Risen, James nyt

=<a href="https://theintercept.com/2023/01/12/house-jim-jordan-church-committee/">https://theintercept.com/2023/01/12/house-jim-jordan-church-committee/</a>no lnx ONE OF their very first steps since taking over the House of Representatives, House Republicans have created a special new panel to launch wide-ranging investigations into what they allege are the ways in which the federal government has abused the rights of conservatives.Related Republican Freedom Caucus Pushes for New Committee to Investigate the Surveillance StateBut Republicans and right-wing pundits have already given up on its clumsy formal title — the “Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government” — and are now simply calling it the new “Church Committee.” By doing so, they are explicitly comparing it to the historic Church Committee of the mid-1970s, which conducted landmark investigations of the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency, and the rest of the intelligence community, none of which had previously been subject to real oversight.The new “weaponization” subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee will be chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan, a right-wing ally of former President Donald Trump, and has a much different objective than the original Church Committee: The panel is widely expected to become a pro-Trump star chamber, investigating the officials and organizations that have previously investigated Trump, including the FBI and the Justice Department.The Jordan subcommittee also seems likely to investigate the House January 6 committee, which operated when the Democrats controlled the chamber — and referred Jordan to the House Ethics Committee for his involvement in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.Jordan, who stuck by Rep. Kevin McCarthy during McCarthy’s marathon bid to become House speaker last week, is now being rewarded with the mandate and resources to conduct investigations into almost any corner of the government he chooses; those probes have the potential to make the Biden administration look bad or Trump look good. McCarthy has even authorized the subcommittee to examine ongoing criminal investigations, which the Justice Department will certainly oppose.By calling their panel the new Church Committee, Jordan and the Republicans are trying to assume the mantle of one of the most iconic investigative committees in congressional history. (I’ve spent the last several years researching and writing a book about Sen. Frank Church and his eponymous panel, which will be published in May.)“When you reach back in history and bring a phrase from the past to the present, you get to carry a meaning into contemporary time,” observed Stephanie Martin, the Frank and Bethine Church Endowed Chair of Public Affairs at Boise State University in Idaho, the native state of Sen. Church, the Democrat who chaired the original Church Committee. “By calling it the Church Committee,” she added, Republicans are appropriating the image “of effective change and effective oversight.”Jordan and the Republicans are trying to assume the mantle of one of the most iconic investigative committees in congressional history.But the differences between the Church Committee and Jordan’s new subcommittee are stark, observes Loch Johnson, who served as an aide to Church on the committee and later wrote a firsthand account of the committee’s work. “The Church Committee was strongly oriented toward following the documentary evidence that we were able to uncover,” said Johnson. “The inquiry was driven not by ideology, revenge, or anything else but the facts.” Today’s Republicans, he added, seem “motivated by ideology and a sense of grievance, starting with the ‘stolen election’ of 2020.”Johnson and others argue that what the Republicans are creating is unlikely to be anything like the Church Committee, especially if, as seems almost certain, it descends into conspiracy theories about a mythical “deep state” that is out to get Trump and conservatives.The existence of an anti-Trump “deep state” has become one of the most persistent conspiracy theories on the right and feeds into the anger and resentment against the government held by pro-Trump forces, including Jordan. Like all powerful and lasting conspiracy theories, it relies on some basic facts — but then turns reality on its head to reach a fantastical conclusion.It is true that America is burdened with a sprawling and ever-growing military-industrial complex built on a network of relationships linking the Pentagon; the CIA; Homeland Security; defense, intelligence, and counterterrorism contractors; and many others in a powerful and partially hidden web that, over the past few decades, has pushed the nation into a period of nearly endless war. The traditional post-World War II military-industrial complex grew steadily for decades despite President Dwight Eisenhower’s famous warning about its rising power in his 1961 farewell address: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” Its power expanded exponentially after the September 11 attacks as counterterrorism and homeland security became big businesses, making it far more difficult for the United States to ever reduce its paranoia over the threat of terrorism.But today’s combined military, intelligence, and counterterrorism complex is a capitalistic, pro-military center of gravity in American society. It is not anti-Trump or anti-conservative, and it is definitely not a secret political organization bent on imposing “woke” views on Americans.In fact, it was the work of the Church Committee that helped ensure that the “deep state” is nothing more than a right-wing conspiracy theory today. In the first three decades after World War II, the U.S. intelligence community faced no real oversight or outside scrutiny, and as a result, the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA grew beyond presidents’ ability to control and became increasingly lawless. The reforms created as a result of the Church Committee helped to bring the intelligence community fully under the rule of law for the first time. By disclosing a series of shocking abuses of power, Church and his committee created rules of the road for the intelligence community that largely remain in place today.The Church Committee’s work represented a watershed moment in American history — which is why Republicans are now so eager to co-opt its name. But there is no evidence that Jordan plans to follow the earlier panel’s serious and comprehensive approach. In fact, the involvement of Jordan and other House Republicans in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election already constitutes an obvious conflict of interest. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the New York Democrat who is now House minority leader, tweeted that “extreme MAGA Republicans have established a Select Committee on Insurrection Protection.”RATHER THAN BEING a true heir to the Church Committee, Jordan’s subcommittee seems destined to follow the pattern of the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954. Jordan and today’s Republicans are employing the same kind of resentment and grievances against “elites” that fueled Joseph McCarthy, and Jordan also seems destined to use some of McCarthy’s tactics, targeting individual officials to claim they are “woke” or part of the “deep state” — updated versions of McCarthy’s phraseology about “Communist subversion.” It’s no coincidence that Roy Cohn, who worked as chief counsel to McCarthy during the Army-McCarthy hearings, later became a key mentor to Trump in the work of launching vicious political attacks.Previously an obscure back-bench Republican senator from Wisconsin, McCarthy surged to fame in 1950, when he falsely claimed in a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, to have a list of Communists in the State Department, triggering a period of intense paranoia and witch hunting that is now known as the McCarthy era. After he became a committee chair in 1953, McCarthy switched his focus to the Army, with Cohn by his side.By going after the State Department and then the Army, McCarthy took on two of the most important and tradition-bound institutions in the United States at the time. The State Department had not fought back successfully against McCarthy, but the Army did. After McCarthy charged Army leaders with ignoring evidence of Communist subversion at a military facility in New Jersey, the Army went on the attack, accusing McCarthy of seeking special treatment for David Schine, a McCarthy consultant and friend of Cohn’s. The charges and counter-charges ultimately led to a long-running series of nationally televised hearings that garnered huge audiences, pitting McCarthy and Cohn against Joseph Welch, an urbane outside lawyer brought in to represent the Army.“We’re headed for something that combines a witch hunt with a circus.”In a televised hearing on June 9, 1954, McCarthy and Welch engaged in a historic showdown, with Cohn looking on. Bitter at Welch, McCarthy publicly raised questions about the loyalty of Fred Fisher, a lawyer at Welch’s law firm. Welch’s devastating response — “Have you no sense of decency?” — has gone down in history as the moment McCarthy’s power was broken.In December 1954, the Senate finally voted to censure McCarthy; by 1957, he was dead.Does the shame that finally brought down McCarthy still have the power to curb Republican excesses? Johnson, Church’s former aide, isn’t so sure.“We’re headed for something that combines a witch hunt with a circus,” Johnson said, noting that the so-called new Church Committee “is likely to make the 1950s McCarthy hearings appear, in retrospect, rather benign.”CONTACT THE AUTHOR:James Risenjim.risen@firstlook.org@JamesRisen1=620 intercept<div class="Homepage-HomepageSubjectSecondaryNode-textBlock" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 16px; width: 247.266px; flex: 1 1 100%;"><h4 class="elements-Heading-heading elements-Heading-light Homepage-HomepageSubjectSecondaryNode-heading" relay="[object Object]" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TIActuBeta-ExBold_web, Tahoma, sans-serif; font-weight: 700; line-height: 22px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; font-style: normal; color: rgb(102, 83, 255); position: relative; z-index: 1; font-size: 20px; cursor: pointer;">Trump Is an Autocrat. It’s Up to All of Us to Stop Him.</h4><div class="Homepage-HomepageSubjectSecondaryNode-byline" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(102, 83, 255);"><div class="PromoByline-byline PromoByline-light" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: TIActuBetaMono-Regular_web, Consolas, " andale="Andale" mono="Mono" monospace="monospace" font-style="font-style" normal="normal" font-weight="font-weight" font-size="font-size" px="px" color="color" rgb="rgb">James Risen</div></div></div><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen</a>James Risen (born April 27, 1955) is an American <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalist" title="Journalist" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">journalist</a> for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Intercept" title="The Intercept" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">The Intercept</a>. He previously worked for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times" title="The New York Times" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">The New York Times</a> and before that for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Times" title="Los Angeles Times" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">Los Angeles Times</a>. He has written or co-written many articles concerning <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_government_of_the_United_States" title="Federal government of the United States" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">U.S. government</a> activities and is the author or co-author of two books about the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Intelligence_Agency" title="Central Intelligence Agency" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Central Intelligence Agency</a> (CIA) and a book about the American public debate about <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion" title="Abortion" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">abortion</a>. Risen is a Pulitzer Prize winner.<div id="toc" class="toc" style="border: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); background-color: rgb(248, 249, 250); padding: 7px; display: table; zoom: 1;"><input type="checkbox" role="button" id="toctogglecheckbox" class="toctogglecheckbox" style="direction: ltr; position: absolute; opacity: 0; z-index: -1; display: none;" /><div class="toctitle" lang="en" dir="ltr" style="direction: ltr; text-align: center;">
</div><ul style="margin: 0.3em 0px; padding: 0px; list-style-image: none; list-style-type: none;"><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-1" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#Background" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">1Background</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-2" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#Reports_on_government_surveillance_programs" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">2Reports on government surveillance programs</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-3" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#State_of_War" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">3State of War</a><ul style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 2em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: none; list-style-type: none;"><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-4" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#United_States_v.Sterling" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">3.1United States v. Sterling</a></li></ul></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-5" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#Wen_Ho_Lee" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">4Wen Ho Lee</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-6" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#Bibliography" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">5Bibliography</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-7" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#References" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">6References</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-8" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#Further_reading" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">7Further reading</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-9" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#External_links" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">8External links</a></li></ul></div><h2 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); line-height: 1.3;">Background</h2>Risen was born in Cincinnati, Ohio,<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#cite_note-1" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[1]</a> and grew up in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethesda,Maryland" title="Bethesda, Maryland" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Bethesda, Maryland</a>. He graduated from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_University" title="Brown University" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Brown University</a> (1977) and received a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master%27s_degree" title="Master's degree" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Master's degree</a> in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism" title="Journalism" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Journalism</a> at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwestern_University" title="Northwestern University" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Northwestern University</a>'s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medill_School_of_Journalism" title="Medill School of Journalism" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Medill School of Journalism</a> (1978). He is currently an investigative reporter for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Intercept" title="The Intercept" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">The Intercept</a>.Risen won the 2006 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulitzer_Prize_for_National_Reporting" title="Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting</a> for his stories about <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_the_United_States" title="President of the United States" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">President</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W.Bush" title="George W. Bush" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">George W. Bush</a>'s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_warrant" title="Search warrant" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">warrantless</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiretap" class="mw-redirect" title="Wiretap" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">wiretapping</a> 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 four 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); <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_War:The_Secret_History_of_the_CIA_and_the_Bush_Administration" title="State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration</a> (The Free Press) (2006); and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_Any_Price:Greed,Power,and_Endless_War" title="Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War</a> (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) (2014). State of War was a New York Times bestseller. Pay Any Price 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.<h2 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); line-height: 1.3;">Reports on government surveillance programs</h2>Risen and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Lichtblau" title="Eric Lichtblau" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Eric Lichtblau</a> were awarded the 2006 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulitzer_Prize_for_National_Reporting" title="Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting</a> for a series of controversial investigative reports that they co-wrote about the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency" title="National Security Agency" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">National Security Agency</a>'s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance" title="Surveillance" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">surveillance</a> of international communications originating or terminating in the United States code-named <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_wind(code_name)" class="mw-redirect" title="Stellar wind (code name)" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">"Stellar Wind"</a> and about a government program called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorist_Finance_Tracking_Program" title="Terrorist Finance Tracking Program" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Terrorist Finance Tracking Program</a> designed to detect terrorist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financier" class="mw-redirect" title="Financier" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">financiers</a>, which involved searches of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_transfer" title="Wire transfer" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">money transfer</a> records in the international <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWIFT" class="mw-redirect" title="SWIFT" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">SWIFT</a> database.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#cite_note-2" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[2]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#cite_note-3" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[3]</a> The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associated_Press" title="Associated Press" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Associated Press</a> reported on May 24, 2011, that Risen was being called as a witness in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Alexander_Sterling" title="Jeffrey Alexander Sterling" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Jeffrey Sterling</a> trial for alleged leaks of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classified_information" title="Classified information" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">classified information</a>.<h2 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); line-height: 1.3;">State of War</h2>
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 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghanistan" title="Afghanistan" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background="background" none="none" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line">Afghanistan</a> into a "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narco-capitalism" class="mw-redirect" title="Narco-capitalism" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background="background" none="none" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line">narco-state</a>", that provides a purported 80% of the world's <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin" title="Heroin" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background="background" none="none" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line">heroin</a> supply.
While doing research for the book, Risen's email and phone connections with former CIA Operations Officer <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Alexander_Sterling" title="Jeffrey Alexander Sterling" style="" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background="background" none="none" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line">Jeffrey Alexander Sterling</a> were monitored by the US federal government.<sup id="cite_ref-NCBNY20110106_5-0" class="reference" style="" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" line-height="line-height" unicode-bidi="unicode-bidi" isolate="isolate" white-space="white-space" nowrap="nowrap"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#cite_note-NCBNY20110106-5" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[5]</a><sup id="cite_ref-NO.1:10CR485(LMB)6-0" class="reference" style="" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" line-height="line-height" unicode-bidi="unicode-bidi" isolate="isolate" white-space="white-space" nowrap="nowrap"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#cite_note-NO.1:10CR485(LMB)-6" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[6]</a> The US federal government also obtained Risen's credit and bank records.<sup id="cite_ref-MSNBC20110225_7-0" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" line-height="line-height" unicode-bidi="unicode-bidi" isolate="isolate" white-space="white-space" nowrap="nowrap"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#cite_note-MSNBC20110225-7" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[7]</a> 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 2015 confirm many details on Operation Merlin.<sup id="cite_ref-NO.1:10CR485(LMB)Doc402_8-0" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" line-height="line-height" unicode-bidi="unicode-bidi" isolate="isolate" white-space="white-space" nowrap="nowrap"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#cite_note-NO.1:10CR485(LMB)Doc402-8" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[8]</a>
Risen is the author of the book <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_War:The_Secret_History_of_the_CIA_and_the_Bush_Administration" title="State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration</a> (January 2006). The book conducted important investigations into <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Intelligence_Agency" title="Central Intelligence Agency" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Central Intelligence Agency</a> activities. It states that the CIA carried out an operation in 2000 (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Merlin" title="Operation Merlin" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Operation Merlin</a>) intended to delay <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction" title="Iran and weapons of mass destruction" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program</a> 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 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Advisor(United_States)" title="National Security Advisor (United States)" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">National Security Advisor</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condoleezza_Rice" title="Condoleezza Rice" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Condoleezza Rice</a> with the NYT Executive Editor <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howell_Raines" title="Howell Raines" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Howell Raines</a>.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#cite_note-NO.1:10CR485(LMB)Doc406-2-4" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[4]</a>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. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byron_Calame" title="Byron Calame" style="background: none; text-decoration-line: none;">Byron Calame</a>, 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 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Justice" title="United States Department of Justice" style="background: none; text-decoration-line: none;">Department of Justice</a> (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 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valerie_Plame_affair" class="mw-redirect" title="Valerie Plame affair" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Valerie Plame affair</a>. In that case, former New York Times reporter <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller(journalist)" class="mw-redirect" title="Judith Miller (journalist)" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Judith Miller</a> was jailed for refusing to reveal a source for a story of hers. The Attorney General hinted in a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Post" class="mw-redirect" title="Washington Post" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Washington Post</a> article on May 22, 2006, that journalists may be charged for any disclosure of classified national security information. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W.Bush" title="George W. Bush" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">President George W. Bush</a>, in a June 25, 2006 news conference, was critical of the publication of information of classified programs by The New York Times.<h3 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.3em 0px 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; border-bottom: 0px; line-height: 1.6;">United States v. Sterling</h3><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Alexander_Sterling" title="Jeffrey Alexander Sterling" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Jeffrey Alexander Sterling</a> was being investigated during the Bush administration. In 2010 he was indicted under the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espionage_Act_of_1917" title="Espionage Act of 1917" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Espionage Act of 1917</a>, one of the few people in US history whose alleged contact with a journalist was punished under espionage law.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#cite_note-josh_gerstein1-9" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[9]</a>Risen was subpoenaed in relation to the case in 2008.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#cite_note-10" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[10]</a> He fought the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpoena" title="Subpoena" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">subpoena</a>, and it expired in the summer of 2009.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#cite_note-subpoena-11" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[11]</a> In what The New York Times called "a rare step," the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Barack_Obama" title="Presidency of Barack Obama" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Obama administration</a> renewed the subpoena in 2010.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#cite_note-subpoena-11" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[11]</a> In 2011, Risen wrote a detailed response to the subpoena, describing his reasons for refusing to reveal his sources, the public impact of his work, and his experiences with the Bush administration.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#cite_note-12" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[12]</a>In July 2013 US Court of Appeals from the Fourth Circuit ruled that Risen must testify in the trial of Jeffrey Sterling. The court wrote "so long as the subpoena is issued in good faith and is based on a legitimate need of law enforcement, the government need not make any special showing to obtain evidence of criminal conduct from a reporter in a criminal proceeding."<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#cite_note-13" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[13]</a> Judge <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Gregory" title="Roger Gregory" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Roger Gregory</a> dissented, writing "The majority exalts the interests of the government while unduly trampling those of the press, and in doing so, severely impinges on the press and the free flow of information in our society."<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#cite_note-14" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[14]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#cite_note-15" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[15]</a>The Supreme Court rejected his appeal during June 2014,<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#cite_note-16" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[16]</a> leaving Risen facing the possibility of jail depending upon whether the federal prosecutors choose to pursue his testimony. He has stated that he will continue to refuse and is willing to go to jail.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#cite_note-17" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[17]</a>In October 2014, Attorney General <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Holder" title="Eric Holder" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">Eric Holder</a>, speaking at a Washington, D.C. event, stated “no reporter’s going to jail as long as I’m attorney general.”<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#cite_note-18" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[18]</a>In January 2015 The New York Times reported that Risen "will not be called to testify at a trial", which ended a seven-year legal fight over whether he could/would be forced to identify his confidential sources.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#cite_note-19" style="background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">[19]</a><h2 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); line-height: 1.3;">Wen Ho Lee</h2>In an article that Risen co-wrote with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Gerth" title="Jeff Gerth" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Jeff Gerth</a> for The New York Times that appeared on March 6, 1999, they allege that "a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Alamos_National_Laboratory" title="Los Alamos National Laboratory" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Los Alamos</a> computer scientist who is Chinese-American" had stolen nuclear secrets for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China" title="China" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">China</a>.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#cite_note-20" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[20]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#cite_note-21" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[21]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#cite_note-22" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[22]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#cite_note-23" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[23]</a>The suspect, later identified as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wen_Ho_Lee" title="Wen Ho Lee" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Wen Ho Lee</a>, 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.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#cite_note-ParkerRemarks-24" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[24]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#cite_note-25" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[25]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#cite_note-26" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[26]</a> 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.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#cite_note-27" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[27]</a> Lee and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Zia" title="Helen Zia" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Helen Zia</a> 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.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#cite_note-LeeZia2001-28" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[28]</a> 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.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#cite_note-MediaSettlement-29" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[29]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#cite_note-30" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[30]</a><h2 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: normal; margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); line-height: 1.3;">Bibliography[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=James_Risen&action=edit&section=6&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro" title="Edit section: Bibliography" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">edit</a>]</h2><dl style="margin-top: 0.2em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><dt style="font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Books</dt></dl><ul style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px 1.6em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" csvg="Csvg" width="%225%22" height="%2213%22%3E" ccircle="Ccircle" cx="%222.5%22" cy="%229%22" r="%222.5%22" fill="%22%23222%22/%3E" c="C" e="E" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" xmlns="%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22" xmlns:data="data"><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Bearden" title="Milton Bearden" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Bearden, Milton</a>, and James Risen. The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA's Final Showdown with the KGB. New York: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_House" title="Random House" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Random House</a>, 2004. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Number" title="International Standard Book Number" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">ISBN</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0-345-47250-0" title="Special:BookSources/0-345-47250-0" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">0-345-47250-0</a> (10). <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Number" title="International Standard Book Number" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">ISBN</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/978-0-345-47250-2" title="Special:BookSources/978-0-345-47250-2" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">978-0-345-47250-2</a> (13). (Also available as an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-book" title="E-book" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">E-book</a>.)</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Risen, James. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen#State_of_War" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">State of War</a>: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration. New York: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%26_Schuster" title="Simon & Schuster" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Simon & Schuster</a> (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Press(publisher)" title="Free Press (publisher)" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Free Press</a> imprint), 2006. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Number" title="International Standard Book Number" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">ISBN</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0-7432-7066-5" title="Special:BookSources/0-7432-7066-5" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">0-7432-7066-5</a> (10). <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Number" title="International Standard Book Number" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">ISBN</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/978-0-7432-7066-3" title="Special:BookSources/978-0-7432-7066-3" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">978-0-7432-7066-3</a> (13).</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Risen, James, and Judy Thomas. Wrath of Angels: The American Abortion War. Perseus Publishing, 1999. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Number" title="International Standard Book Number" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">ISBN</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/978-0-465-09273-4" title="Special:BookSources/978-0-465-09273-4" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">978-0-465-09273-4</a> (13).</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Risen, James. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_Any_Price:Greed,Power,_and_Endless_War" title="Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War</a>. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Number" title="International Standard Book Number" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">ISBN</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/978-0-5443-4141-8" title="Special:BookSources/978-0-5443-4141-8" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">978-0-5443-4141-8</a>.</li></ul>

The First Amendment

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

</blockquote>

=
In Risen’s 2006 book, “State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration,” he wrote about a botched CIA plan to give bogus nuclear weapons blueprints to the Iranians. The U.S. government alleges that the source was Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA employee, whom the Justice Department is prosecuting under the 1917 Espionage Act. Risen refuses to release information about his source.=

7/14

<div>

</div>

<div>

The U.S. government is insisting that award-wining New York Times "national security" reporter James Risen reveal a confidential source -- or go to jail. Risen says he won’t capitulate.

Now you can let this journalist and top government officials know that you’re in solidarity with his brave stand for a free press. <a rel="nofollow" title="Sign the petition " target="_blank" href="http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=9JvzMjsTGBSEE3mlsbTmAoIeaYBH%2FR1K" style=" text-decoration: none; line-height: 1.2em; outline: none;">Sign the petition "We Support James Risen Because We Support a Free Press.</a>"

The Freedom of the Press Foundation has called the government's effort to force Risen to reveal a source "one of the most significant press freedom cases in decades."

So much is at stake: for whistleblowers, freedom of the press and the public’s right to know. And for democracy.

That’s why our team at The Progressive/Center for Media and Democracy is joining forces with RootsAction, Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), the Freedom of the Press Foundation and The Nation magazine to insist on protection for the confidentiality of journalists’ sources.

===

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Here’s what passes for good news when it comes to a free press these days: two weeks ago, the Supreme Court <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/03/us/james-risen-faces-jail-time-for-refusing-to-identify-a-confidential-source.html" target="blank" style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none;">refused without comment</a> to hear a case involving New York Times reporter James Risen.  It concerned his unwillingness to testify before a grand jury under subpoena and reveal a confidential source of information in his book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0743270673/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">State of War</a> on the secret U.S. campaign against the Iranian nuclear program.  The case will now go back to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which has already ordered him to testify.  He says he will instead go to jail, if necessary.

That’s the bad news, right?  Really bad news!  The Supremes, the highest court in the land, refused to protect a reporter protecting a source at a moment when the Obama administration is in the midst of a wide-ranging <a href="http://wemeantwell.com/blog/2014/06/11/government-demands-whistleblower-organizations-encrypted-files/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">crackdown</a> on leakers and whistleblowers of all sorts (and those in the media considered to be aiding and abetting them).  Actually, in a world in which Congress has not yet managed to pass a <a href="http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/24275-the-james-risen-case-cuts-to-the-heart-of-freedom-of-the-press" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">federal shield law</a> that would protect reporters, it turns out that that’s actually the good news -- or so at least various media commentators say.  Follow the logic here (and it is logic of a sort).  Right now the Richmond, Virginia-based Appeals court decision applies only to courts in states under its jurisdiction.  Had the Supremes agreed to take on the case, given their conservative and generally government-friendly bent on matters of executive power and what passes for national security, they would likely have ruled against Risen and that ruling would have applied nationally.

So, phew!  Their rejection was a “<a href="http://www.newsweek.com/supreme-court-did-james-risen-and-first-amendment-favor-253151" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration: none;">blessing</a>” (in disguise).  The only harm they did, after all, was to confirm the atmospherics of a moment in which the Obama administration has been <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/10/obama-leaks-aggressive-nixon-report-prosecution" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration: none;">eager</a> to shut down the leaking of unauthorized government information in a big way -- oh yes, and drive another modest nail into the coffin of a free-to-report-what-our-government-actually-does media.  That’s the minimal, not the maximal damage claim; so say various relieved <a href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-james-risen-supreme-court-freedom-of-the-press-20140606-story.html" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration: none;">commentators</a>.  As for Risen, he now has to depend on the kindness of strangers, of in fact Attorney General Eric Holder, who may briefly <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/28/us/holder-hints-reporter-may-be-spared-jail-in-leak.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">declare a truce</a> in the administration’s “war on the press” and not jail him.

Best news we’ve had in a while!  And should Congress pass that shield law (even if it <a href="http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/opinion/58045428-82/administration-case-media-obama.html.csp" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">leaves national security out</a>), uncork the champagne!  And we’ll all toast the Supreme Court and the attorney general and the president and his top officials for their grace under pressure.  Or rather, hold on just a sec there.  Maybe that isn’t quite the classic American way of preserving our freedoms -- i.e, allowing our government free rein to preserve them for us, if its officials happen to be in the mood.  In fact, as State Department whistleblower and <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175792/tomgram%3A_peter_van_buren,we_have_to_destroy_our_constitution_to_save_it/" target="_blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration: none;">TomDispatch regular</a> Peter Van Buren suggests, we may be entering a grim new era when it comes to our Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Tom

What We've Lost Since 9/11

Taking Down the First Amendment in Post-Constitutional America

By <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/authors/petervanburen" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Peter Van Buren</a>

America has entered its third great era: the post-constitutional one. In the first, in the colonial years, a unitary executive, the King of England, ruled without checks and balances, allowing no freedom of speech, due process, or privacy when it came to protecting his power.

In the second, the principles of the Enlightenment and an armed rebellion were used to push back the king’s abuses. The result was a new country and a new constitution with a Bill of Rights expressly meant to check the government's power. Now, we are wading into the shallow waters of a third era, a time when that government is abandoning the basic ideas that saw our nation through centuries of challenges far more daunting than terrorism. Those ideas -- enshrined in the Bill of Rights -- are disarmingly concise. Think of them as the haiku of a genuine people's government.

Deeper, darker waters lie ahead and we seem drawn down into them. For here there be monsters.

</blockquote>

The Powers of a Police State Denied

America in its pre-constitutional days may seem eerily familiar even to casual readers of current events. We lived then under the control of a king. (Think now: the imperial presidency.) That king was a powerful, unitary executive who ruled at a distance. His goal was simple: to use his power over “his” American colonies to draw the maximum financial gain while suppressing any dissent that might endanger his control.

In those years, <a href="http://www.shmoop.com/american-revolution/politics.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">protest</a> was dangerous. Speech could indeed make you the enemy of the government. Journalism could be a crime if you didn’t write in support of those in power. A citizen needed to watch what he said, for there were spies everywhere, including fellow colonists hoping for a few crumbs from the king's table. Laws could be brutal and punishments swift as well as extra-judicial. In extreme cases, troops <a href="http://www.bostonmassacre.net/timeline.htm" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">shot down</a> those simply assembling to speak out.

Among the many offenses against liberty in pre-constitutional America, one pivotal event, the <a href="http://www.history.org/history/teaching/tchcrsta.cfm" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Stamp Act</a> of 1765, stands out. To enforce the taxes imposed by the Act, the king's men used "<a href="http://www.constitution.org/bor/otis_against_writs.htm" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">writs of assistance</a>" that allowed them to burst into any home or business, with or without suspicion of wrongdoing. American privacy was violated and property ransacked, often simply as a warning of the king’s power. Some colonist was then undoubtedly the first American to mutter, “But if I have nothing to hide, why should I be afraid?” He soon learned that when a population is categorically treated as a potential enemy, everyone has something to hide if the government claims they do.

The Stamp Act and the flood of kingly offenses that followed created in those who founded the United States a profound suspicion of what an unchecked government could do, and a sense that power and freedom are not likely to coexist comfortably in a democracy. A balancing mechanism was required. In addition to the body of the Constitution outlining what the new nation's government could do, needed was an accounting of what it could not do. The answer was the Bill of Rights.

The Bill's <a href="http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_transcript.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">preamble</a> explained the matter this way: “...in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of [the government's] powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added.” Thomas Jefferson <a href="https://www.aclu.org/racial-justice_prisoners-rights_drug-law-reform_immigrants-rights/bill-rights-brief-history" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">commented </a> separately, "[A] bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth."

In other words, the Bill of Rights was written to make sure that the new government would not replicate the abuses of power of the old one. Each amendment spoke directly to a specific offense committed by the king. Their purpose collectively was to lay out what the government could never take away. Knowing first-hand the dangers of a police state and unchecked power, those who wrote the Constitution wanted to be clear: never again.

It needs to be said that those imperfect men were very much of their era. They were right about much, but desperately wrong about other things. They addressed “humanity,” but ignored the rights of women and Native Americans. Above all, they did not abolish the institution of slavery, our nation’s Original Sin. It would take many years, and much blood, to begin to rectify those mistakes.

Still, for more than two centuries, the meaning of the Bill of Rights was generally expanded, though -- especially in wartime -- it sometimes temporarily contracted. Yet the basic principles that guided America were sustained despite civil war, world wars, depressions, and endless challenges. Then, one September morning, our Post-Constitutional era began amid falling towers and empty skies. What have we lost since? More than we imagine. A look at the Bill of Rights, amendment by amendment, tells the tale.

The First Amendment

The <a href="http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_transcript.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">First Amendment</a> was meant to make one thing indisputably clear: free speech was the basis for a government of the people. Without a free press, as well as the ability to openly gather, debate, protest, and criticize, how would the people be able to judge their government's adherence to the other rights? How could people vote knowledgeably if they didn’t know what was being done in their name by their government? An informed citizenry, Thomas Jefferson <a href="http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/educated-citizenry-vital-requisite-our-survival-free-people-quotation" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">stated</a>, was "a vital requisite for our survival as a free people."

That was how it was seen long ago. In Post-Constitutional America, however, the government strives to "control the message," to actively thwart efforts to maintain a citizenry informed about what’s done in its name, a concept that these days seems as quaint as Jefferson's powdered wig. There are far too many examples of the post-9/11 erosion of the First Amendment to list here. Let's just look at a few important ones that tell the tale of what we have lost since 9/11.

(Lack of) Freedom of Information

In 1966, an idea for keeping Americans better informed on the workings of their government was hatched: the Freedom of Information Act (<a href="http://www.foia.gov/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">FOIA</a>). Strengthened in 1974, it began with the premise that, except for some obvious <a href="http://foia.state.gov/Learn/FOIA.aspx" target="blank" style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none;">categories</a> (like serious national security matters and personal information), the position of the government should be: everything it does is available to the public. Like the Bill of Rights, which made specific the limits of government, FOIA began with a presumption that it was the government’s duty to make information available -- and quickly -- to the people, unless a convincing case could be made otherwise. The default position of the FOIA switch was set to ON.

Three decades later, the FOIA system works far differently. Agencies are generally loath to release documents of any sort and instead put their efforts into creating roadblocks to legitimate requests. Some still require signatures on paper. (The State Department <a href="http://foia.state.gov/Request/Submit.aspx" target="blank" style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none;">notes</a>, “Requests for personal information cannot be submitted electronically and should be submitted by mail.”) Others demand hyper-detailed information like the precise dates and titles of documents whose dates and titles may be classified and unavailable. The NSA simply <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/07/06/1221694/-NSA-Rejecting-Every-FOIA-Request-Made-by-U-S-Citizens" target="blank" style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none;">denies</a> almost all FOIA requests out of hand, absent a court order.

Most federal agencies now regard the <a href="http://www.foia.gov/faq.html#howlong" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">deadline</a> mandated for a response as the time period to send out a “request received” note. They tend to assign only a few staff members to processing requests, leading to near-endless <a href="http://wemeantwell.com/blog/2014/05/13/state-dept-pulls-lowest-ranking-for-foia-request-replies/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">delays</a>. At the State Department, most FOIA work is done on a part-time basis by retirees. The CIA won’t directly release electronic versions of documents. Even when a request is fulfilled, “free” copying is often denied and reproduction costs exaggerated.

In some cases, the requested records have a way of disappearing or are simply <a href="http://www.wired.com/2014/06/feds-seize-stingray-documents/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">removed</a>. The ACLU’s experience when it filed an FOIA-style request with the Sarasota police department on its use of the cell phone surveillance tool <a href="http://www.wired.com/2013/04/verizon-rigmaiden-aircard/all/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Stingray</a> could be considered typical. The morning the ACLU was to review the files, Federal Marshals arrived and physically took possession of them, claiming they had deputized the local cops and made the files federal property. An ACLU spokesperson <a href="http://www.wired.com/2014/06/feds-seize-stingray-documents/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">noted</a> that, in other cases, federal authorities have invoked the <a href="http://www.dhs.gov/homeland-security-act-2002" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Homeland Security Act</a> to prevent the release of records.

John Young, who runs the web site <a href="http://cryptome.org/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Cryptome</a> and is a steadfast FOIA requester,<a href="https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2013/nov/15/interview-john-young-founder-cryptome/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">stated</a>, “Stonewalling, delay, brush-off, lying are normal. It is a delusion for ordinary requesters and a bitch of a challenge for professionals. Churning has become a way of life for FOIA, costly as hell for little results.”

Sealed Lips and the Whistleblower

All government agencies have regulations requiring employees to obtain permission before speaking to the representatives of the people -- that is, journalists. The U.S. Intelligence Community has among the <a href="http://www.dailydot.com/politics/james-clapper-media-contact-directive/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">most restrictive</a> of these policies, banning employees and contractors completely from talking with the media without prior authorization. Even speaking about unclassified information is a no-no that may cost you your job. A government ever more in lockdown mode has created what one journalist <a href="http://www.editorandpublisher.com/TopStories/Features/When-Censorship-Becomes-a-Cultural-Norm2014-05-15T11-11-19" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">calls</a> a “culture where censorship is the norm.”

So who does speak to Americans about their government? Growing hordes of spokespeople, communications staff, trained PR crews, and those anonymous “senior officials” who pop up so regularly in news articles in major papers.

With the government obsessively seeking to hide or spin what it does, in-the-sunlight contact barred, and those inside locked behind an iron curtain of secrecy, the whistleblower has become the paradigmatic figure of the era. Not surprisingly, anyone who blows a whistle has, in these years, come under fierce attack.

Pick a case: <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175500/" target="blank" style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none;">Tom Drake</a> exposing early NSA efforts to turn its spy tools on Americans, <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175719/" target="blank" style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none;">Edward Snowden</a> proving that the government has us under constant surveillance, <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175414/chase_madar_bradley_manning_american_hero" target="blank" style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none;">Chelsea Manning</a> documenting war crimes in Iraq and sleazy diplomacy everywhere, <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175591/tomgram:peter_van_buren,our_9_11_torturers/" target="blank" style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none;">John Kiriakou</a> acknowledging torture by his former employer the CIA, or <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175814/" target="blank" style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none;">Robert MacLean</a> revealing Transportation Safety Administration malfeasance. In each instance, the threat of jail was quick to surface. The nuclear option against such truthtellers is the <a href="http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Espionage+Act+of+1917" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Espionage Act</a>, a law that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espionage_Act_of_1917#World_War_I" target="_blank" style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none;">offended</a> the Constitution when implemented in the midst of World War I. It has been resurrected by the Obama administration as a blunt “wartime” tool for silencing and punishing whistleblowers.

The Obama administration has already charged <a href="http://pogoblog.typepad.com/pogo/2012/01/six-americans-obama-and-holder-charged-under-the-espionage-act-and-one-bonus-whistleblower.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">six</a> people under that act for allegedly mishandling classified information. Even Richard Nixon only invoked it once, in a failed prosecution against Pentagon Papers whistleblower <a href="http://www.ellsberg.net/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Daniel Ellsberg</a>.

Indeed, the very word “espionage” couldn’t be stranger in the context of these cases. None of those charged spied. None sought to aid an enemy or make money selling secrets. No matter. In Post-Constitutional America, the powers-that-be stand ready to twist language in whatever Orwellian direction is necessary to bridge the gap between reality and the king's needs. In the Espionage Act case of State Department contractor <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/08/us/politics/ex-state-department-contractor-pleads-guilty-in-leak-case.html?r=0" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Stephen Kim</a>, a judge <a href="http://blogs.fas.org/secrecy/2013/07/prosecutors-burden/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">departed</a> from previous precedent,<a href="http://www.fas.org/sgp/jud/kim/072413-opinion3.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">ruling</a> that the prosecution need not even show that the information leaked to a Fox news reporter from a CIA report on North Korea could damage U.S. national security or benefit a foreign power. It could still be a part of an “espionage” charge.

A final question might be: How could a law designed almost 100 years ago to stop German spies in wartime have become a tool to silence the few Americans willing to risk everything to exercise their First Amendment rights? When did free speech become a crime?

Self-Censorship and the Press

Each person charged under the Espionage Act in these years was primarily a source for a journalist. The writers of the Bill of Rights chose to include the term “press” in the First Amendment, specifically carving out a special place for journalists in our democracy. The press was necessary to question government officials directly, comment on their actions, and inform the citizenry about what its government was doing. Sadly, as the Obama administration is moving ever more fiercely against those who might reveal its acts or documents, the bulk of the media have acquiesced. Glenn Greenwald said it <a href="http://m.sfgate.com/default/article/No-Place-to-Hide-by-Glenn-Greenwald-5484817.php#page-1" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none;">plainly</a>: too many journalists have gone into a self-censoring mode, practicing "obsequious journalism."

For example, a survey of reporters <a href="http://www.salon.com/2014/05/15/american_journalism_needs_more_edward_snowdens/" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none;">showed</a> “the percentage of U.S. journalists endorsing the occasional use of ‘confidential business or government documents without authorization,’ dropped significantly from 81.8% in 1992 to 57.7% in 2013.” About 40% of American journalists would not have published documents like those Edward Snowden revealed.

And the same has been true of the management of newspapers. In mid-2004, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/politics/16program.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">uncovered</a> George W. Bush's illegal warrantless eavesdropping program, but the New York Times held the story for <a href="http://m.sfgate.com/default/article/No-Place-to-Hide-by-Glenn-Greenwald-5484817.php#page-1" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">15 months</a>, until after Bush's reelection. Executives at the Times were told by administration officials that if they ran the story, they'd be helping terrorists. They accepted that. In 2006, the Los Angeles Times similarly gave in to the NSA and <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2007/03/whistleblower_h/" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none;">suppressed</a> a story on government wiretaps of Americans.

Government Efforts to Stop Journalists

Reporters need sources. Increasingly, the government is classifying just about any document it produces -- <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175570/tomgram%3A_engelhardt,the_national_security_complex_and_you/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">92 million documents</a> in 2011 alone. Its intelligence agencies have even <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/28/cia-over-classification-report_n_4680479.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">classified reports</a> about the over-classification of documents.  As a result, journalistic sources are often pressed into discussing, at great personal risk, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/28/nsa-surveillance-too-many-documents-classified" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">classified</a> information. Forcing a reporter to reveal such sources discourages future whistleblowing.

In one of the first of a series of attempts to make journalists reveal their sources, former Fox News reporter <a href="http://boingboing.net/2014/05/30/house-passes-federal-shield.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Mike Levine</a> stated that the Justice Department persuaded a federal grand jury to subpoena him in January 2011. The demand was that he reveal his sources for a 2009 <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/2009/07/02/somali-americans-accused-al-qaeda-ties-indicted-on-terror-charges-sources-say/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">story</a> about Somali-Americans who were secretly indicted in Minneapolis for joining an al-Qaeda-linked group in Somalia. Levine fought the order and the Department of Justice finally dropped it without comment in April 2012. Call it a failed test case.

<a href="http://my.firedoglake.com/Jane-2/2014/05/20/the-price-of-whistleblowing-manning-greenwald-assange-kiriakou-and-snowden/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">According</a> to Washington lawyer Abbe Lowell, who defended Stephen Kim, significant amounts of time have been spent by the Department of Justice in the search for a legal rationale for indicting journalists for their participation in exposing classified documents. A crucial test case is James Risen's 2006 book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0743270673/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">State of War</a>, which had an anonymously sourced chapter on a failed CIA operation to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program. When Risen, citing the First Amendment, <a href="http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/02/08/journalist-james-risen-facing-threat-prison-wins-freedom-press-award/gXiatUVYP9q8q4TXtpCVEI/story.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">refused</a> to identify his source or testify in the trial of the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/06/AR2011010604001.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">former CIA officer</a> accused of being that source, the government sought to imprison him. He <a href="http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/13/protecting-a-source-james-risen-takes-his-case-to-the-supreme-court/?php=true&type=blogs&r=0" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">responded</a> that the “Obama administration... wants to use this case and others like it to intimidate reporters and whistleblowers. But I am appealing to the Supreme Court because it is too dangerous to allow the government to conduct national security policy completely in the dark.”

In June 2014, the Supreme Court <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/06/02/the-supreme-court-wont-intervene-in-the-james-risen-case-whats-next/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">refused</a> to take Risen's case on appeal, essentially ratifying a U.S. Court of Appeals <a href="http://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinions/published/115028.p.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">decision</a> that the First Amendment didn’t protect a reporter from being forced to testify about “criminal conduct that the reporter personally witnessed or participated in.” That decision makes clear that a reporter receiving classified information from a source is part of the crime of “leaking.”

Risen has said he will go to prison rather than testify. It is possible that, having secured the precedent-setting right to send Risen to jail, the government will bring the suspected leaker to trial without calling on him. Attorney General Eric Holder recently <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/28/us/holder-hints-reporter-may-be-spared-jail-in-leak.html" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none;">hinted</a> that his Justice Department might take that path -- a break for Risen himself, but not for reporters more generally who now know that they can be jailed for refusing to divulge a source without hope of recourse to the Supreme Court.

The Descent Into Post-Constitutionalism

As with the King of England once upon a time, many of the things the government now does have been approved in secret, sometimes in <a href="http://epic.org/privacy/terrorism/fisa/fisc.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">secret courts</a> according to a secret body of law. Sometimes, they were even approved openly by Congress. In constitutional America, the actions of the executive and the laws passed by Congress were only legal when they did not conflict with the underlying constitutional principles of our democracy. Not any more. “Law” made in secret, including pretzeled legal interpretations by the Justice Department for the White House, opened the way, for instance, to the use of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/ref/international/24MEMO-GUIDE.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">torture</a> on prisoners and in the Obama years to the <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/02/obama-released-torture-memos-why-not-targeted-killing-memos" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none;">drone assassination</a> of Americans. Because such “legalities” remain officially classified, they are, of course, doubly difficult to challenge.

But can’t we count on the usual pendulum swings in American life to change this? There were indeed notable moments in American history when parts of the Constitution were put aside, but none are truly comparable to our current situation. The Civil War lasted five years, with Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus limited in geography and robustly <a href="http://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jala/2629860.0029.205/--lincoln-s-suspension-of-the-writ-of-habeas-corpus?rgn=main;view=fulltext" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">contested</a>. The World War II Japanese internment camps <a href="http://web2.uconn.edu/aasi/Research/jarl.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">closed</a> after three years and the persecuted were a sub-set of Japanese-Americans from the West Coast. Senator McCarthy’s notorious career as a communist-hunter lasted four years and ended in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none;">shame</a>.

Almost 13 years after the 9/11 attacks, it remains “wartime.” For the war on terror, the driver, excuse, and raison d'être for the tattering of the Bill of Rights, there is no end in sight. Recently retired NSA head Keith Alexander is typical of key figures in the national security state when he <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2014/05/were-at-greater-risk-q-a-with-general-keith-alexander.html" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none;">claims</a> that despite, well, everything, the country is at greater risk today than ever before. These days, wartime is forever, which means that a government working ever more in secret has ever more latitude to decide which rights in which form applied in what manner are still inalienable.

The usual critical history of our descent into a post-constitutional state goes something like this: in the panic after the 9/11 attacks, under the leadership of Vice President Dick Cheney with the support of President George W. Bush, a cabal of top government officials pushed through legal-lite measures to (as they liked to say) “<a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/63903/mark_danner_bush's_state_of_exception" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">take the gloves off</a>” and allow <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/02/05/a-staggering-map-of-the-54-countries-that-reportedly-participated-in-the-cias-rendition-program/" style="text-decoration: none;">kidnapping</a>, <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Investigation/story?id=1322866" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">torture</a>, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/independent-review-board-says-nsa-phone-data-program-is-illegal-and-should-end/2014/01/22/4cebd470-83dd-11e3-bbe5-6a2a3141e3a9_story.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">illegal surveillance</a>, and <a href="http://ccrjustice.org/learn-more/reports/report:-torture-and-cruel,-inhuman,-and-degrading-treatment-prisoners-guantanamo-" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">offshore imprisonment</a> along with <a href="https://www.aclu.org/national-security/president-obama-issues-executive-order-institutionalizing-indefinite-detention" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none;">indefinite detention</a> without charges or trial.

Barack Obama, elected on a series of (false) promises to roll back the worst of the Bush-era crimes, while rejecting torture and closing America’s overseas “black sites,” still pushed the process forward in his own way. He expanded executive power, emphasized drone assassinations (including against American citizens), gave amnesty to torturers, increased government secrecy, targeted whistleblowers, and heightened surveillance. In other words, two successive administrations lied, performed legal acrobatics, and bullied their way toward a kind of absolute power that hasn’t been seen since the days of King George. That's the common narrative and, while not wrong, it is incomplete.

Missing Are the People

One key factor remains missing in such a version of post-9/11 events in America: the people. Even today, <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/05/14/america_china_amnesty_torture_survey_32_percent_of_united_states_citizens.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">45%</a> of Americans, when polled on the subject, agree that torture is “sometimes necessary and acceptable to gain information that may protect the public.” Americans as a group seem unsure about whether the NSA's global and domestic surveillance is justified, and many remain convinced that Edward Snowden and the journalists who published his material are <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/08/books/review/no-place-to-hide-by-glenn-greenwald.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">criminals</a>. The most common meme related to whistleblowers is still “patriot or traitor?” and toward the war on terror, “security or freedom?”

It’s not that Americans are incorrect to be fearful and feel in need of protection. The main thing we need to protect ourselves against, however, is not the modest domestic threat from terrorists, but a new king, a unitary executive that has taken the law for its own, aided and abetted by the courts, supported by a powerful national security state, and unopposed by a riven and weakened Congress. Without a strong Bill of Rights to protect us -- indeed, secure us -- from the dangers of our own government, we will have gone full-circle to a Post-Constitutional America that shares much in common with the pre-constitutional British colonies.

Yet there is no widespread, mainstream movement of opposition to what the government has been doing. It seems, in fact, that many Americans are willing to accept, perhaps even welcome out of fear, the death of the Bill of Rights, one amendment at a time.

We are the first to see, in however shadowy a form, the outlines of what a Post-Constitutional America might look like. We could be the last who might be able to stop it.

Peter Van Buren blew the whistle on State Department waste and mismanagement during Iraqi reconstruction in his first book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805096817/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" target="blank" style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none;">We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People</a>. A<a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175838/tomgram:peter_van_buren,regime_change_in_america/" target="blank" style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none;">TomDispatch regular</a>, he writes about current events at his blog <a href="http://www.wemeantwell.com/" target="blank" style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none;">We Meant Well</a>. His new book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1935462911/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" target="blank" style="font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none;">Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the #99Percent</a>, is available now.  In future pieces at TomDispatch he will consider other amendments being dismantled in the post-9/11 era.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/tomdispatch" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Facebook</a> and <a href="http://tomdispatch.tumblr.com/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Tumblr</a>. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Rebecca Solnit's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608463869/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Men Explain Things to Me</a>.

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