The Chill Factor: Investigative Reporter Talks US Covert Wars and National Secrets
By Olivier Knox, Reena Ninan, Richard Coolidge, and Jordyn Phelps – 1 hr 49 mins ago
As the White House faces questions about secret internet and telephone surveillance programs, investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill says, “There's a chill that's been sent through the national security reporting community.”
Scahill, who investigated the United States’ covert operations in the war against terrorism in a new documentary, “Dirty Wars,” told Top Line in an interview recorded prior to the most recent NSA leaks that sources inside the government have grown fearful of talking to the media.
“Many sources that I used to be able to talk to through encrypted e-mail or with chats using OTR, off the record software, they won't do it anymore,” Scahill said. “It's either in person or nothing. … There's a real fear on the part of whistleblowers and sources that the Espionage Act is going to come knocking on their door one day under the Noble Peace Prize-winning, Constitutional law professor, Democratic president.”
In his documentary, Scahill makes the case that the Obama administration has overstepped its stated goals of “targeted killings” of terrorists in places like Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/power-players-abc-news/chill-factor-investigative-reporter-talks-us-covert-wars-112605856.html?vp=1
