James Risen, Obama, Holder and the NSA
Earlier this year I did an hour long interview with James Risen. We discussed his case with the Department of Justice, where he was being threatened with incarceration for refusing to reveal his source who gave him insights about NSA activities. This was before Obama and Eric Holder decided to drop the prosecution against him. I saw him give the keynote speech at the luncheon for the Investigative Reporters and Editors 2015 conference and after his talk, in which he lambasted former Attorney General Eric Holder, I asked him to do a brief interview, based on his comments on Obama, Eric Holder and their legacies.
Rob Kall: My guest is James Risen. He was just the luncheon speaker for the Investigative Reporters and Editors conference (1800 attendees)
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Rob Kall: I was really hoping you would recap what you said to about 1500 journalists about your experience with the DOJ and Eric Holder and where journalism is today.
James Risen: I think the main point I was trying to make is the legacy of the Obama administration on press freedom issues is a bad one. They had, in my case, sought to eliminate what’s called the reporter’s privilege, which is the ability of reporters to protect their confidential sources in criminal trials and not be forced to testify and identify sources. In my case the judge sided with me and quashed the subpoena from the Justice Department against me. But the Obama administration appealed that to the appeals court and they overturned that decision by the lower court and in their appeal to the appeals court, they said, there is no such thing as a reporters’ privilege in a federal case. And the court sided with them and that had the effect of eliminating the ability, legally, of reporters to protect their sources in federal criminal cases.
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