National security reporter James Risen on fighting his editors and the government

James Risen is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter

Courtesy of Virginia Lozano for The Intercept

Investigative reporter James Risen has spent his career revealing the secret activities of the federal government, specifically the CIA and NSA. He won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting that the NSA was secretly - and illegally - wiretapping Americans during the Bush years. But his employer at the time, the New York Times, refused to publish that story for more than a year. Risen has written a lengthy account as to why his bosses were reluctant to publish, and why both the Bush and Obama administrations aggressively pursued him and his sources.