DoJ’s War on Leaks Heading Toward ‘First Amendment Constitutional Crisis’
SputnikNews.com
04.08.2017
“Beleaguered” US Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Friday announced long-anticipated plans to initiate a new war on leaks, stating, “this culture of leaking must stop.” But the crackdown means the US government will have greater authority to subpoena media organizations for exercising First Amendment rights.
The department may begin to hunt down media organizations that publish sensitive information and ask reporters to reveal sources.
Former CIA analyst and whistleblower John Kiriakou, who unveiled US practices of waterboarding as torture in 2007 and is currently a fellow with the Institute for Policy Studies, spoke with Eugene Puryear on Radio Sputnik’s By Any Means Necessary on Friday to discuss the new DoJ initiative.
”This is a very dangerous extension of what was begun by Eric Holder,” attorney general in the Obama administration from 2009 until April 2015. Kiriakou pointed to a case in which a New York Times reporter was asked by the Justice Department to disclose his sources: When the writer took his case to the Supreme Court, the court ruled that the law was in favor of the Justice Department practice despite the fact that it seemed “patently” unconstitutional to laymen.
“In my view,” Kiriakou said, the DoJ push will result in a “First Amendment constitutional crisis.”
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