Justice Department Backs Down in Fight Over Press Freedom
Published at
iStock/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department on Tuesday backed down on a legal fight against one of the country’s top national security reporters that has been ongoing for years.
James Risen was most recently subpoenaed to testify in the trial of a former CIA official charged with leaking classified information. At the direction of Attorney General Eric Holder, the department backed off of a legal battle in which it pressed Risen, a New York Times reporter, to reveal his confidential sources or face jail time.
Holder promised earlier this year that as long as he is in charge of the Justice Department “no reporter is going to go to jail for doing their job.”
Prosecutors will still push Risen to testify at the Sterling trial to confirm that he will not breach a confidentiality agreement with his source or sources for certain information in his book, State of War, that information from his book and two articles he wrote was provided by an unnamed source and that information attributed to an identified source was made by an identified source, and that Risen and Sterling had a prior non-confidential reporter-source relationship.
Follow @ABCNewsRadio
Copyright 2014 ABC News Radio