This is intercepted.

I'm Jeremy Skahill coming to you from the offices of the intercept in New York City,

and this is a special bonus episode of Intercepted.

James Ryzen is a legend in the world of investigative and national security journalism.

As a reporter for the New York Times, Ryzen broke some of the most important stories of the

post-911 era from the warrantless surveillance against Americans that was conducted under the

Bush and Cheney administration to the black prison sites run by the CIA to failed covert actions in Iran.

Jim Ryzen has won the Pulitzer and many other journalism awards, but perhaps what he's most

famous for now is the fight that he had to endure under both the Bush and Obama administrations as they

demanded under threat of imprisonment that James Ryzen name one of his alleged confidential sources.

In the end, Ryzen prevailed. He refused to testify and he was not locked up.

But during the course of his case, there were rulings that could have far reaching implications for journalists,

particularly in a climate where the current president of the United States is characterizing news outlets as enemies of the people

contemplating arresting reporters and is conducting at least 27 leak investigations.

And all of this before the end of his first year in office.

But it isn't just the government that Jim Ryzen had to fight.

He also had to battle his own editors and other powerful figures at the New York Times.

Those editors and others pushed the narrative that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

And they regularly colluded with senior officials at the CIA, the NSA, and inside the White House in an effort to kill or adjust Jim Ryzen's stories.

It's all quite scandalous. And Jim Ryzen has now written an extensive account of those years at the New York Times.

And in this piece, he names names.

Jim Ryzen is now a senior national security correspondent at the intercept where his incredible story has now been published.

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