Associated Press writer Ricardo-Alonso Zaldivar contributed to this report. Sections U. Science Technology Business U. In this Sept. Connect with the definitive source for global and local news. The Associated Press. All rights reserved. By the time Bush left office, no one had been prosecuted, although a CIA officer was fired for unreported contacts with Priest, and several Justice Department investigations were continuing.
The Bush White House and Vice President Dick Cheney did not hesitate to take issue with an increasingly adversarial press publicly and privately, especially as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—and the Bush administration itself—became more unpopular. But journalists and news executives, including myself, were still able to engage knowledgeable officials at the highest levels of the administration in productive dialogue, including discussions of sensitive stories about classified national security activities.
And not just in national security. Ellen Weiss, Washington bureau chief for E. And they are obsessed with taking advantage of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and every other social media forum, not just for campaigning, but governing. You were right. I was wrong, and I want to apologize in a video you can watch exclusively at whitehouse.
This makes it more difficult for the news media to inform citizens about how the president makes decisions and who is influencing them. This president has wiped all that coverage off the map. They feel entitled to and expect supportive media coverage. Reporters and editors said they often get calls from the White House complaining about news content about the administration.
More insidious than the chilling effect of the leaks investigations is the slow roll or stall. I have to clear it with public affairs. As this information-control culture took root after Obama entered the White House in January , his administration also came under growing pressure from U.
Holder Jr. There were more crime reports from the intelligence agencies than in previous years. The first Obama administration prosecution for leaking information popped up quickly in April , when a Hebrew linguist under contract with the FBI, Shamai K.
Leibowitz, gave a blogger classified information about Israel. Leibowitz pleaded guilty in May , and was sentenced to 20 months in prison for a violation of the Espionage Act. The campaign against leaks then gathered steam with Espionage Act prosecutions in two of the investigations inherited from the Bush administration. In the first, NSA employee Thomas Drake was indicted on April 14, , on charges of providing information to The Baltimore Sun in and about spending and management issues at the NSA, including disagreements about competing secret communications surveillance programs.
Drake gave information to Siobhan Gorman, then a Sun reporter, including copies of documents that, in his view, showed the NSA had wrongly shelved a cheaper surveillance program with privacy safeguards for Americans in favor of a much more costly program without such safeguards. Drake and two of his NSA colleagues believed they were whistle-blowers who had first voiced their concerns within the NSA and to a sympathetic congressional investigator, to no avail.
Apparently Drake, his NSA colleagues, and the congressional investigator to whom Drake had turned then became the focus of that investigation, even though they were never identified as sources for The Times. The raids frightened and angered them, but they were not prosecuted. Drake volunteered to investigators that, acting as a whistle-blower, he had sent copies of documents and hundreds of e-mails to Sun reporter Gorman. When Judge Richard D. Drake, who was forced to resign from the NSA, now works in an Apple computer store.
Former NSA director Hayden told me that, despite his differences with Drake, the employee should never have been prosecuted under the Espionage Act. Sterling, who is black, had unsuccessfully sued the CIA for discrimination after he lost his job there. In hindsight, it was the first clear evidence that the Justice Department was digging into the phone and e-mail records of both government officials and journalists while investigating leaks.
He went to court and the case was thrown out. No waste, fraud, or abuse was involved. This is a disturbing distinction that the Obama administration has made repeatedly.
But exposing questionable government policies and actions, even if they could be illegal or unconstitutional, is often considered to be leaking that must be stopped and punished. This greatly reduces the potential for the press to help hold the government accountable to citizens.
Beginning in early , the Justice Department repeatedly tried to subpoena Risen to testify against Sterling in what has become a long-running legal battle closely watched by journalists and media lawyers. In July , Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled in Federal District Court that, while Risen must testify to the accuracy of his reporting, he could not be compelled by the government to reveal his source. She concluded that courts, dating back to the U. It was the first time a reporter had successfully invoked such a privilege at the grand jury and trial stages of a federal prosecution.
A coalition of 29 news organizations and related groups came forward to support Risen, a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for journalism. In an appellate brief, they pointed to the many significant national security and government accountability news stories over the years that could not have been reported by the press without confidential sources. However, in July this year, a three-judge panel of the U.
A 2-to-1 majority ruled that the First Amendment did not protect Risen from being forced to testify against his source. Without him, the alleged crime would not have occurred, since he was the recipient of illegally-disclosed, classified information. Dissenting, Judge Roger Gregory argued that the decision could be a serious blow to investigative journalism.
Risen asked the full judge appellate court to review the case, and he vowed to go to jail rather than identify his source. Backed once again by many press organizations, he also formally asked the Justice Department to withdraw the subpoena. The Justice Department has continued to press for enforcement of the subpoena by asking the full appellate court not to hear further arguments in the case.
Intelligence had discovered that North Korea was planning, in defiance of the United Nations, to escalate its nuclear program and conduct another nuclear weapons test. The Justice Department soon began a secret investigation, which produced an August 19, , felony indictment of Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a State Department contract analyst.
He was charged with violating the Espionage Act by giving classified intelligence information about North Korea to Rosen, who was not named in the indictment. The indictment of Kim contained just two bare-bones paragraphs—the tip of an iceberg of secret investigations on which the Obama administration and the press would collide resoundingly nearly three years later. It is to ruin the whistleblower personally, professionally and financially.
It is meant to send a message to anybody else considering speaking truth to power: challenge us and we will destroy you. In May , the Justice Department seized the records of phone lines that Associated Press employees used. AP confirmed that the records were from personal home and cell phones of reporters and editors, as well as phones that AP used in the press quarters of the House of Representatives. Officials also conducted electronic surveillance of both New York Times reporter James Risen and Fox News correspondent James Rosen in an effort to identify their sources.
Scoggins: Verdict on Gophers season again comes down to beating Iowa, Wisconsin. Massive Harmonia Hall in Minneapolis went from a jewel to a rooming house.
Opinion Exchange Counterpoint: Obama's war on the press was more harmful It was smoother than the brash, in-your-face style of President Donald Trump's, but it set the stage for today's restrictions.
By William Beyer. William Beyer is a writer in St. Louis Park. More from Star Tribune. Local Lake Minnetonka mansion, nearly completed, could be forced to relocate am. Coronavirus Minnesota virus breakthrough cases rise amid 'perfect storm' pm. Business Study: Mpls. Paul minimum wage increases led to loss of restaurant jobs November Local Minnesota family that lost the road to their home is getting it back 32 minutes ago. Local Man shot and killed in north Minneapolis; suspect arrested after attempted carjacking pm.
0コメント