Democracy Now! Obama Worse Than Nixon? Obama spies on AP reporters

Obama Worse Than Nixon? Pentagon Papers Attorney Decries AP Phone Probe, Julian Assange Persecution

By Democracy Now!
Also see: Obama administration locks up whistleblowers 
 
We are joined by James Goodale, the general counsel for The New York Times during the Pentagon Papers crackdown. He discusses how the Justice Department's disclosure of secretly subpoenaed phone records of journalists from the Associated Press has prompted a wave of comparisons between President Obama and Richard Nixon.


Four decades ago the Nixon administration attempted to block The New York Times from publishing a secret history of the Vietnam War leaked to the newspaper by whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg.
Two days after the Times first published excerpts of what became known as the "Pentagon Papers," the Nixon government asked for and received a Supreme Court injunction against the newspaper, arguing that publication of the documents posed a "grave and immediate danger to the security of the United States." Goodale is a leading expert on the First Amendment and has published a new book, "Fighting for the Press: The Inside Story of the Pentagon Papers and Other Battles."
He says he wrote the book in part because of the work of Julian Assange, founder of the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks, and how he is likely being targeted by the U.S. government in an ongoing grand jury probe. "My book is meant to be a clarion call to the journalist community," Goodale says.
"Wake up! There's danger out there. You may not like Assange, but wake up! The first amendment is really going to be damaged. If Obama goes forward and succeeds, he will have succeeded where Nixon failed." Obama Worse Than Nixon? Pentagon Papers Attorney Decries AP Phone Probe, Julian Assange Persecution DEMOCRACY NOW LINK: http://www.democracynow.org/2013/5/17/obama_worse_than_nixon_pentagon_papers VIDEO EMBED CODE: YOUTUBE LINK: http://youtu.be/dvHIPOczS0A