person:james risen

NYT’s James Risen & Abby Martin on Fighting Censorship, Endless War
▻http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/nyts-james-risen-and-abby-martin-on-fighting-censorship-endless-war

Few journalists know the cruelty of government censorship as well as James Risen, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist at the New York Times, targeted for several major stories implicating...

James Risen n’aura finalement pas à révéler ses sources
▻http://www.lorientlejour.com/article/905587/usa-un-journaliste-naura-finalement-pas-a-reveler-ses-sources.html

Un journaliste du New York Times n’aura finalement pas à révéler ses sources dans une affaire impliquant la CIA et dont le procès doit démarrer cette semaine, a indiqué le quotidien américain lundi : ▻http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/13/us/times-reporter-james-risen-will-not-be-called-to-testify-in-leak-case-lawye

James Risen, journaliste auréolé du prestigieux prix Pulitzer, a été cité à comparaître en 2008 puis en 2011 pour témoigner au procès d’un ancien responsable de la CIA, Jeffrey Sterling, accusé d’avoir rendu publiques des informations confidentielles. James Risen avait refusé ces convocations.

[Cf. ▻http://seenthis.net/recherche?recherche=James+Risen]

Sommé par la justice de révéler le nom de sa source, il a toujours refusé de le faire, risquant même la prison pour cela

#secret_des_sources

La 2ème mort de Charlie - par Woodward Et Newton
▻https://www.bakchich.info/france/2015/01/12/la-2eme-mort-de-charlie-63839

Entendre entonner à plein poumon à Paris l’ode à la liberté d’expression par l’impayable Eric Holder exécuteur des basses besognes sans précédent d’Obama contre les journalistes américains à commencer par James Risen et les whistleblowers d’Outre Atlantique comme l’ont découvert les lecteurs de Bakchich, par son obligé zélé britannique Cameron, par Erdogan le néo-dictateur turc qui martyrise sa presse d’opposition, par le premier ministre espagnol qui s’emploie à réduire les libertés fondamentales ibériques, par l’immense démocrate hongrois Orban, par le ministre des affaires étrangères russe, par le chef du gouvernement tunisien et par bon nombre de despotes africains présents ou représentés au carnaval dominical de faux-culs ou lui ayant apporté leur « caution morale » à commencer par Ali Bongo, a quelque chose de franchement inconvenant voire d’obscène.

Que Cameron vienne faire le paon à Paris sur les cadavres de la rédaction de Charlie, après avoir, le tout premier, dénoncé l’odieux crime des Kouachi contre la liberté d’expression de la presse, est simplement inimaginable. Qu’on en juge : en 2014, la Police Métropolitaine de Londres à dépensé 33,5 millions de Livres rien que pour espionner les journalistes british. Contre 19,5 millions l’année précédente. Une police qui se voit reproché aujourd’hui d’abuser de la loi dite « RIPA » (Regulation of Invest Powers Act) en dépit des dispositions législatives locales sur la protection des sources.

Pas plus tard qu’en octobre dernier, l’ancien Lord Chancelier Falconer a affirmé – en pure perte – que la police britannique ne devait pas détourner la législation RIPA pour surveiller les activités des journalistes sans avoir préalablement obtenu l’autorisation d’un juge.

#Charlie_Hebdo

The real politics behind the US war on IS | Middle East Eye
▻http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/real-politics-behind-us-war-1739057128

In fact, it is all about domestic political and bureaucratic interests.

(...)

After thirteen years in which administration and national security bureaucracies have pursued policies across the Middle East that are self-evidently disastrous in rational security and stability terms, a new paradigm is needed to understand the real motivations underlying the launching of new initiatives like the war on IS. James Risen’s masterful new book, Pay Any Price: Greed, Power and Endless War, shows that the key factor in one absurdly self-defeating national security initiative after another since 9/11 has been the vast opportunities that bureaucrats have been given to build up their own power and status. 

 
(...)

... the military services and the counter-terrorism bureaucracies in the CIA, NSA and Special Operations Command (SOCOM) viewed a major, multi-faceted military operation against ISIL as a central interest. Before ISIL’s spectacular moves in 2014, the Pentagon and military services faced the prospect of declining defence budgets in the wake of a US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Now the Army, Air Force and Special Operations Command saw the possibility of carving out new military roles in fighting ISIL. The Special Operations Command, which had been Obama’s “preferred tool” for fighting Islamic extremists, was going to suffer its first flat budget year after 13 years of continuous funding increases. It was reported to be “frustrated” by being relegated to the role enabling US airstrikes and eager to take on ISIL directly.

On 12 September, both Secretary of State, John Kerry and National Security Adviser, Susan Rice were still calling the airstrikes a “counterterrorism operation”, while acknowledging that some in the administration wanted to call it a “war”. But the pressure from the Pentagon and its counter-terrorism partners to upgrade the operation to a “war” was so effective that it took only one day to accomplish the shift.

The following morning, military spokesman, Admiral John Kirby told reporters: “Make no mistake, we know we are at war with [IS] in the same way we are at war, and continue to be at war, with al-Qaeda and its affiliates.” Later that day, White House press secretary, Josh Ernst used that same language. 

Under the circumstances that exist in Iraq and Syria, the most rational response to IS’s military successes would have been to avoid US military action altogether. But Obama had powerful incentives to adopt a military campaign that it could sell to key political constituencies. It makes no sense strategically, but avoids the perils that really matter to American politicians.

#effrayant

L’interminable #guerre contre le #terrorisme
▻http://www.courrierinternational.com/dessin/2014/12/04/l-interminable-guerre-contre-le-terrorisme

Dans son livre Pay Any Price : Greed, Power and Endless War (“A tout prix : pouvoir, avidité et guerre sans fin”, 2014, inédit en français), le célèbre journaliste du New York Times #James_Risen estime que la guerre contre le terrorisme – qui inclut les campagnes d’Irak et d’Afghanistan – a coûté 4 000 milliards de dollars (3 200 milliards d’euros) à l’Etat américain. En permettant à des entreprises américaines de signer de très gros contrats avec le #Pentagone, elle a également donné lieu à “l’un des plus gros transferts d’argent #public vers le #privé de toute l’histoire américaine”.

Dans une tribune sur le Huffington Post, #Tom_Engelhardt, auteur et codirecteur de la collection de livres anti-impérialistes “The American Empire Project”, commente : “D’une part, nous avons investi 4 000 milliards de dollars pour voir émerger une bande de #profiteurs que Risen surnomme ‘les #oligarques du 11 septembre’”, et, d’autre part, “si vous vous souvenez bien, les objectifs de la guerre contre le terrorisme lancée par George W. #Bush […] étaient d’éradiquer le terrorisme de la planète […]. Treize ans et tous ces dollars plus tard”, le #djihadisme s’est étendu, et on estime que 15 000 combattants étrangers ont gagné la Syrie pour rejoindre l’organisation de l’Etat islamique.

Un bilan qui amène Tom Engelhardt à la question suivante : “Après 13 ans de guerre contre le terrorisme, et face à un terrorisme endémique, n’est-il pas temps de changer de nom ? Un simple changement de préposition suffirait à rendre cette appellation plus en phase avec la réalité : la #guerre_pour_le_terrorisme”.

James Risen’s ‘Pay Any Price’ - NYTimes.com
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/books/review/james-risens-pay-any-price.html

While this is an enormously impressive book, it does have some weaknesses. I’ll mention three. Risen makes clear at the outset that he has relied upon many anonymous sources. Fair enough. But he has also relied on many open sources while rarely naming them. He says, for example: “One 2012 estimate concluded that the decade of war had cost Americans nearly $4 trillion.” Why not provide the source for this estimate, and for others mentioned throughout the book? Doing so would enable readers to evaluate the reliability of the source, and to conduct further research on their own.

Another weakness is that Risen, whose moral indignation is kept in check but rarely far below the surface, does not make distinctions that might be drawn between those he labels kleptocrats, oligarchs and the simply greedy. He rightly points out that the corporate leaders of the security industry are the true winners of the war on terror. He names them “the New Oligarchs.” It is certainly true that General Atomics, which produces drones and in 2012 received $1.8 billion in government contracts, has benefited financially. But it can hardly be blamed for that. President Obama’s policy of aggressively using drones is open to criticism on many grounds, but the argument should be with the government policy, not with the company that makes the drones.

Finally, while Risen is devastating in his criticism of the profligacy of government agencies and the “oversight-free zone” they operated, he acknowledges that this was because they were overwhelmed, that Congress was panicking and that the public was whipped up into an unwarranted fear of terrorism. He points to the role of self-appointed terrorism experts in promoting this fear while drawing lucrative consulting contracts for themselves. But he makes no mention of the press . I would argue that many in the news #media were at least as guilty as others in his book of stirring up public anxiety for private gain. Risen himself, and the paper for which he works [SIC], are notable exceptions. Still, an account of the #corruption engendered by endless war that doesn’t include the role of a complicit media is incomplete.

The American Government Tried to Kill James Risen’s Last Book - The Intercept
▻https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/10/13/american-government-tried-kill-james-risens-last-book

It has been previously reported that the government considered asking the publisher or one of its parent companies to kill Risen’s book because it disclosed information on one or more secret and purportedly sensitive intelligence operations, including a botched attempt to feed secretly flawed blueprints for a nuclear bomb trigger to the Iranians. But in those accounts the request is never made because Risen’s book was already in stores or on delivery trucks by the time the White House became aware of its contents. The 60 Minutes report appears to mark the first disclosure such a request did, in fact, occur.

#james_Risen

Supreme Court refuses to take reporter’s case on revealing confidential source
▻http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/supreme-court-refuses-to-take-reporters-case-on-revealing-confidential-source/2014/06/02/d704de58-ea54-11e3-9f5c-9075d5508f0a_story.html

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to intervene on behalf of a New York Times reporter and author who has been subpoenaed to reveal a confidential source.

The court without comment turned down requests from reporter James Risen and a host of media groups to overturn a lower court order and find that reporters are protected by the Constitution from testifying about their sources.

In a 2006 book, “State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration,” Risen detailed classified information about the CIA’s efforts to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program. Prosecutors want Risen to testify in its prosecution of Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA analyst.

Risen : Obama administration is this generation’s ‘greatest enemy of press freedom’ | Poynter.
▻http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/244525/risen-obama-administration-is-this-generations-greatest-enemy-of-press-free

“It won’t take me long to alienate everyone in the room,” Jeffrey Toobin told an audience in New York Friday. “For better or worse, it has been clear there is no journalistic privilege under the First Amendment.”

(...)

New York Times reporter #James_Risen, who is fighting an order that he testify in the trial of Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA officer accused of leaking information to him, opened the conference earlier by saying the #Obama administration is “the greatest enemy of press freedom that we have encountered in at least a generation.” The administration wants to “narrow the field of national security reporting,” Risen said, to “create a path for accepted reporting.” Anyone journalist who exceeds those parameters, Risen said, “will be punished.”

The administration’s aggressive prosecutions have created “a de facto Official Secrets Act,” Risen said, and the #media has been “too timid” in responding.

#Liberté_de_la_presse #Etats-Unis

Protecting a Source, #James_Risen Takes His Case to the Supreme Court
▻http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/13/protecting-a-source-james-risen-takes-his-case-to-the-su

Obama versus James Risen #journalisme #premier_amendement

Protection des #lanceurs_d'alerte #whistleblowers

#NSA Report Outlined Goals for More Power - NYTimes.com
By JAMES RISEN and LAURA POITRAS, November 22, 2013
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/23/us/politics/nsa-report-outlined-goals-for-more-power.html?pagewanted=all

(U) SIGINT Strategy 2012-2016 (23 février 2012)
▻http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/11/23/us/politics/23nsa-sigint-strategy-document.html

In response to the controversy about its activities after Mr. #Snowden’s disclosures, agency officials claimed that the N.S.A.’s sweeping domestic surveillance programs had helped in 54 “terrorist-related activities.” But under growing scrutiny, congressional staff members and other critics say that the use of such figures by defenders of the agency has drastically overstated the value of the domestic surveillance programs in counterterrorism.

#terrorisme

Relying on Internet routing data, commercial and Sigint information, Treasure Map (...) collects Wi-Fi network and geolocation data, and between 30 million and 50 million unique Internet provider addresses (...) It boasts that the program can map “any device, anywhere, all the time.”

(...) The program is not used for surveillance, they said, but to understand computer networks.

The program takes advantage of the capabilities of other secret N.S.A. programs. To support Treasure Map, for example, the document states that another program, called Packaged Goods, tracks the “traceroutes” through which data flows around the Internet. Through Packaged Goods, the N.S.A. has gained access to “13 covered servers in unwitting data centers around the globe,” according to the PowerPoint. The document identifies a list of countries where the data centers are located, including Germany, Poland, Denmark, South Africa and Taiwan as well as Russia, China and Singapore.

Despite the document’s reference to “unwitting #data_centers,” government officials said that the agency does not hack into those centers. Instead, the officials said, the intelligence community secretly uses front companies to lease space on the servers.

#infrastructure

Au passage je découvre la page SIGINT sur Wikipedia, où il est question d’interception sur #câbles_sous-marins :
▻https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renseignement_d'origine_%C3%A9lectromagn%C3%A9tique#Interception_des_c

N.S.A. Gathers Data on Social Connections of U.S. Citizens
By JAMES RISEN and LAURA POITRAS
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/us/nsa-examines-social-networks-of-us-citizens.html

The concerns in the United States since Mr. Snowden’s revelations have largely focused on the scope of the agency’s collection of the private data of Americans and the potential for abuse. But the new documents provide a rare window into what the N.S.A. actually does with the information it gathers.

A series of agency PowerPoint presentations and memos describe how the N.S.A. has been able to develop software and other tools — one document cited a new generation of programs that “revolutionize” data collection and analysis — to unlock as many secrets about individuals as possible.

The Toobin principle PressThink
▻http://pressthink.org/2013/08/the-toobin-principle

« Abrogez le concept d’un #public_éclairé, réprimez votre décision de prendre une mesure aussi radicale. »

La semaine dernière, lors de son programme CNN, Piers Morgan avait presque terminé un petit discours sur le fait qu’un mec ne pouvait pas à la fois bénéficier de la connaissance de dossiers de sécurité et cracher des informations classifiées « sur un coup de tête », quand James Risen, journaliste couvrant la sécurité nationale pour le New York Times, l’a interrompu : quels documents parmi ceux divulgués auriez-vous souhaité qu’ils ne le soient pas ? (...)

C’était une bonne question. Piers Morgan n’a pas trop su quoi répondre.

Quand, dans le même programme, Jeffrey Toobin du New Yorker a déclaré que le débat public sur les matériaux précédemment classifiés était « une bonne chose », mais qu’il pensait toujours qu’Edward Snowden était un criminel, Risen l’a interrompu : « Ce débat aurait été impossible sans lui », a-t-il dit.

« La chose que je ne comprends pas concernant le climat de Washington ces jours-ci, est que les gens veulent avoir des débats à la télévision et ailleurs, mais en même temps ils veulent jeter en prison les gens qui permettent de les initier. »

L’observation était pointue. Jeffery Toobin n’a pas trop su quoi répondre.

...

#courtisans

... un tribunal a décidé vendredi 19 juillet que James Risen, un reporter du New York Times, devrait témoigner au tribunal contre sa propre source, un agent de la CIA poursuivi pour lui avoir transmis des informations classées secret défense.

Des affaires qui font dire à l’avocat James C. Goodale, avocat du New York Times (en anglais), que « Barack Obama risque fort de supplanter Richard Nixon pour le titre de pire président de l’histoire américaine pour la liberté de la presse dans le domaine de la Défense ».

▻http://www.francetvinfo.fr/monde/snowden/affaire-snowden-pourquoi-barack-obama-ne-lachera-rien_373206.html

Les infos en question mettent surtout en lumière à quel point
les responsables étasuniens peuvent être irresponsables et remontent à l’ère Clinton

Mr. Risen is a national security reporter for The Times, but the case revolves around material he published in his 2006 book, “State of War,” not in the newspaper. A chapter in the book recounted efforts by the C.I.A. in the Clinton administration to trick Iranian scientists by having a Russian defector give them blueprints for a nuclear triggering device that had been altered with an error. The chapter portrays the operation as reckless and botched in a way that could have helped the Iranians gain accurate information.

▻http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/20/us/in-major-ruling-court-orders-times-reporter-to-testify.html?pagewanted=1&hp