Produced by:
KBOO
Program::
Air date:
Thu, 01/15/2015 - 12:00am
Interview with David Swanson
What follows is gleaned from firedoglake. It complements David Swanson's terrific interview this morning on 'Air Cascadia'
Jeffrey who?
Some people have heard of James Risen, a New York Times reporter who refused to name his source for a story. Damn right. Good for him. But what was the story and whom did the government want named as a source? Ah. Those questions might seem obvious, but the reporting on James Risen has avoided them like the plague for years and years now. And the independent media is not always as good at creating a story as it is at improving on stories in the corporate press.
Jeffrey Sterling went to Congress with his story. He was a CIA case officer. He is accused of having taken his story to James Risen. The prosecution is quite clearly establishing, against its own interest, during the course of this trial already, that numerous people were in on the story and could have taken it to Risen. If Sterling is to be proved guilty of the non-crime of blowing the whistle on a crime, the prosecution has yet to hint at how that will be done.
But what is the story? What is the crime that Sterling exposed for that tiny sliver of the population that’s interested enough to have listened? (Sure, Risen’s book was a “best seller” but that’s a low hurdle; not a single prospective juror in Alexandria had read the book; even a witness involved in the case testified Wednesday that he’d only read the one relevant chapter.)
The story is this. The CIA drew up plans for a key part of a nuclear bomb (what a CIA officer on Wednesday described in his testimony as “the crown jewels” of a nuclear weapons program), inserted flaws in the plans, and then had a Russian give those flawed plans to Iran.
During the trial on Wednesday morning, the prosecution’s witnesses made clear both that aiding Iran in developing a part of a bomb would be illegal under U.S. export control laws, and that they were aware at the time that there was the possibility of what they were doing constituting just such aid.
Jeffrey who?
Some people have heard of James Risen, a New York Times reporter who refused to name his source for a story. Damn right. Good for him. But what was the story and whom did the government want named as a source? Ah. Those questions might seem obvious, but the reporting on James Risen has avoided them like the plague for years and years now. And the independent media is not always as good at creating a story as it is at improving on stories in the corporate press.
Jeffrey Sterling went to Congress with his story. He was a CIA case officer. He is accused of having taken his story to James Risen. The prosecution is quite clearly establishing, against its own interest, during the course of this trial already, that numerous people were in on the story and could have taken it to Risen. If Sterling is to be proved guilty of the non-crime of blowing the whistle on a crime, the prosecution has yet to hint at how that will be done.
But what is the story? What is the crime that Sterling exposed for that tiny sliver of the population that’s interested enough to have listened? (Sure, Risen’s book was a “best seller” but that’s a low hurdle; not a single prospective juror in Alexandria had read the book; even a witness involved in the case testified Wednesday that he’d only read the one relevant chapter.)
The story is this. The CIA drew up plans for a key part of a nuclear bomb (what a CIA officer on Wednesday described in his testimony as “the crown jewels” of a nuclear weapons program), inserted flaws in the plans, and then had a Russian give those flawed plans to Iran.
During the trial on Wednesday morning, the prosecution’s witnesses made clear both that aiding Iran in developing a part of a bomb would be illegal under U.S. export control laws, and that they were aware at the time that there was the possibility of what they were doing constituting just such aid.
- KBOO
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