In 2005, there was an alarming rise in the number of reporters who received subpoenas and were facing jail time for refusing to reveal confidential sources. This trend continued in 2006, as journalists who had broken important stories on controversial antiterrorism programs including eavesdropping, torture, and secret prisons became targets of surveillance and of threats of prosecution under the Espionage Act. PEN responded by mounting a series of programs to raise awareness of these new threats to press freedom and public access to vital information.

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Since September 11, 2001, more than 250 foreign scholars and writers have been denied entry to the United States. Just as PEN protested the exclusion of hundreds of scholars and writers from the United States during the Cold War, we have again been fighting to ensure that Americans have access to controversial voices from abroad.

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In 2004, PEN became a plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) regulations, which threatened the publication of literature and information from Iraq, Iran, Cuba, North Korea, and Sudan. These regulations violated the First Amendment and the Berman Amendment, which exempts information and informational materials from trade embargoes. In response to the suit, OFAC subsequently revised its regulations to guarantee that publishers can issue works from embargoed countries without facing criminal or civil penalties.

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