James Risen

James Risen (born April 27, 1955) is an American journalist and author. He previously worked for The Intercept, The New York Times, and The Los Angeles Times. He has written or co-written many articles concerning U.S. government activities and is the author or co-author of five books, including several about the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and intelligence and national security matters, as well as a book about the American public debate about abortion. Risen is a Pulitzer Prize winner.

James Risen (born April 27, 1955) is an American journalist and author. He previously worked for The Intercept, The New York Times, and The Los Angeles Times. He has written or co-written many articles concerning U.S. government activities and is the author or co-author of five books, including several about the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and intelligence and national security matters, as well as a book about the American public debate about abortion. Risen is a Pulitzer Prize winner. ==Background== Risen was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and grew up in Bethesda, Maryland. He graduated from Brown University (1977) and received a master's degree in journalism at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism (1978). He has been an investigative reporter for The Intercept. In the spring of 2023, he joined the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland as the visiting professor on press freedom. Risen won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for his stories about President George W. Bush's warrantless wiretapping program. He was a member of The New York Times reporting team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting for coverage of the September 11th attacks and terrorism. He was also a member of The New York Times reporting team that was a finalist for the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting, for coverage of the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa. Risen has written five books: Wrath of Angels: The American Abortion War (Basic Books) (Judy Thomas, co-author) (1998); The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA's Final Showdown with the KGB (Random House) (Milt Bearden, co-author) (2003); State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration (The Free Press) (2006); Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) (2014); "The Last Honest Man: The CIA, The FBI, The Mafia, And The Kennedys-And One Senator's Fight to Save Democracy" (Little, Brown) (Thomas Risen, co-author) (2023) State of War was a New York Times bestseller. "Pay Any Price" was also a New York Times bestseller. "The Last Honest Man" was also a New York Times bestseller. "The Main Enemy" was awarded the 2003 Cornelius Ryan Award for "best nonfiction book on international affairs" by the Overseas Press Club of America. ==State of War== Risen is the author of the book State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration (January 2006). The book conducted important investigations into Central Intelligence Agency activities. It states that the CIA carried out an operation in 2000 (Operation Merlin) intended to delay Iran's alleged 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. In early 2003, The New York Times refrained from publication of the story after an intervention by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice with the NYT Executive Editor Howell Raines. While doing research for the book, Risen's email and phone connections with former CIA Operations Officer Jeffrey Alexander Sterling were monitored by the US federal government. The US federal government also obtained Risen's credit and bank records. The CIA Public Affairs Office issued a press release alleging that Risen's book contains serious errors in every chapter. However, CIA documents released in January 2015¹ confirm many details on Operation Merlin. 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 the 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. The Department of Justice (DOJ) also conducted an investigation of the sources of the security leak involving the NSA. Risen says this book is based on information from a variety of anonymous sources that he would protect. The issue of journalists protecting their anonymous sources was widely discussed during this time period due to the Valerie Plame affair. In that case, former New York Times reporter Judith Miller was jailed for refusing to reveal a source for a story of hers. 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. ==Wen Ho Lee and civil lawsuit== In an article that Risen co-wrote with Jeff Gerth for The New York Times that appeared on March 6, 1999, they allege that "a Los Alamos computer scientist who is Chinese-American" had stolen nuclear secrets for China. The suspect, later identified as Wen Ho Lee, pleaded guilty to a single charge of improper handling of national defense information, the 58 other counts against him were dropped, and he was released from jail on September 13, 2000. No espionage charges were ever proven. The judge apologized to Lee for believing the government and putting him in pretrial solitary confinement for months. On September 26, 2000, The New York Times apologized for significant errors in reporting of the case. Lee and Helen Zia would later write a book, My Country Versus Me, in which he described Risen and Gerth's work as a "hatchet job on me, and a sloppy one at that", and he points out numerous factual errors in Risen and Gerth's reporting. The New York Times was one of five newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, which jointly agreed to pay damages to settle a lawsuit concerning their coverage of the case and invasion of privacy. ==Bibliography== Books Bearden, Milton, and James Risen. The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA's Final Showdown with the KGB. New York: Random House, 2004. (10). (13). (Also available as an E-book.) Risen, James. State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration. New York: Simon & Schuster (Free Press imprint), 2006. (10). (13). Risen, James, and Judy Thomas. Wrath of Angels: The American Abortion War. Perseus Publishing, 1999. (13). Risen, James. Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014. . ==References== ==Further reading== Coll, Steve. The Reporter Resists His Government (Feb. 2015), New York Review of Books Karr, Rick. Web Exclusive: Rick Karr on Government Secrecy. Bill Moyers Journal. PBS. February 29, 2008. Accessed December 16, 2008. (Vodcast.) Scheer, Robert. No Defense: "How The New York Times Convicted Wen Ho Lee". The Nation, October 5, 2000. Risen, James. "Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts". The New York Times, December 16, 2005. "George Bush Insists That Iran Must Not Be Allowed to Develop Nuclear Weapons. So Why, Six Years Ago in the Clinton Administration, Did the CIA Give the Iranians Blueprints to Build a Bomb?". The Guardian, 5 January 2006, (Extract from State of War.) "Global Agenda 2003". Speech presented at the University of Delaware, May 7, 2003. ==External links== James Risen – Index of articles published in The New York Times, Times Topics. "The 2006 Pulitzer Prize Winners: National Reporting: James Risen and Eric Lichtblau" – Biographies and photographs of these journalists for The New York Times hosted on the official Pulitzer Prize Website.

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