Eric Holder backs down, DOJ will not force NYT reporter James Risen to reveal source

Outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder is backing down.

After years of battling with New York Times reporter James Risen, Holder has decided against forcing Risen to reveal the identity of a confidential source, NBC News reported.

Risen has been repeatedly pressured by the Obama administration to give up the  government source who told him about a failed CIA attempt to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program. Risen’s 2006 book, State of War, exposed the botched CIA operation.

At one point, Justice Department prosecutors even sifted through Risen’s credit card and phone records. He has been threatened with jail time and aggressively targeted, even though the name of the suspected leaker, Jeffrey Sterling, has been widely known for years. Risen never turned on Sterling, but Sterling was arrested in 2011 for leaking the information.

The government wanted Risen’s testimony in Sterling’s trial.

But now, a Justice Department official told NBC, Holder has directed that Risen must not be required to reveal “information about the identity of his source.”

If Risen is forced to testify at all, it would only be to confirm that he had a confidential source and that he wrote the book himself, the official said.

Holder told a group of news media executives earlier this year that “As long as I am attorney general, no reporter who is doing his job is going to jail,” but had left the decision about Risen in the wind until now.

Risen has been an outspoken critic against the Obama administration’s anti-whistleblower and anti-journalist policies. He even called the president “the greatest enemy of press freedom that we have encountered in at least a generation.”