Social Engineering in the Digital Cyber Age | 3 comments (3 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

Why Marcy Wheeler Left Omidyar's The Intercept (none / 0)

Why I Left The Intercept: The Surveillance Story They Let Go Untold for 15 Months by Marcy Wheeler
The Intercept has a long, must-read story from James Risen about the government's targeting of him for his reporting on the war on terror. It's self-serving in many ways -- there are parts of his telling of the Wen Ho Lee, the Valerie Plame, and the Jeffrey Sterling stories he leaves out, which I may return to. But it provides a critical narrative of DOJ's pursuit of him. He describes how DOJ tracked even his financial transactions with his kids (which I wrote about here).

The government eventually disclosed that they had not subpoenaed my phone records, but had subpoenaed the records of people with whom I was in contact. The government obtained my credit reports, along with my credit card and bank records, and hotel and flight records from my travel. They also monitored my financial transactions with my children, including cash I wired to one of my sons while he was studying in Europe.
He also reveals that DOJ sent him a letter suggesting he might be a subject of the investigation into Stellar Wind.

But in August 2007, I found out that the government hadn't forgotten about me. Penny called to tell me that a FedEx envelope had arrived from the Justice Department. It was a letter saying the DOJ was conducting a criminal investigation into "the unauthorized disclosure of classified information" in "State of War." The letter was apparently sent to satisfy the requirements of the Justice Department's internal guidelines that lay out how prosecutors should proceed before issuing subpoenas to journalists to testify in criminal cases.
[snip]
When my lawyers called the Justice Department about the letter I had received, prosecutors refused to assure them that I was not a "subject" of their investigation. That was bad news. If I were considered a "subject," rather than simply a witness, it meant the government hadn't ruled out prosecuting me for publishing classified information or other alleged offenses.
But a key part of the story lays out the NYT's refusals to report Risen's Merlin story and its reluctance -- until Risen threatened to scoop him with his book -- to publish the Stellar Wind one.
Glenn Greenwald is rightly touting the piece, suggesting that the NYT was corrupt for acceding to the government's wishes to hold the Stellar Wind story. But in doing so he suggests The Intercept would never do the same.
That's not correct.
One of two reasons I left The Intercept is because John Cook did not want to publish a story I had written -- it was drafted in the content management system -- about how the government uses Section 702 to track cyberattacks. Given that The Intercept thinks such stories are newsworthy, I'm breaking my silence now to explain why I left The Intercept.