Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist James Risen, who spent seven years fighting off government efforts to force him to reveal a confidential source, will continue to advocate for the First Amendment as director of the First Look Press Freedom Defense Fund, HuffPost has learned.

Risen will also join The Intercept, the First Look Media news organization launched in 2014 by journalists Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras and backed by billionaire eBay founder and philanthropist Pierre Omidyar.

At the Intercept, Risen will serve as senior national security correspondent, writing a column based on his own reporting, and help steer the sites investigative work.

I am incredibly excited by this amazing and unique opportunity to combine my journalism with efforts to defend press freedom, Risen said in a statement. I am honored to help lead the fund as both America and the world face unprecedented threats to freedom of the press, while also writing and reporting and helping [Intercept editor-in-chief] Betsy Reed and her incredible team continue to turn The Intercept into one of the most important investigative reporting outlets in the nation.

Risen, 62, was among the most prominent journalists to leave the New York Times last month in the papers latest round of buyouts. Times executive editor Dean Baquet described Risen at the time as one of the giants of national security and investigative reporting.

In nearly two decades at the Times, Risen delved deeply into national security, intelligence, and surveillance matters. He was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team delving into the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and won a second Pulitzer with colleague Eric Lichtblau for their2005 investigation into the National Security Agencys secret domestic spying program.

Risen also battled attempts by both the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations to compel him to reveal a confidential source for a botched CIA plot described in his 2006 book, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration. Risen, whose legal fight finally ended in 2015, has expressed concern that the Obama administration laid the groundwork for the targeting of journalists under President Donald Trump.

There is no journalist better equipped to cover the national security scandals and abuses of the Trump era than Jim Risen, Reed said in a statement.

Were honored and thrilled to have the countrys leading national security journalist bring his vast experience and vision to our team at this critical time, she added.

The Intercept was co-founded by journalists at the forefront of reporting on the disclosures from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, and the site has quickly distinguished itself for aggressive coverage of national security issues.

But the site alsocame under firein Junefollowing accusations that its reporters failed to protect contractor Reality Leigh Winner, the alleged source of top secret NSA documentrevealing Russian hacking efforts ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

Following an internal review,Reed said that at several points in the editorial process, our practices fell short of the standards to which we hold ourselves for minimizing the risks of source exposure when handling anonymously provided materials.

The company announced last month thatFirst Looks Press Freedom Defense Fund would help provide support for Winners legal defense, a role it intends to play for journalists and whistleblowers in future cases.

First Look Media president Michael Bloom cited Risens first-hand experience in a statement on the companys newly created defense fund role.

Jim is not only a respected journalist who was prepared to sacrifice his own freedom to protect a source, he said, but a very real example of how the press can challenge those in power who misuse laws to fulfill a political agenda.

The Morning Email

Wake up to the day's most important news.

Here is the original post:
Pulitzer-Winner James Risen Joins The Intercept And First Look Media - HuffPost

Alexandra Piacenza, Courier Columnist

For months, the White House has been alternately exposed and outraged by stories about its inner workings fed to the press by unnamed sources. Ironically, the president himself often prefaces surprising (and many later found to be baseless) statements and claims with, A lot of people say ... or Many people are saying . . .

Apparently in his mind, he is free of responsibility for spreading these fanciful innuendos because its a vague group of unknowns who came up with them and not him. Yet he demands that the sources of press accounts that in almost all cases are borne out by subsequent evidence or testimony be rooted out and prosecuted by Attorney General Sessions.

However, the presidents hypocrisy in attackingthe press for protecting so-called leakers is greatly overshadowed by the disservice that will be done to the American people should his vendetta succeed in turning off the tap.

Admittedly, theres much to be said in support of keeping confidentiality agreements, contractual and otherwise. No doubt breaking such agreements is at the least a troubling sign of distrust and at most an unethical and possibly illegal act. However, when the fecklessness and illegality of the actions and scenarios being revealed far exceed the act of revealing them, moralabsolutism no longer serves the cause of justice.

The protection of national security interests that is, the assets and information that keep our population safe and the international playing field relatively level deserves to be respected. Yet the most egregious betrayals of such interests in recent history came not from the press but from within the government. Many are shocked and dismayed by individual leakers, government contractor Edward Snowden, army private Chelsea Manning and most recently Reality Winner. Yet their actions are easily matched in shocking crassness of motive by the George W. Bush White House outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame. This act endangered both valuable information gathering and the human lives being risked doing it, in the name of political retribution.

Neither does protection of national security interests include the presidents insistence on secrecy to maintain the element of surprise in his military strategy. First, making a general position known, such as the commitment to find and terminate Osama Bin Laden, doesnt reveal the specific details or endanger the success of an operation to implement it, such as the Navy Seals attack on Bin Laden. Second, such a position of secrecy is only conceivably valid if an actual concrete strategy exists and has been entrusted to the leaders of the armed forces to implement. Thanks to leaked information regarding the meetings and confrontational relationship between the president and Pentagon generals, we know that the latter simply isnt true.

The benefits to the public of press accounts from unnamed sources lay not only in providing otherwise unavailable insights into the culture, intentions, knowledge and capabilities of the White House. They also serve as a check on expending precious government time and treasure on chasing down personal enemies and lulling the American people into false confidence with imaginary strategies. The revelations of inappropriate and disrespectful behavior by White House staff and the president himself dont denigrate the executive branch or the presidency. On the contrary, by pulling back the curtain on this administration, they are helping to protect those institutions for the future.

Alexandra Piacenza is a Prescott resident and is the immediate past president of Prescott Area Leadership.

Read more here:
Column: In defense of 'leakers' - The Daily Courier

NewsBusters (press release) (blog)

Vogue: Chelsea Manning Didn't Regret 'Leaking of State Secrets' NewsBusters (press release) (blog) Laura Poitras, an executive producer of an upcoming Manning documentary, gave her subject a sort of bizarre mystical comparison to Edward Snowden, a fellow leaker of secrets. When I first met Ed Snowden in Hong Kong, he had the same sort of eerie ... Chelsea Manning faces backlash after posing in a red swimsuit: 'You traitor!'International Business Times UK all 72 news articles »

More:
Vogue: Chelsea Manning Didn't Regret 'Leaking of State Secrets' - NewsBusters (press release) (blog)

Australian debate on encryption based on a very thoughtful question about visibility of governments own insider threat

Governments must be held to higher standards than commercial entities when it comes to protecting citizens privacy, a former deputy head of the US National Security Agency has said while noting that increasingly complicated threats have nonetheless necessitated a fresh look at security and privacy.

Few know this better than Chris Inglis, a career US military officer who served as deputy director of the NSA for 8 years and presided over the ignominious mass information leak by Edward Snowden. Snowdens actions which Inglis has previously said showed a lack of courage drew attention onto the NSA and its mass surveillance programs, which eventually led to changes in the NSAs remit and even bigger problems when NSA-developed exploits were this year leveraged to enable the mass WannaCry and Petya malware attacks.

Snowdens compromise, and the significant shift in government transparency that Snowdens revelations about mass surveillance occasioned, has been a defining force in reshaping the information-security dialogue between public and private sectors. Recent years have seen governments in Australia and elsewhere moving to formalise their cybersecurity defences, as well as the rapid maturation of a security community that has tapped novel technologies to respond to the growth in low and slow infiltrations used by malicious insider like Snowden.

Because they are familiar with installed defences, such insiders have proven uniquely able to avoid tripping conventional alarms. And this, says Inglis, has laid out the extent of the problem facing companies and government agencies alike.

Weve got to move from episodic defence at choke points, to a continuous understanding of whats happening on these networks such that we can detect anomalies or bad activities the first time it happens, he explains. Its no longer good enough to react well; you have to anticipate well.

Inglis comments mirror those of Australian government cybersecurity advisor Alistair MacGibbon, who has frequently and publicly called for change in our collective approach to security. Security vendors have been on the same page, with analysts warning years ago that Australian companies are thinking reactively more than in an agile way. This requires engagement from the business yet even as hackers get more professional about their approach to breaching security, some CSOs had struggled to make the same progress in getting the executive support they need.

This had led many companies into a similar situation as the one that Inglis and his peers faced at the NSA where companies find themselves compromised and trying after the fact to figure out where they had gone wrong. With Australian businesses recently ranked as the most likely in the world to deploy data loss prevention tools after a breach rather than before one its a lesson that many companies will continue to learn the hard way.

Inglis, for one, has put his money on user entity behavioural analytics (UEBA) technology that watches users online behaviour on an ongoing basis, quietly searching for behavioural anomalies that might indicate suspicious behaviour by otherwise-trusted users.

Shortly after leaving the NSA, Inglis joined the advisory board of UEBA vendor Securonix, which this month opened shop in Australia to tap into a land rush for ANZ businesses that are shoring up their defences in anticipation of a perfect storm of new legislation and governance requirements they will face in 2018 and beyond.

UEBA is just as important in catching outsiders as it is in catching Snowden-like insiders. Outsiders Holy Grail is to become someone or something that has privileges inside the system, Inglis said. Youre looking for a baseline that says that there is actually a different entity behind this privilege, and you want to catch that to defend the integrity and reputation of the person whose privileges have been stolen.

Once that theft happens, the damage can be considerable and fast. We have put more and more power into the hands of fewer individuals, Inglis said. Computers allow you to have much higher leverage based on a single person; the scope and scale attendant to what somebody can do is now much bigger. And your ability to catch it in time to restore things to good order easily, is much harder.

Varying narratives about Snowdens legacy years later, he remains a traitor to some and a hero to others shouldnt distract from the importance of embracing new technologies to stop what he did, Inglis said, arguing that everything should be on the table at this point.

Despite his call for stronger government oversight, Inglis called for a level-headed approach to the current controversy around the governments plans to force software giants to figure out a way to provide access to otherwise inaccessible communications.

While mass brute-force decryption remains mathematically challenging and the details of how such access might be provided remain sketchy, Inglis said its important to remember that the government is effectively fighting its own insider threat. And while discussion about the mechanisms of such a policy are still in early days, he sees them in large part as an extension of long-standing policy around police access to potential evidence of criminal activity.

The Australian governments push to gain access to secure private messaging was an example of the type of considerations that had to be weighed given the current security climate, Inglis said. The question is whether we can take advantage of the capabilities that are there under the rule of law as it has existed for time immemorial, he explained.

The question now is how do we not force ourselves into a place to choose between one and the other, he said, but to ask the right policy questions and come up with the right framework.

The further question, he continued, is whether you want to begin to alter technology trends so you can continue to have a collective defence with secure domestic and national security and individual rights? The government is held accountable by its citizens to deliver those. Its a very thoughtful question.

Error: Please check your email address.

Tags cybersecurity adviser Alistair MacGibbonNational Security AgencyEdward SnowdenPetyaprotecting citizensWannaCryChris Inglismalware attacks

More about ANZAustraliaNational Security AgencyNSA

Read this article:
Security means knowing your network better than your attackers or your users: ex NSA head - CSO Australia

The Department of Justices probe into the billing practices at Booz Allen Hamilton is unlikely to wrap up quickly, the McLean government contracting firms chief executive told analysts Monday.

Horacio Rozanski said the criminal investigation could take years to resolve.

The timeline for resolution remains uncertain, but given the complexity of cost accounting issues and the fact that we are still in the early stages of the investigation, we believe it is more likely to be years than months, Rozanksi said in a call with investors.

The company disclosed on June 15 that it is under federal investigation for the way it handled certain elements of the companys cost accounting and indirect cost charging practices, but has offered little information on the scope of the inquiry or what prompted it. Indirect costs are typically items like general administrative expenses or other overhead that may or may not be allowed under a government contract.

Rozanski emphasized Tuesday that his company is cooperating with the investigation and no charges have yet been brought. He said it is too early to estimate how much the company would spend on legal expenses, and he said the company had not yet set aside funds to deal with the matter.

The lack of clarity has investors worried.

The investigation could be [related to] two accounts out of 10,000 or something widespread that is in all of them. We just dont know, said Brian Ruttenbur, an analyst with Drexel Hamilton

Ruttenbur said the firms stock price has been trading about 5 percent below other firms in its industry, and will likely continue to do so until the issue is resolved. The June 15 revelation that the firm is under criminal investigation was enough to cause the firms stock price to drop by 17.8 percent the following day, erasing most of the stocks post-election gains.

The probe comes as the company is still smarting from allegations that employees Edward Snowden and Harold Martin III were involved in national security leaks.

Rozanski insisted Tuesday that the company has so far seen no impact from the investigation on the companys ability to bid on new contracts or service old ones.

Unless its something like fraud, I dont think this would hurt their business per say, said Cai Von-Rumohr, an analyst with Cowen investment bank. It certainly didnt in the first quarter [of 2017]; their bookings were sensational.

If history is any guide, the financial pain is likely to be small. An analysis of seven similar cases conducted by Cowen investment bank found the firms typically settled for less than $9 million. Thats a relatively small sum for a company as large as Booz Allen, which takes in almost $5.5 billion each year.

The rest is here:
Booz Allen Hamilton's criminal probe could drag on for years, CEO says - Washington Post

From Texas Standard:

U.S. Attorney General Jeff SessionsannouncedFriday that the Department of Justice would be cracking down on what he calls the "culture of leaking" that hasbesiegedthe Trump administration.

Sessions saysthe Justice Department has more than tripled investigations into leaks since President Trump took office, compared to under the Obama administration. And Sessions promised the DOJ would not hesitate to prosecute leakers of classified information.

So how does the number of leaks coming out of the Trump White House stack up to past administrations? ProfessorBobby Chesney, director of the Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas, says leaks are as old as the presidency itself, but that their frequency and the public debate over them have ramped up under Trump. Digital technology is partly to blame.

Technological changes disrupted the entire media space, he says.

When the Pentagon Papers were leaked in the 1970s, for example, there were media gatekeepers like Washington Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee, Chesney says. And it was up to him and other newspaper editors to decide whether to publish sensitive information. These days, a potential leaker has easy access to numerous media outlets, some with less rigorous editorial standards.

If youre Edward Snowden you can go to the Washington Post, and if they dont want to publish some of it, well, then you can turn to a foreign newspaper. Go to the Guardian in the U.K., and if they dont want to do it, well maybe go over to Der Spiegel in Germany, and if they dont want to do it, well maybe just go to WikiLeaks and see if Julian Assange will help you out, Chesney says.

But the executive branch does have ways to stop leaks, including firing government employees.

You can lose your job. If youre leaking classified information, then youre gonna lose your clearance, he says.

Prosecution is a consequence only in serious cases. The government can use the Espionage Act to prosecute leakers of national defense information and certain types of intelligence information, Chesney says. But the law in this case applies only to the government employee, not to the journalist or publication that publishes the information.

The federal governments never prosecuted a journalist as a co-conspirator for actually leaking the information, and I dont think thats what they were signaling they were gonna do here, he says.

Instead, Chesney says, the Trump administration likely will subpoena journalists to try to compel them to give up their sources. And legally, it has the authority to do so. Chesney says the First Amendment does not protect journalists from being asked to give up their sources.

Historically, though, the DOJ has been careful not to overuse its subpoena power.

Legal or not, theres going to be a real price to pay and as some people would say, you ought not to pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel, Chesney says.

Written by Caroline Covington.

See the article here:
As The Trump Administration Cracks Down, Technology Makes Leaking Easier - KUT

HBO. Sony. Netflix. WME. UTA. ICM. Being hacked in Hollywood was once an exclusive club, but its rapidly expanding. Criminals have taken notice of the easy pickings at entertainment companies, according to two leading IT security experts asked about the recent attack on HBO.

Hackers earlier this week obtained an estimated 1.5 terrabytes of information from the HBO system, including a script for an upcoming Game of Thrones episode and some shows of Ballers and Room 104. The materials also reportedly included financial documents, company emails, and some customer information. After the initial disclosure, tonights Game of Thrones episode leaked, but its appearance was believed to be unrelated to the previous intrusion. Hackers have also threatened to release more material.

Although identifying the exact culprits for HBOs problem hasnt been achieved, corporate hacking is maturing. Where once it was a game played by young men, its now grown into a criminal enterprise or a nation-state show of power, according to two leading IT security experts

Dan Clements, an IT cyber-security consultant who has worked with many three-letter agencies, said cyber-crime used to be just a lark to a large underground cadre of hackers. Composed of hard-core computer nerds and avid gamers alienated from the real world, all boastful and eager to impress their peers, the hacking groups usually infiltrated sites just to prove it could be done. The goal was to obtain a trophy, rather than a ransom.

That relatively benign practice changed with the Sony corporate hack, Clements said, an intrusion which the FBI blamed on North Korea. But before that major incident, where stolen executive emails led to firings, there was an earlier intrusion. A group called the Lizard Squad, made up of Eastern Europeans, Australians, and even a Hawaii-based hacker, probed into Sony, Clements said.

By sharing what they found on popular underground hacker web sites, they may inadvertently led to the North Korean exploits.

Some of that Sony information had been floating around the underground, and the North Koreans may have had access to that intelligence, Clements said. The FBI said the cyber prints (on the major hack) were the North Koreans. But the rumor in the underground was that the gamers had already been in there.

Pre-Sony, the underground groups could be found by people who knew where to look, Clements said. Now, most rogue hackers are practically invisible. The groups are pretty dark these days, Clements said. In the old days, they liked to brag. Theres too much visibility these days. The young guys still brag, but the professionals arent going to be seen. Youre not going to be able to figure out who they are.

Roderick Jones, a former Scotland Yard security expert who now runs Rubica, a San Francisco cyber-security firm, said that most hacking attacks begin simply. If you look at the history of attacks that were, at the time, described as sophisticated and then back it up from there, theyre usually the effect of a Phishing attack against an employee. Stuxnet, thats a sophisticated attack. The major of attacks aimed against organizations are getting employees to click bad links.

Hacking into systems happens because of the collaborative nature of the workforce, Jones says. Too many people have access to sensitive material, he said, citing NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden as the classic example.

Sadly, there is no defense against someone determined to get into a computer system, Clements said. If you create a penetration testing group and formulate a hack plan, and have them try to get in, theyre going to be able to get in. The probability is so high that they can figure out how to get in, and once theyre in, then they migrate amongst servers and people and figure out what they want to take and if they want to hold us hostage. It just depends on their motivations.

But there is one hope. Many former hackers eventually decide to go legit. Ive seen them over 20 years grow up and want to have real jobs, said Clements. A lot of them want to work for security companies, some of them help law enforcement.

Read more:
Entertainment Hackers Morphing Into Criminal Enterprises: IT Experts - Deadline

The U.S. Justice Department has significantly ramped up its number of leak investigations, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Friday, more than tripling themcompared with the past three years numbers combined.

Thestatement likely came much to the glee of President Donald Trump. But it was his predecessor, Barack Obama, who charted a course for Trump when it came to leak crackdowns.

Perhaps answering his bosss cries for investigations, Sessions said that at least four people, three of whose cases had not been reported on as of Friday, have already been charged with unlawfully disclosing classified material or with concealing contacts with foreign intelligence officers. He also said the Justice Departmenthad seen a boom in criminal referrals for probes into intelligence agency leaks.

Daily Emails and Alerts - Get the best of Newsweek delivered to your inbox

Referrals for investigations of classified leaks to the Department of Justice from our intelligence agencies have exploded, Sessions said. In the first six months of this administration, DOJ has already received nearly as many criminal referrals involving unauthorized disclosures of classified information as we received in the last three years combined.

To date, only Reality Winner, a 25-year-old federal government contractor accused ofleaking classified information to The Intercept, is known to be facing prosecution. Her trial is set to begin in October.

Sessionss DOJ still has to play catch-up to reach the number of leak investigations from Obamas time.

DOJ prosecutors under the Obama administration pursued nine leak cases, and in May 2013 it was disclosed that federal investigators had surreptitiously seized two months worth of phones records from Associated Press reporters and editors, including home phones and cellphones, The New York Times reported.

Later in 2013, a scathing report from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)said the Obama administrations war on leaks had been the worst of its kind since the days of Richard Nixon, who engaged in a cover-up that eventually led to his resignation in 1974.

At the time of the CPJs report, Obamas team had used the Espionage Act, passed in 1917, to kick-start eight prosecutions involving allegations of leakedclassified information, including those against Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden. Manning was later granted clemency by Obama, before he left office earlier this year, while Snowden remains in exile in Russia.

Though CPJs report did show that the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington set off a major expansion of information deemed to be classifiedstarting with the administration of President George W. BushObamas eight prosecutions far outranked the three Espionage Act prosecutions under every other president before him.

In May 2016, Obama said that many of the cases prosecuted during his time in office actually were holdovers, but according to Politico that proved to be untrue.

Many of the cases that are often lumped into, you know, my ledger, essentially were cases that were brought before we came into office, Obama said to a college newspaper. Some of them are serious, where you had purposeful leaks of information that could harm or threaten operations or individuals who were in the field involved with really sensitive national security issues.

Politico found that of the eight cases, three were from the Bush administration that preceded Obama.

One of those cases involved New York Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, who in 2005 revealed the National Security Agencys domestic and clandestine surveillance program. Risen also wrote about a CIA operation to disrupt Irans nuclear program in a book published in 2006. Under Obama, the DOJ and Attorney General Eric Holder attempted to force Risen to testify and reveal his source of the classified information.

In December, Risen penned an op-ed forthe Times,and its closing paragraph now seems almost prophetic: Press freedom advocates already fear that under Senator Jeff Sessions, Mr. Trumps choice to be attorney general, the Justice Department will pursue journalists and their sources at least as aggressively as Mr. Obama did.

The rest is here:
Obama's 'War on Leakers' Was More Aggressive Than Trump's So Far - Newsweek

Surveillance expert Edward Snowden, the former US National Security Agency (NSA) analyst turned leaker, has spoken out about the recent spike in internet censorship across Russia and China, saying the incoming ban of VPNs and proxies is a "violation of human rights".

On Sunday 30 July, Russian president Vladimir Putin signed a law which said any technology that could be used to access blacklisted websites including virtual private networks and online anonymisation software will be completely outlawed from 1 November 2017.

Separate legislation will require all messaging applications in the country to be able to identify users through phone numbers after 1 January next year.

Moscow officials argued that the unprecedented move was designed to block access to illegal content and not to restrict the web for law abiding citizens.

Not everyone agreed. "Banning the 'unauthorised' use of basic internet security tools makes Russia both less safe and less free. This is a tragedy of policy," Snowden commented on 30 July, via Twitter.

The NSA whistleblower (or criminal leaker, to some) currently lives in Russia with his partner after being granted asylum in 2013.

He continued: "If the next generation is to enjoy the online liberties ours did, innocuous traffic must become truly indistinguishable from the sensitive.

"Whether enacted by China, Russia, or anyone else, we must be clear this is not a reasonable 'regulation' but a violation of human rights."

The internet clampdown has been teased for months. In late April, it emerged that Russia's media watchdog was drafting the legislation to "completely prohibit" the use of anonymising software.

Firms that fail to abide by the rules would face hefty financial penalties, reports suggested.

And it is now clear the plans were not limited to Russia, with Chinese authorities also talking up moves to bolster its Great Firewall, the state censorship apparatus. In July 2017, Bloomberg reported that access to VPNs would be banned in China from February next year.

VPNs, and web browsing software such as Tor, are able to circumvent censorship and hide identities in a way that makes it difficult for authorities to track the locations of users. In the post-Snowden world, as state-backed spying hit the public consciousness, use of such tools rocketed.

Snowden, who could risk biting the hand that feeds by criticising the Russian state, warned: "For [those] working for major firms: note well this spread in China and Russia within the same week. Don't sleep on the trend." US tech giants have, so far, complied with the bans.

Read more

See the article here:
Edward Snowden: Russian crackdown on web freedom is 'violation of human rights' - International Business Times UK

Doublethink is defined as holding two contradictory beliefs in ones mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. That word is from George Orwells novel 1984, a favorite of Russian scientist Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, who was in a unique position to appreciate the term: As head of his countrys so-called anti-doping lab, Rodchenkov ran a stunningly duplicitous program of doping and outright fraud.

But he blows the whistle on all of it in Icarus, director Bryan Fogels new Netflix documentary, which starts out like Super Size Me and ends up evoking the Edward Snowden-centric Citizenfour.

Fogel, a cyclist, initially planned to film himself going on a doping regimen to achieve better results and show how the cheating is done. He enlists Rodchenkov after American doctors balk at helping and, almost accidentally, gets the charismatic scientist to admit that the Russians have been playing dirty for decades, with the full support of the state.

I could have never imagined that it was essentially going to end up exposing the biggest scandal in sports history, says Fogel, 44. It truly changes the last 40 years of Olympics history.

After sneaking Rodchenkov out of Russia, Fogel went with him to the New York Times, which ran a front-page story about the scope of the cheating at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, a cloak-and-dagger operation that involved swapping dirty urine for clean, the latter of which was stowed at a former KGB facility.

It was incredibly nerve-racking before the story became public, says Fogel, who reveals that Rodchenkov felt safer once the information was out in the open. Their fears were not unfounded: Within two weeks (in February 2016), two former Russian Anti-Doping Agency officials were found dead.

Rodchenkov has since gone into the federal witness-protection program. Through his attorney, Im being told hes OK, says Fogel. But his family is not able to leave Russia. Theyre under surveillance, they took their passports and seized most of the familys assets. But his wife and sister still have jobs, and Im told they are safe at this time.

As for whether sports will ever really be able to break free from doping and cheating, Fogel is unsure. It feels like were in a never-ending cat-and-mouse game between human evolution and technology and science, he says, and I think as long as there are billions of dollars in professional sports, human nature is always going to try to find an advantage.

Read more here:
Netflix documentary shows the depths of Russia's doping regime - New York Post