If you blinked at the end of June, you may have missed one
of the best pieces of journalism in 2014. The New York Times headline
accompanying the story was almost criminally
bland, but the
content itself was extraordinary: A
top manager at Blackwater, the notorious defense contractor, openly
threatened to kill a US State Department official in 2007 if he
continued to investigate Blackwater’s corrupt dealings in Iraq. Worse,
the US government sided with Blackwater and halted the investigation. Blackwater
would later go on to infamously
wreak havoc in Iraq.
But what makes the story that much more remarkable is that its author,
journalist James Risen, got it published amidst one the biggest legal battles
over press freedom in decades – a battle that could end with the Justice
Department forcing him into prison as early as this fall. It could make him the
first American journalist forced into jail by the federal government since
Judith Miller nearly a decade ago.
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