[mojito]

Risen has blown three very high value operations:

In December 2005 Risen published details of the National Security Agency's electronic surveillance of al Qaeda-related communications.

Then, in 2006, Risen blew the SWIFT program used by the Treasury to track terrorist financing.

Then, the details of these Iranian operations, which were apparently so sensitive that even the Slimes wouldn't publish them.

[Alberta's Child]

I'm usually not one to defend ANY reporter -- let alone a leftist reporter for a leftist media outlet like the New York Times, but it's important to provide accurate information when making statements like that.

Nobody in the U.S. media "necessarily blew" those first two operations. In at least one of them, the reporting was all done based on information that had been documented in a public record by a Federal government authority -- namely, it was included in the details released as part of the formal indictment of an al-Qaeda operative here in the U.S.

Regardless of what the reporter's motives were in making those details more public than they would have otherwise been, the truth is that it was the Feds themselves who released it.