Jeffrey Sterling was hired by the US Central Intelligence Agency(CIA) as a “case officer” and worked for them for about 10 years until he was fired because he wasn’t meeting performance targets. During the exit interviews, he refused to sign the paper, stating that he would not disclose state secrets. Before this dismissal, Sterling submitted drafts of his memoirs to the CIAs Publication Review Board for editing. When sterling saw that his memoir was heavily censored he said that he will be “coming at [them] … with everything at his disposal” (US v. Sterling, 724 F.3d 482 (2013)) A short time after this Sterling had a few conversations with journalist James Risen who wrote an article about Sterling for the New York Times but it wasn’t published due to state security reasons. After this article, Risen published a book that described Sterling’s work and was based on his interview with the journalist. After the publication of the book Sterling was indicted by a grand jury for the “unauthorized retention and disclosure of national defense information” (case) The government issued a subpoena for Risen, who filed the filed the motion for a protective order under reporter’s privileges law. The motion was partially granted, holding that while Risen can be forced to testify, the elected testimony could only be about the …show more content…
He argued that his alibi could be proven by Terri Sanginiti, a reporter who was interviewing a suspect during the time of a robbery. Sanginiti refused to testify before the jury under the reporter's privilege law. The real question of the court was whether they can apply the privileges when the reporter tries to protect information that was obtained from known and identified source. Later, Sanginiti argued that she doesn't want to protect the source, but rather the information she obtained from