Free Republic

In view of the increasing failures of national, state, local government from San Jose, CA to Sweden to protect their citizens from thugs, both secular and religious, where do innocent people turn when the institutions designed to serve the community fail to do so, or worse, actually turn against the people?From my last post, John Locke explained in Chapter XIX of his Second Treatise, the legislative power, or, simply the legislative, granted by society to government is the essence of republicanism. When any force, from outside or within, alters the legislative, government is dissolved. Locke writes:“When the legislative or executive...

Last night, radio talk show host and former US Justice Department official Mark Levin shocked many listeners when he reported that President Bill Clinton gave nuclear technology to the Iranians in a harebrained scheme. He said that the transfer of classified data to Iran was personally approved by then-President Clinton and that the CIA deliberately gave Iranian physicists blueprints for part of a nuclear bomb that likely helped Tehran advance its nuclear weapons development program. The CIA, using a double-agent Russian scientist, handed a blueprint for a nuclear bomb to Iran, according to a new book "State of War" by...

A New York Times reporter will be subpoenaed to answer questions ahead of an upcoming trial of a former CIA officer accused of leaking classified information, though a Tuesday hearing indicated there is much confusion about what the journalist may be asked to reveal. Prosecutors say they will not ask James Risen if ex-CIA man Jeffrey Sterling was his anonymous source for part of the 2006 book “State Of War” that detailed a botched CIA effort to cripple Iran’s nuclear program. However, they do want to know if the two had a prior, on-the-record source relationship. Risen’s lawyer, Joel Kurtzberg,...

Risen: No, they haven't printed it, but again, I don't want to get into The New York Times, one way or the other. Mitchell: But did you have concerns about putting it into your book? Risen: I thought about it, you know. I thought about everything. one way or the other, but I thought that this story was so old, that it no longer really mattered. As I said, goes back to the Clinton years. Mitchell: How do you balance your own role finally? You've broken some major stories here, and critics, the administration will say that it compromises American...

WASHINGTON - A new book on the government's secret anti-terrorism operations describes how the CIA recruited an Iraqi-American anesthesiologist in 2002 to obtain information from her brother, who was a figure in Saddam Hussein's nuclear program. Dr. Sawsan Alhaddad of Cleveland made the dangerous trip to Iraq on the CIA's behalf. The book said her brother was stunned by her questions about the nuclear program because — he said — it had been dead for a decade. New York Times reporter James Risen uses the anecdote to illustrate how the CIA ignored information that Iraq no longer had weapons of...

VIENNA: The CIA, using a double-agent Russian scientist, may have handed a blueprint for a nuclear bomb to Iran. State of War by James Risen, the New York Times reporter who exposed the Bush administration's controversial domestic spying operation, claims the plans contained fatal flaws designed to derail Tehran's nuclear drive. But the deliberate errors were so rudimentary they would have been easily fixed by sophisticated Russian nuclear scientists, the book said. The operation, which took place during the Clinton administration in early 2000, was codenamed Operation Merlin and "may have been one of the most reckless operations in...

Is The New York Times about to be indicted? That would be a fair inference from the strange exchanges that have gone back and forth over the past few days between the Justice Department and the editors of the paper. On Sunday, during the ABC news program, "This Week," Attorney General Gonzales was asked if the federal government might prosecute journalists who published classified information. "There are some statutes on the books," he answered, "which . . . would seem to indicate that this is a possibility." He went on to suggest that such prosecutions were implicitly authorized by the...

James Risen, an Investigative Journalist, and veteran New York Times Reporter, is now another name on the list of Journalists being prosecuted by the Obama Administration. Risen, whose reporting on warrantless wiretapping was published in 2006, is now facing jail time for the same material that earned him a Pulitzer Prize. According to Democracy Now, Risen’s original story was supposed to be published in the New York Times prior to the Presidential election in 2004. However, the report was not published until 2006, because Risen was under “government pressure,” due to the fact that his article could have had an...

A former CIA officer was arrested on Thursday on charges of illegally disclosing national defense information about Iran to a New York Times reporter who wrote a book. The U.S. Justice Department said Jeffrey Sterling, 43, was charged with six counts of unauthorized disclosure of national defense information and one count of unlawfully keeping national defense information, mail fraud, unauthorized conveyance of government property and obstructing justice.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — After losing a seven-year legal battle, James Risen, a reporter for The New York Times, reluctantly took the witness stand in federal court here on Monday, but refused to answer any questions that could help the Justice Department identify his confidential sources. Mr. Risen said he would not say anything to help prosecutors bolster their case against Jeffrey A. Sterling, a former C.I.A. officer who is set to go on trial soon on charges of providing classified information to Mr. Risen for his 2006 book, “State of War.” The Justice Department first subpoenaed Mr. Risen to testify...

President Barack Obama is no friend of press freedom, says a New York Times reporter who may be sent to jail for refusing to reveal a source. “A lot of people still think this is some kind of game or signal or spin,” reporter James Risen told his own paper in a profile about his plight published Saturday. “They don’t want to believe that Obama wants to crack down on the press and whistle-blowers. But he does. He’s the greatest enemy to press freedom in a generation.” Risen’s troubles stem from the 2006 publication of his book “State of War,”...

Ex-CIA Officer Indicted for Leaking Classified Info to New York Slimes Reporter Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA officer, was indicted today for leaking classified information to New York Times reporter James Risen. The indictment shows that the federal government had access to their e-mail and phone contacts going back several years. Sterling served on the Iran desk of the CIA in the 1990s, and oversaw a classified program aimed at sabotaging the development of its nuclear programming. He left the CIA in 2000 and sued for racial discrimination (he is African American) in a case that went all the way...

The Obama administration’s crackdown on leaks to the press has snared a high-profile conviction of an FBI linguist, who was sentenced to 20 months in prison Monday after pleading guilty to giving classified information to a blogger. The sentence for Shamai Leibowitz is likely to become the longest ever served by a government employee accused of passing national security secrets to a member of the media. His case represents only the third known conviction in U.S. history for a government official or contractor providing classified information to the press. And it reflects a surprising development: President Barack Obama’s Justice Department...

Not Every Leak Is Fit to Print Why have federal prosecutors subpoenaed a New York Times reporter?by Gabriel Schoenfeld 02/18/2008, Volume 013, Issue 22 Investigations of national-security leaks in Washington are not all that rare. But until Judith Miller of the New York Times was sent to jail for 85 days by a special prosecutor digging into the Valerie Plame imbroglio, investigations of such leaks in which journalists are subpoenaed were about as common as unicorns wandering the National Mall. We now have another such unicorn. On January 24, a federal grand jury in Alexandria issued a subpoena to...

The Book Behind the Bombshell By ROMESH RATNESAR In the abstruse world of espionage, it's not always easy to know when you are in on a secret. So when intelligence sources approached New York Times reporter James Risen in late 2004 with evidence that the Bush Administration was running a covert domestic-spying program, Risen says he "wasn't sure what to believe." As Risen and Times colleague Eric Lichtblau looked into the story, more whistle-blowers came forward, convincing the reporters that the eavesdropping claims were credible. At that point Risen asked a few "very senior" government officials what they knew about...

HOW THE NYTIMES IS RINGING IN 2006 By Michelle Malkin   ·   December 31, 2005 10:45 PM Yes, it's New Year's Eve. And since there's no rest for the NYTimes, I'm not taking it easy tonight either. You see, NYTimes' reporter James Risen has been a busy bee over the holidays. The co-author of the infamous Chicken Little opus exposing the NSA special collection program to monitor international communications between suspected al Qaeda operatives and their contacts will be launching his new book, State of War, on January 3. Turns out the publisher of Risen's new book, which includes a discussion...

A Republican senator on Saturday accused The New York Times of endangering American security to sell a book by waiting until the day of the terror-fighting Patriot Act reauthorization to report that the government has eavesdropped on people without court-approved warrants. ''At least two senators that I heard with my own ears cited this as a reason why they decided to vote to not allow a bipartisan majority to reauthorize the Patriot Act,'' said Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas. ''Well, as it turns out the author of this article turned in a book three months ago and the paper,...