Information security

SPOOKED: HOW THE CIA MANIPULATES THE MEDIA, PART 1

The increasingly sophisticated ability of intelligence agencies to manipulate reality has enormous consequences for our democracy. After fifteen years of never-ending press accounts about terror threats and Islamic bogeymen, a paranoid reality reinforced by even more breathless Hollywood thrillers, the American people have become all too willing to give up their freedoms and acquiesce to a state of permanent war.

James Risen of the New York Times is one of the few mainstream reporters who has been willing to challenge the enormous power of the national security state, much to his own personal and professional peril. He has learned firsthand that this empire of secrecy always wants to “control the press and limit what you write.” “If you go beyond those limits, you will be punished,” says Risen. “We have built a national security state worth billions of dollars that is trampling our civil liberties and we are living with a fear of threats that are not there.”