Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter James Risen is not mincing words about President Barack Obama.
Risen has been fighting the Obama administration's efforts to get him to testify about his sources for six years. The Department of Justice has ordered him to testify against former CIA agent Jeffrey Sterling, who it believes leaked information about a failed CIA operation in Iran that Risen reported on in his book. Risen recently lost his bid to have the Supreme Court revisit his case.
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd spoke to Risen for her Sunday column "Where’s the Justice at Justice?"
"How can he [Obama] use the Espionage Act to throw reporters and whistle-blowers in jail even as he defends the intelligence operatives who 'tortured some folks,' and coddles his C.I.A. chief, John Brennan, who spied on the Senate and then lied to the senators he spied on about it?" Dowd wrote.
Risen had one word to describe Obama's actions: "hypocritical."
Steve Kroft's Softball Obama Interviews Diminish '60 Minutes'
On 60 Minutes, the news-magazine show that prides itself on "hard-hitting" investigations and interviews, correspondent Steve Kroft, who has won most of the highest awards in his industry, has just broadcast another softball interview with the most powerful man in the world, a performance that ought to earn him a rebuke from his peers in the news business but almost certainly won't. His CBS bio page proudly touts his unparalleled access to President Obama: He scored the first post-election sit down after Election 2008, another exclusive following the killing of Osama bin Laden, and a third sit-down as the president kicked off his reelection campaign. Little wonder that Obama keeps going back.
