By Reporters Without Borders
The jailing of US whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling has brought severe condemnation from press freedom organisation Reporters Without Borders which says Sterling is in jail for merely talking to a journalist regularly and was sentenced based only on circumstantial evidence.

By David Swanson
(Article updated 31 Jan 2015)
This cable https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/GX44-47.pdf was submitted as evidence by the prosecution in the trial of Jeffrey Sterling, a trial in which Sterling was convicted on entirely circumstantial evidence of leaking to a reporter that the CIA had given nuclear weapons part plans (with flaws added) to Iran. The cable makes crystal clear that the CIA proposed to do the same with Iraq.

By David Swanson
What the U.S. government does openly is many times worse than anything it can be doing secretly, and yet the secrets fascinate us.

By David Swanson
Since Tuesday and continuing for the coming three weeks, an amazing trial is happening in U.S. District Court at 401 Courthouse Square in Alexandria, Va. The trial is open to the public, and among the upcoming witnesses is Condoleezza Rice, but—unlike the Chelsea Manning trial—most of the seats at this somewhat similar event are empty.

RootsAction.org co-founder Norman Solomon praised the U.S. Department of Justice's apparent decision to drop its threat to imprison author and journalist James Risen unless he reveals his source in reporting the story of Operation Merlin.

By David Swanson
When New York Times report James Risen published his previous book, State of War, the Times ended its delay of over a year and published his article on warrantless spying rather than be scooped by the book. The Times claimed it hadn't wanted to influence the 2004 presidential election by informing the public of what the President was doing. But this week a Times editor said on 60 Minutes that the White House had warned him that a terrorist attack on the United States would be blamed on the Times if one followed publication—so it may be that the Times' claim of contempt for democracy was a cover story for fear and patriotism. The Times never did report various other important stories in Risen's book.