Intelligence leaders and courts unite in renewed offensive against press freedoms

Current and former intelligence community leaders made their case for imprisoning journalists to the public through compliant corporate media outlets today while a federal judge gutted a historic court ruling protecting journalists and their sources. The court ruling could lead to the indefinite jailing of Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times journalist James Risen.

General Michael Hayden's comments leave little doubt that some in the Obama administration are strongly considering espionage charges against Glenn Greenwald who has been leading the journalistic investigations of NSA violations of US and international law through its bulk interception of virtually every phone call and email on planet Earth. Taken together with the mysterious death of investigative journalist Michael Hastings, the government's control of the press seems to tighten daily.

In a written op-ed for CNN, the former head of both the CIA and the NSA, Hayden, castigated both whistle-blower Edward Snowden, whom he likened to Benedict Arnold, and Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald. His comments, proffered in his current role as “CNN Terrorism Analyst” openly called for Attorney General Eric Holder to prosecute Greenwald saying that he is “far more deserving of the Justice Department's characterization of a co-conspirator than Fox's James Rosen ever was.”

If charged and convicted as an espionage co-conspirator as General Hayden seems to demand, Greenwald would face a life behind bars, possibly in solitary confinement. Greenwald lives in Brazil, a nation whose citizens were recently revealed to have been the target of wholesale spying by the NSA.

The current Director of National Intelligence, General Alexander, also appeared in public today to bolster support for NSA spying in a friendly venue, the Aspen Security Forum, a business friendly conference that is the subject of a special series by CNN. At the conference Alexander fielded softball questions in a town hall style interview where he used a mixture of patriotism and fear to make his case "We came together as a country and said never again," he said. "We don't want another 9/11."

Meanwhile, a court ruling could force James Risen to testify against his alleged source in the court case against Jeffery Sterling, a CIA agent fired after his equal employment suit against the agency was dismissed in 2004. The government argued that the racial and ethnic composition of the CIA was classified and thus there was no way Sterling could present his case.

Sterling was arrested and charged with mishandling classified information in 2010 after Risen refused to testify against him at grand jury proceedings in 2008. Sterling is alleged to have provided information for Risen’s book State of War, which concerns covert CIA operations against the Iranian nuclear program. The communications between Sterling and Risen were intercepted via wiretap and the government later purloined Risen’s credit and bank records.

A court is now free to jail Risen for refusing to testify against Sterling. The subpoena is an end run around a recent policy change at the Department of Justice, where the Attorney General has claimed he will no longer consider journalists to be co-conspirators in cases involving state secrets. This apparently means that media professionals that meet with the administrations approval will be required to testify against their sources, effectively turning the press into an arm of the intelligence community through coercion.

In other news, the First Amendment was pronounced dead today during a routine surgery. The cause of death will remain classified until 2113 but sources close to Dr. Obama's surgical team reveal that it happened during a botched lobotomy. Other portions of the Bill of Rights are scheduled for similar surgeries during the fall legislative session.