FOTP 2013 Full Report

figures, though libel formally remains a criminal offense in a number of states. The state ofColorado repealed its criminal libel law in 2012.Some 39 states have shield laws that give journalists limited protection from revealingsources or other information gathered in the course of their work. The federal government,however, offers no such protection, and an effort to adopt a federal shield law has effectivelybeen shelved by a combination of congressional inaction and executive opposition. Over the pastdecade, a series of controversies have emerged over efforts by federal prosecutors to obtaintestimony from journalists in high-profile cases, including some in which government workershave been charged with leaking information to the media or lobbyists. Until recently, judgeshave tended to side with prosecutors and have on occasion held journalists in contempt of courtfor refusing to identify sources. While many of the cases were initiated by the JusticeDepartment under President George W. Bush, the administration of President Barack Obama hasproven equally zealous in pursuing government secrecy cases and issuing demands forinformation from reporters. The best-known case during 2012 involved James Risen, a prizewinningNew York Times reporter and author of several books on national security themes. TheJustice Department has sought on three occasions to compel Risen to testify about information hemay have received from Jeffrey Sterling, a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee,in the course of researching a book about American efforts to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program.While the Justice Department continued to seek to compel Risen to testify in 2012, its effortswere restricted by a 2011 federal court ruling that reporters are not to be called before grandjuries if the government has not already exhausted other means to gather the information inquestion, or if enough material for indictment has already been obtained. Separately, the JusticeDepartment announced in July 2012 that it would not seek testimony by journalists in theprosecution of John C. Kiriakou, a former intelligence officer accused of leaking classifiedinformation.Another case during the year centered on efforts by award-winning Irish journalist EdMoloney and researcher Anthony McIntyre to keep their sources secret. Moloney and McIntyrehad conducted interviews with former members of the Irish Republican Army militant group foran oral history project at Boston College and promised the interviewees that their contributionswould only be published after their deaths. Nevertheless, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Bostonruled in July 2012 that the interviews must be surrendered to the police. Moloney and McIntyrewere petitioning the Supreme Court to intervene at year’s end.Although it has not yet ensnared journalists, the case of Army private Bradley Manning,who is alleged to have provided hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the antisecrecyorganization WikiLeaks, has drawn considerable attention from civil libertarians, both becauseof the nature of the charges and because of the harsh detention conditions Manning hasreportedly endured while awaiting trial since his 2010 arrest. It remained unclear in 2012whether individuals associated with WikiLeaks would be charged despite the group’s claim to bethe equivalent of a media organization.In November 2012, proposed antileak measures were dropped from an intelligenceauthorization bill after protests from press freedom organizations and civil libertarians. Amongother provisions, the bill would have forced many former government employees to wait oneyear before providing analysis or commentary for the media, prohibited intelligence communityofficials from speaking to the media about unclassified issues, and given intelligence agenciesthe authority to strip pension benefits from any employee or former employee that theydetermine to have been responsible for an unauthorized disclosure.398