a letter and gave the letter to left it with the Iranians that their Vienna mission . Along with the blueprints and you will see problems in here. And you you know. And it's so they was telling the Iranians that the blueprints he was giving them had flaws in them which was kind of the whole point of this operation so in other words it's quite possible we don't know exactly how this all played out in Iran but it's quite possible that these blueprint that since they were tipped off to the fact that there were flaws in the blueprints that the Iranians were able to use them use the good parts of them and not the bad parts and any event so that's how the program seemed to be flawed and so. This was coming I was starting to work on this right around the time of the invasion of Iraq and when the hold one of the big justifications for the war in Iraq was this the w m d program that Iraq supposedly had so I thought it was really important to write about Iran's nuclear you know the CIA effort on Iran when Iran looked like it was going to be the next war there were a lot of people in the Bush administration who at the time were talking about well you know as soon as we knock off Iraq will go after Iran or Syria or something. And so I thought it was a really important story and very relevant and newsworthy and would have been in the public interest. But as soon as I called the CIA for comment. Condi Leesa Rice the national security adviser called. Jill Abramson who was then the Washington bureau chief for The New York Times and demanding a meeting and so Jill and I went to the White House. In the late April or early May of 2003 and we met with Rice and George Tenet the CIA director. And they were adamant that we not publish the story and I remember Rice tell I may never make another phone call about the story ever again. And you should destroy your notes and never talk to anybody ever about this but at the same process time you know they were confirming the story. And the only thing that Tenet. Disputed in that conversation was that the program had been mismanaged. And so you know Joe and I left that meeting you know kind of very. You know stunned by the by the over the top approach that they had taken to try to get us to kill the story. But I also realized you know we had great confirmation now of the story too. And so you know pretty soon I you know I wanted to get the story published but it was happening coincidentally just as the whole Jason Blair scandal was happening at the New York Times and if you remember that it was a very weird time at the paper where Jason Blair was a young reporter who had. You know had some problems and there was a lot of questions about his reporting and that led to a big crisis in the leadership of the paper and how Raines who was the executive editor at the time was forced out and then there was an interim editor who came in and then finally Keller Bill Keller was named executive editor and that summer. And so I ultimately took the story to him and he. He decided not to publish it. And I tried several times. Over the next year to get him to change his mind but he wouldn't and so that was the backdrop that had been going on before we started talking about the n.s.a. Story the following year and I wanted to just play a clip of the woman who had become the New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson in an interview published on line by c.b.s. 60 Minutes in 2014 that Abramson regrets not pushing your paper to publish the story changed horizon about the CIA's efforts to undermine Iran's nuclear program I regret it now but I think I had I lean towards it not publish it seemed in the calculus of all of the major stories we were dealing with at that point not worth it to me and I regret that decision that I regret that I did not. A great reporter. Who I had worked where then who have then war Fermi and whose work I knew was about to rob So that was the woman who became the New York Times executive editor James Jill Abramson now Jim described then as how these 2 stories interacted with each other one that was published by The Times for which won the Pulitzer Prize one that was published in your book and how you ended up facing jail well what it was. Interesting like you know as I said this stuff started happening with the Iran story in 2003 and then in 2004. Had the the n.s.a. Story and so. I was you know as I said as I said earlier I was so frustrated and furious I decided once they'd kill both of them and they had also killed other stories I'd worked on before that. I just decided that I had to write a book. Because I didn't feel like I could cover the war on terror the post 911 world in the at the New York Times in the way that I wanted and so I started working on the book and after they had killed the n.s.a. Story for the 2nd time in December of 2004 I decided to take I took a book leave that I had scheduled and I decided to put both of them both of the stories in my book and as I said I came back to the paper and then in the late summer early fall of 2005 I told the editors those stories are going to be in my book and that they should publish them and it was very odd but the entire conversations all the conversations I had with the editors over the next few months were focused on the n.s.a. Story and not the Iran story and we had hardly had any discussions at all about the Iran story. And. So you know they published the n.s.a. Story but not the Iran story and it wasn't because we had a big meeting at that late point you know in the fall in the winter of 2005 about the Iran story whenever our really ever discussed it during that time period and. So after my book came out. The Bush administration. Launched a couple of leak investigations the main one was about the n.s.a. Story in The New York Times they wanted to find out who would talk to us and then what I found later was that they had started a 2nd. Leak investigation of my book and that they had they were looking 1st at several chapters about several different issues that were in my book with but which I hadn't published in The New York Times and I became convinced that they were looking for something to get me on where they could isolate me from the New York Times and ultimately they decided on the Iran story but I know that there were f.b.i. Agents and. And government officials looking at other chapters that had nothing to do with the Iran story as well and so I always felt like they were just looking for things all to Mali where they could. Divide me from the The New York Times and that's ultimately what they did do they decided they had a grand jury that was. Investigating the leak on the n.s.a. Story to The New York Times but they never pursued it they dropped that and instead they had a sack a 2nd grand jury that investigated my book and that's what they pursued and explain what happened from there explain what this meant to say they pursued it and had the time to defend you on the Iran story as well which they hadn't published Well what happened was. You know we continue to are a do reporting for the paper and dead Eric Lichtblau and I did another big story on the swift program and how the CIA was spying on the banking records of Americans and others. And that led to just a growing chorus in the Bush administration and among their conservative supporters outside that they should try to prosecute the New York Times and me in Erik and Keller in particular. For. Revealing classified information and so there was this drumbeat going on throughout 2006 about whether or not the government was going to try to either prosecute us for under the Espionage Act or just subpoena subpoena us and 4 try to force us to testify about who our sources were and they decided not to do that and. Then in and so I thought that I kind of thought maybe that you know they had forgotten about us until in the summer of 2007. To you know year and a half after our stories ran I got a letter in the Federal Express on the low at my house from the Justice Department saying you know we're conducting a criminal investigation of. Unauthorized disclosures of classified information in your book State of War and we want you to cooperate and tell us who where you got this information. And. I realize that it was the precursor to a subpoena because under the Justice Department's guidelines for how they deal with the media they're supposed to seek to negotiate or ask you voluntarily 1st before they subpoena you whether you will cooperate and I refused to cooperate and then in January 2008 I finally got a subpoena from the Justice Department demanding that I testify before a grand jury in Alexandria Virginia about. The chapter in my book that related to the Iran CIA operation and at that point I had to get lawyers and. Simon and Schuster which. You know own the imprint the free press which published my book agreed to provide legal you know my lawyers the New York Times did not provide any legal help for me. Now you learned much later about you know this is both a story of what happened with your with your 2 cases but me 10 to which the Times was meeting with top officials like Michael Hayden if you could explain for example the meeting between Philip cowed men and Michael Hayden and the fact that you weren't included in a number of these stories about the pieces you were writing. That were I'm not sure how many meetings there were because I was you know after there were meetings between Taubman and Hayden and other people at the n.s.a. . And Hayden Hayden describes in his memoir in 2016 which I hadn't frankly I hadn't read until I started doing this piece. And. There was a really fascinating exchange in there where he describes how after the 1st meeting that Talban and I had with John McLaughlin and John most men his chief of staff in the former head of CIA before him before the 2004 election he describes how he thought he could work with Taliban but not with me and so that led to further meetings between Hayden and Taubman that I wasn't included in and or Eric was included in and there was one where he apparently Talban was taken out to n.s.a. Headquarters and Hayden allowed him to meet with officials who were actually involved in the domestic spying program and let him talk to them and ask them questions but then he came back to the office and he told me Eric that he couldn't tell us the details of what he had learned because it was you know he'd agreed to keep it secret or keep it off the record and then there was I think another meeting between Keller with Keller anti-woman. Where they came back after me I'm not sure who they met. Or they came back and they have you know been given a briefing on the program and they couldn't tell us the details of what they've been told we have to break again we're just going to break for 30 seconds and when we come back we'll talk about what ultimately happened because of course then Bush was out of office Obama was you had high hopes until you saw they were going to pursue you with a vengeance We're talking with the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist James rise and who just has written an amazing $15000.00 word piece the biggest secret as he talks about not only government suppression attempts to suppress his pieces that the Times but The Times itself Stay with us. It is support for it came out comes in part from gross profits tax representation and bookkeeping services gross and enroll agent has been helping individuals and businesses with tax preparation text agency issues and bookkeeping for over 25 years can be reached at 9867020 for a consultation this. Week . Against diet by most staff the song is for a mouth This is Democracy Now I'm Amy Goodman as we spend the hour with James risin the Pulitzer Prize winning former New York Times journalist now with the intercept where he's written this remarkable piece titled The biggest secret my life is a New York Times reporter and the shadow of the war on terror in 2013 President Obama said he made no apologies for seeking to crack down on leaks. Leaks related to national security. Can put people at risk. They can put men and women in uniform that I've sent into the battlefield at risk. They can put. Some of our intelligence officers who are in various dangerous situations that are easily compromised at risk so I make no apologies and I don't think the American people would expect me as commander in chief not to be concerned about information that might compromise their missions or might get them killed so that's President Obama James rise and in December 2016 you wrote a piece in The New York Times if Trump targets journalists thank Obama so yeah talk about what happened we only have 3 minutes then we'll do a post show and posted online by Ok. You we only have 3 minutes to talk about what happened once Bush was out of office and you thought you were home free. Well you know the as I said I was subpoenaed 1st in January 2008 which as you remember was an election year and I was as that that case you know slowly wound its way through the court I realized Well we've only got a few months until the election and maybe we can you know the new president will get rid of this and I think the judge was agreed in the judge in my case Judge Brinkema in Virginia she was I think still kept move the case very slowly during that year thinking that well the new president will get rid of this because in she didn't do any make any decisions for several months until after the election like in June or July of 2009 she finally issued this brief little memo saying well I see that the grand jury in this case has been fixed has expired and that means the subpoena is probably moot and she said I give 10 days to the government to drop this case and I think she thought the Obama people were going to drop it as well and instead the new Obama administration said no no no no hold on we want to put we want to issue a new subpoena and they issued a new subpoena and then pursued this case throughout the entire administration and that went on when she quassia their subpoenas against me to the grand jury they would issue a new one and then she would question the next one and then when they issued a trial subpoena to May they she question that and they took that to the appeals court. And they finally end in their motion to the so in their brief to the surprise of the appeals court they said the reason we believe that we want this. Subpoena is because there's no such thing as a reporter's privilege which is a fundamental constitutional issue of whether or not a reporter as a right to protect their sources and they believe that a reporter has no right to do that and so on and that regard there were no different from Trump or Bush. We just have 30 seconds but you begin your piece there when you are going into court the ultimate moment where you don't know if you're going to be sent to jail at this point or not right you know that was in January 2015. We had the case had gone to the Supreme Court the subscript the Supreme Court refused to hear my appeal of their appeal and so I I had no more legal recourse to avoid appearing in court and I just refused to say I said I was not going to reveal my sources when the prosecutor asked me and at that moment the prosecutor blinked and said Ok we're we have no further question James arise and we have to leave it there but we're going to do a poll show post on line is Democracy Now dot org The Pulitzer Prize winning reporter now with the intercept as national security correspondent will link to his piece The biggest secret my life as a New York Times reporter in the shadow of the war on terror that does it for our show a fond farewell to our news fellow amount on that we may shoot wish you all the very best time Amy Goodman thanks for joining us and that does it for this edition of democracy now it's just about 1 o'clock you were listening to k m u d Garberville 91 point one f.m. In h.d. 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