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Talking to James Risen About Pay Any Price, the War on Terror and Press Freedoms
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of The Intercept


The Intercept, November 25, 2014
Posted: December 15th, 2014
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/11/25/talking-james-...

James Risen, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005 for exposing the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program, has [been] threatened with prison by the Obama Justice Department. [This] is almost certainly the vindictive by-product of the U.S. governments anger over his NSA reporting. He has published a new book on the War on Terror entitled Pay Any Price: Greed, Power and Endless War. Risen's [critique] is one of the first to offer large amounts of original reporting on ... a particular part of the War on Terror, namely the way in which economic motives, what [he] calls the Homeland Security Industrial Complex, has driven a huge part of the war. GLENN GREENWALD: How much of this economic motive is the cause of the fact that weve now been at war for 13 years? RISEN: It plays a really central role. After so many years theres ... a post-9/11 mercenary class thats developed that have invested. Not just people who are making money, but people who are in the government. Their status and their power within the government are invested in continuing the war. Theres very little debate about whether to continue the war. When Dick Cheney said, the gloves come off, ... that really meant, Were going to deregulate national security, and were going to take off all the rules that were imposed in the 70s after Watergate. That was just a dramatic change. Its been extended to this whole new homeland security apparatus. People think that terrorism is an existential threat, even though its not, and so theyre willing to go along with all this.

Note: The complete interview at the link above provides details of James Risen's fight to preserve journalistic integrity against a corrupted government's attempts to manipulate the news. For more on Risen's deeply revealing investigation of the Homeland Security Industrial Complex, see this recent NPR interview.


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