AMY GOODMAN: -- that is what you are being prosecuted for now.
JAMES RISEN: Right. There was another story, a CIA operation involving the Iran nuclear weapons program, in which the CIA had used a Russian defector to give nuclear blueprints to the Iranians. And the idea was that they were supposed to be flawed blueprints that would then send the Iranians down the wrong track on building a bomb. But the Russian told them immediately, "Oh, I can see the flaws," because he was a scientist, he was a nuclear scientist. He says, "I can see the flaws. The Iranians are going to see the flaws." And then he sent a letter. When he gave the blueprints to the Iranians, he gave a letter to the Iranians saying, "You're going to see that there are problems in these blueprints." And so, it's quite possible that the Iranians were able to -- by being tipped off, were able to find good information in them and ignore the bad information.
And that was in my book. I had written that for the paper in -- before, and the editors had decided not to run it because the White House asked them not to on national security grounds. And after my book came out, the government began leak investigations of both the NSA story and other things in my book, including that story. I think they finally decided not to come after The New York Times on the NSA story, because it would have meant a major constitutional showdown. And I think they decided to find something else in my book to come after me on, to isolate me from The New York Times. And they picked the Merlin operation.
AMY GOODMAN: And they want to know your source.
JAMES RISEN: Yeah, they want to know who my sources are for that story.
AMY GOODMAN: Did it surprise you that it went from the Bush administration to the Obama administration?
JAMES RISEN: Yes. I thought that once the Obama administration came into office, that the whole thing would be dropped. And I was very surprised that the Obama administration continued to pursue the case, when, in 2009, they issued a new subpoena. And they've continued to pursue this ever since.
AMY GOODMAN: You told New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, President Obama is "the greatest enemy of press freedom in a generation"?
JAMES RISEN: Yeah, I think that his record speaks for itself. He's gone after -- he's prosecuted more whistleblowers and gone after more journalists than any president in history. He's done -- I think that record is going to be a major part of his legacy, of trying to erode press freedom in the United States.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist James Risen. He has just published a new book -- it's out today -- called Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War. When we come back, we'll talk about what he calls "the homeland security-industrial complex." Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. We're spending the hour with James Risen, investigative journalist with The New York Times, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. His new book, just out today, is Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War. You're being pursued by the U.S. government. Will you reveal the name of your source?
JAMES RISEN: No.
AMY GOODMAN: Because?
JAMES RISEN: I just think that the -- you know, you cannot have aggressive investigative reporting in America without confidential sources. And without aggressive investigative reporting, we can't really have a democracy, because the only real oversight for the government is an independent and aggressive press. And I think that's what the government really fears more than anything else, is an aggressive investigative reporting in which we shine a light on what's going on inside the government. And we can't do that without maintaining the confidentiality of sources.
AMY GOODMAN: Has President Obama, Eric Holder or anyone else in the administration signaled to you that they may not demand that you testify and reveal your source?
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