In response, journalists and their lawyers have fought back by claiming “reporter’s privilege,” with varying degrees of success.

These issues have come to a head over the past decade as the Bush and Obama administrations have used unprecedented aggressiveness in going after reporters and their sources.

The newest How-To briefing from the Medill National Security Initiative’s Josh Meyer also provides journalists with information about what to steps to take to protect themselves from being subpoenaed, and what to do if they are subpoenaed, or come under investigation and possible prosecution.

Read the full briefing.

And here it is:

Deaths ranged from “decorated Iraq War veterans who shot or hanged themselves after being turned away from mental health treatment, to Vietnam veterans whose cancerous tumors were identified but allowed to grow, to missed diagnoses, botched surgeries and fatal neglect of elderly veterans,” CIR’s story said.

Below is a CIR’s interactive map that shows payouts and case details by local VA facility. Zoom out a bit to see Hawaii and Puerto Rico.

— NYT Public Editor Margaret Sullivan re: Times national security reporter James Risen’s U.S. Supreme Court filing yesterday to protect a confidential source. (Read the filing).

Lawyers.com in a post described it as a “try-it-at-your-own-risk scenario,” but says “TSA policy and anecdotal reports suggest that passengers who travel between states in which they can legally use pot are likely to be allowed to fly.”

TSA’s “official policy” on drugs is to let local authorities know. “So if the passenger has authorization to use medical marijuana, or if he or she is flying between Washington and Colorado, where possession of the drug even for recreational purposes has been legalized, local law enforcement isn’t going to intervene,” Lawyers.com said.

→ Full Post

“There’s not a national security reporter that I can find who supports the shield law because it won’t protect us. We’re going to get exempted out of it one way or another.”

— Investigative journalist Scott Armstrong at a Newseum panel discussion. (Full story)

“. . . [T]he Department will work to make the same benefits available to all military spouses, regardless of whether they are in same-sex or opposite-sex marriages. The Department will continue to recognize all marriages that are valid in the place of celebration,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel wrote in a memo.

The Pentagon will extend leave of up to 10 days to those who want to marry but need to travel to a different state where same-sex unions are legal and recognized. “This will provide accelerated access to the full range of benefits offered to married military couples throughout the Department and help level the playing field between opposite-sex and same-sex couples seeking to be married,” Hagel’s memo said.

Earlier, the Pentagon had pledged to extended benefits to same-sex couples in a “committed relationship.” That will now narrow to married couples only.

“As the Supreme Court’s ruling has made it possible for same-sex couples to marry and be afforded benefits available to any military spouse and family, I have determined, consistent with the unanimous advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that the extension of benefits to the san1e-sex domestic partners of military members is no longer necessary to remedy the inequity that was caused by section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act,” Hagel wrote.

The spousal and family benefits, including TRICARE health plan, housing allowance and family separation allowance, will be retroactive to the June 26th date of the Supreme Court decision.

“There is no First Amendment testimonial privilege, absolute or qualified, that protects a reporter from being compelled to testify by the prosecution or the defense in criminal proceedings about criminal conduct that the reporter personally witnessed or participated in, absent a showing of bad faith, harassment, or other such non-legitimate motive, even though the reporter promised confidentiality to his source,” the ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond, VA said.

A lower court had blocked the government from asking Risen to confirm that Jeffrey Sterling was a source for his book “State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration.” Sterling has been charged under the Espionage Act, accused of leaking secrets.

In a dissent on the privilege issue, Judge Roger Gregory wrote he found it “sad” that the court had veered from precedent. He continued:

“Under the majority’s articulation of the reporter’s privilege, or lack thereof, absent a showing of bad faith by the government, a reporter can always be compelled against her will to reveal her confidential sources in a criminal trial. The majority exalts the interests of the government while unduly trampling those of the press, and in doing so, severely impinges on the press and the free flow of information in our society. The First Amendment was designed to counteract the very result the majority reaches today.”

Just yesterday, Risen’s lawyer Joel Kurtzberg wrote to the appeals court to say that new Justice Department guidelines on the media exempt from Risen from testifying, NPR reported.

Kurtzberg this morning told the New York Times, “We are disappointed by and disagree with the court’s decision. We are currently evaluating our next steps.”

Steven Aftergood, who writes the Secrecy News blog, wrote this morning that the ruling has “ominous implications for national security reporting.”

He noted that there is “a permanent tension, if not an irreconcilable conflict, between a free press and the operations of national security. The tension can be managed by the exercise of prudent self-restraint on both sides. . . .But the tension can also be exacerbated, as in the present case, perhaps to a breaking point.”

Read the Ruling (PDF) | Bloomberg Story | Aftergood Story | NY Times Story

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo visits with ASNE in Washington (Photo from C-SPAN video).

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo joined us for lunch on Wednesday at the American Society of News Editors conference in Washington and talked about journalism and its intersection with Twitter (and vice-versa); his company and its culture; privacy; and a few other topics.

But when it came to one hot topic in DC of late and  why Twitter wasn’t included on the now-famous PowerPoint slide about companies the NSA has relationships with for the top-secret PRISM user data collection program, Costolo pretty much had precisely 140 characters of nothing specific to say. With a hashtag of #mumstheword.

Asked  by Marty Baron of the Washington Post whether Twitter was “invited or instructed by the federal government to participate in this program, whether you chose to turn the government down, and if you did that based on legal objections, what were those legal objections,” Costolo wouldn’t take the bait.

He did, however, say Twitter is very aggressive and takes a “principled approach” when it comes to pushing back against government requests for large amounts of user data.

“When we get specific, pointed legal requests that are legally valid. . . we respond to them,” he said in reply to Baron’s question. “When we receive general requests that we feel are overly broad, not valid legal requests, we push back on those. I think it’s fair to say as has been reported in other cases like Wikileaks, we will spend time and energy and money to defend out users’ rights to be informed about the information that is being requested about them. . . That’s really all i can say about it.”

Earlier in his visit, interviewer Cecilia Kang of the Washington Post said, “It feels like we’re sort of dancing around this thing that’s all in caps called PRISM. You can’t talk so much about it.  . . .  Does it bother you you can’t talk more about your relationship with the government and these sorts of requests?”

His repsonse was much the same as what he told Baron.

He did note that he has talked publicly about a rule in the UK that makes it illegal to even disclose there’s an injunction in some situations, and called such rules “Kafkaesque. . . . Those kinds of things are generally disturbing and we have called for and would love to see more transparency around these types of requests.”

I’ve extracted the PRISM-related discussion from the hourlong Costolo chat (but the content isn’t available yet for embedding). View it here:

• Part I (Kang’s questions)
• Part II (Baron’s question)
• Complete appearance

Medill NSJI colleague Ellen Shearer was among the panelists of journalists, educators and national security experts at this roundtable at the Newseum in Washington on June 25.