James Risen

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James Risen is a reporter for The New York Times and previously the Los Angeles Times. He has written or co-written several articles concerning United States government activities, as well as two books about the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

1 Reports on government surveillance programs
2 State of War
3 Wen Ho Lee
4 Dismissing KGB propaganda effects
5 Books
6 See also
7 References
8 External links

[edit] Reports on government surveillance programs

Risen along with Eric Lichtblau authored a highly controversial news story about the National Security Agency's surveillance of international communications originating or terminating in the United States and a controversial story about a government program called Terrorist Finance Tracking Program designed to detect terrorist financiers, which involved searches of money transfer records in the international SWIFT database. Risen was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for these investigative stories in 2006. The White House Press Office issued a statement on August 6, 2007 that Risen's New York Times article on the Congressional and Presidential approval of a six month extension of terrorism monitoring in the United States was misleading.

[edit] State of War

Risen is the author of the book State of War (January 2006). The book makes numerous controversial allegations about Central Intelligence Agency activities. It alleges that the CIA carried out an operation in 2000 (Operation Merlin) intended to delay Iran's nuclear weapons program by feeding it flawed blueprints for key missing components - which backfired and may actually have aided Iran, as the flaw was likely detected and corrected by a former Soviet nuclear scientist the operation used to make the delivery.

The CIA Public Affairs Office issued a press release indicating that Risen's book contains serious errors in every chapter.

Risen writes in State of War that, "Several of the Iranian [CIA] agents were arrested and jailed, while the fate of some of the others is still unknown", after a CIA official in 2004 sent an Iranian agent an encrypted electronic message, mistakenly including data that could potentially identify "virtually every spy the CIA had inside Iran". The Iranian was a double agent and handed over the information to Iranian intelligence. This also has been denied by an intelligence official. Risen also alleges that the Bush Administration is responsible for transformation of Afghanistan into a "narco-state", that provides a purported 80% of the world's heroin supply.

The publication of this book was expedited following the December 16, 2005 NSA leak story. The timing of The New York Times story after the Iraq election in mid December 2005 is a source of controversy since the story was delayed for over a year. The New York Times story appeared two days before a former NSA employee, dismissed in May 2005, requested permission to testify to two Congressional intelligence oversight committees. Byron Calame, the Public Editor of The New York Times, wrote in early January 2006 that two senior Times officials refused to comment on the timing of the article.

Risen says this book is based on information from a variety of anonymous sources, and he is scheduled to appear before a Grand Jury in February, 2008, on sources of allegations of CIA operations. The Department of Justice (DOJ) conducted an investigation of the sources of the security leak involving the NSA. These follow an earlier investigation of the Valerie Plame leak that resulted in former New York Times reporter Judith Miller being jailed before she agreed to reveal her source. The Attorney General hinted in a Washington Post article on May 22, 2006 that journalists may be charged for any disclosure of classified national security information. President George W. Bush, in a June 25, 2006 news conference, was critical of the publication of information of classified programs by the New York Times.

[edit] Wen Ho Lee

A 1999 New York Times story, coauthored with Jeff Gerth, alleged that "a Los Alamos computer scientist who is Chinese-American" had stolen nuclear secrets for China. The suspect, later identified as Wen Ho Lee, pled guilty to a single charge of improper handling of classified data, with 58 other counts against him dropped, and was released from jail. No espionage charges were brought or proven. The New York Times later apologized for significant errors in reporting of the case. The New York Times and Los Angeles Times were among five newspapers who jointly agreed to pay damages to settle a lawsuit concerning their coverage of the case.^[1]

[edit] Dismissing KGB propaganda effects

In a 1999 article in the New York Times, regarding revelations from the Mitrokhin Archives of long term KGB efforts to promote the theory that there was a CIA conspiracy to assassinate President John Kennedy, Risen writes, "The K.G.B.'s clumsy propaganda campaign never had much of an impact on the debate over the Kennedy assassination in the United States."

The Washington Post, in a Mitrokhin related editorial, writes, "In June 1964, a freelance journalist named Joachim Joesten posited an (...) analysis in his book "Oswald: Assassin or Fall Guy?" Following a chapter on "Oswald and the CIA," Joesten asserted that the agency was beyond presidential control and bitterly opposed to Kennedy's policy of "easing the Cold War". It has long been a matter of record that Joesten's book was the first published in the United States on the subject of the assassination. Until the notes of a former KGB archivist named Vasili Mitrokhin were published in 1999, however, it was not known that Joesten's publisher, the small New York firm of Marzani & Munsell, received subsidies totaling $672,000 from the Central Committee of the Communist Party in the early 1960s.

The CIA has produced a study that explains how KGB propaganda directly led to the wide dissemination of the "CIA killed Kennedy" conspiracy theory. https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/fall_winter_2001/article02.html

The KGB's efforts, which successfully influenced Jim Garrison to open a case on the assassination^{[citation needed]}, in turn eventually led to Oliver Stone's JFK film about Garrison which extended knowledge of the conspiracy theory globally.

Professor John McAdams, who teaches a course on the Kennedy assassination at Marquette University in Milwaukee says, "The greatest and grandest of all conspiracy theories is the Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory."

[edit] Books

James Risen (2006), State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, Simon & Schuster; Free Press, January 2006, ISBN 0-7432-7066-5
Milton Bearden and James Risen (2004), The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA's Final Showdown with the KGB, Random House
James Risen and Judy Thomas (1998), Wrath of Angels: The American Abortion War, Perseus Publishing

[edit] See also

Wen Ho Lee - Chinese-American Los Alamos scientist accused of espionage
COINTELPRO - FBI counter-intelligence program investigating and disrupting dissident political organizations within the United States
ECHELON - secretive world-wide signals intelligence and analysis network run by the UKUSA Community, capturing radio and satellite communications, telephone calls, faxes and e-mails nearly anywhere in the world
Carnivore - FBI wiretapping of e-mail and internet communications through proxy computers installed at Internet Service Providers
CALEA - to make clear a telecommunications carrier's duty to cooperate in the interception of communications for Law Enforcement purposes, and for other purposes
Operation Mockingbird - alleged Central Intelligence Agency operation to influence domestic and foreign media