For more than seven years, James Risen has been locked in a legal battle with the US Justice Department, facing potential jail time in his effort to protect an anonymous source from his 2006 book, State of War. Over that seven-year span, press–government relations have continued to sour, and the Obama administration has pursued more criminal leak investigations than all its predecessors, combined. The war on terror has forged ahead, meanwhile, most recently with a prolonged air campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
With these personal, national, and global battles as a backdrop, Risen published his latest book, Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War, on October 14. He takes readers inside the “homeland security-industrial complex” that grew after the September 11 attacks, chronicling how a perpetual war on terror has helped erode a number of American ideals.
In June, the Supreme Court rejected Risen’s appeal to avoid testifying against ex-CIA intelligence officer Jeffrey Sterling, who is being prosecuted for leaking classified information. Sterling’s trial is slated to begin in January.
CJR on Thursday spoke with Risen by phone about his book, the latest on his legal battle, and his recent entry to the Twittersphere:
CJR: You begin your book by describing how the US government flew billions in cash to Baghdad, only to lose track of it. And you condensed this revelation for a New York Times piece on October 12. Scoops don’t come too often in books — how long ago did you report this out, and did you ever get anxious that someone else would find it? Was there ever temptation to publish it ahead of your book?
I was worried that somebody would find out about the bunker in Lebanon, but thankfully, they didn’t. I had worked with The Times for the last couple months or so on it. They have a thing now with a lot or reporters who are working on a book — they do a news story on something in the book. The editors chose that story as one they thought would be the best.
CJR: In your reporting on Alarbus and Jerash Air Cargo, firms set up to conduct intelligence operations for US Special Operations Command, you initially posed as a potential investor, not a journalist. Did you ever question this decision from an ethical standpoint?
I did most of the reporting on that straight up. I only did that to meet a Palestinian who was involved in the operation, in the Jerash Air Cargo operation. I had been told a number of things by sources who raised allegations that he wanted to use the bank accounts set up by the government for this covert operation for laundering hundreds of millions of dollars. I had been told that the FBI was investigating these allegations, and that the FBI had thought about doing a sting operation but then had backed off.
So I thought I would try to find out some information by myself. I thought about it a lot, and I thought the only way I could meet him was to do this undercover. I thought it was the only way to do it.
I think undercover operations used to be much more common in journalism than they are today. If you look at things like the Mirage Tavern — the Chicago Sun-Times thing that happened when I was at Northwestern — there’s been incidents where journalists have done undercover operations throughout history. It just hasn’t been as commonly used in more recent history. I don’t think it’s good to do all the time, but I disagree with those people who say it should never be done. The New York Times never allows it, so I’ve never done it while working for them.
CJR: Do you think the way the media covers security, civil liberties, and terrorism has changed in the past 13 years?
We go through cycles. There are some periods when it’s more skeptical, but others when it’s not. When the Iraq War started turning bad, the media became more skeptical. Then we go through these cycles when some terrorist attack happens, and people become less skeptical again.
Now, we’ve gone through a generation of reporters who covered 9/11. People like me, who covered 9/11 and Iraq at the time, are mostly gone. And now the people who got into covering terrorism years after have to relearn a lot of things that we had to learn.
CJR: In your afterword, you call Pay Any Price an “answer — both to the government’s long campaign against me and to this endless war.” Given your legal battle, was it difficult to maintain balance in your reporting and writing of this book? Did it ever get personal?
A lot of things I’ve heard about I find kind of outrageous. I guess I wrote some of this with a sense of outrage. But I tried to be professional about it. You write a book differently than you write for a newspaper. You have to have a voice. That’s important. Books are also structured differently.
CJR: Attorney General Eric Holder has said on a couple of occasions that reporters shouldn’t be going to jail for doing their jobs. Former NSA Director Michael Hayden said on 60 Minutes a few weeks back that he doesn’t see the necessity of going after you. Do those type of remarks make you more optimistic about your legal case?
It’s unclear to me what’s going to happen right now. It’s kind of up in the air. The one thing I’ve been grateful about is that I’ve gotten a lot of support over the last few months from a lot of different people. That makes me feel good.
But I really don’t know what the government has planned. The trial is scheduled for January, but I have no idea what the government is going to do.
CJR: You recently joined Twitter after a long holdout. What made you join, and what are your favorite and least favorite things about it so far?
I just joined to try it out, I guess. I felt like I didn’t want to be a total Luddite when it came to social media. So I thought I would try it. And I found it easier to do than I expected.
But the one thing I’ve thought about that’s interesting, not just with Twitter but all social media, is that one of the problems is people who have never written for publication ever before are basically trying to write for publication. Twitter is publication, and a lot of people don’t realize that. So people are writing for publication for the first time in the most constrained manner — 140 characters. So it’s not surprising to me that there are Twitter problems. It’s easy, even if you’ve written for a long time, to screw up.
This interview has been lightly edited for publication.
David Uberti is a writer in New York. He was previously a media reporter for Gizmodo Media Group and a staff writer for CJR. Follow him on Twitter @DavidUberti.