Northwest Indiana Discussion

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news.

The records obtained by the Justice Department listed incoming and outgoing calls, and the duration of each call, for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and the main number for AP reporters in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP.

In all, the government seized those records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown but more than 100 journalists work in the offices whose phone records were targeted on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.

In a letter of protest sent to Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday, AP President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt said the government sought and obtained information far beyond anything that could be justified by any specific investigation. He demanded the return of the phone records and destruction of all copies.

“There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters. These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP’s newsgathering operations, and disclose information about AP’s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know,” Pruitt said.

The government would not say why it sought the records. U.S. officials have previously said in public testimony that the U.S. attorney in Washington is conducting a criminal investigation into who may have leaked information contained in a May 7, 2012, AP story about a foiled terror plot. The story disclosed details of a CIA operation in Yemen that stopped an al-Qaida plot in the spring of 2012 to detonate a bomb on an airplane bound for the United States.

Senator Ted Cruz says the IRS scandal “harkens back to the days of Richard Nixon,” and proves that President Obama keeps an “enemies list.”

“This is part of a distressing pattern of the Obama administration of being less than honest with the American people and using the machinery of government to target their political opponents,” Cruz tells National Review in an interview.

“It harkens back to the days of Richard Nixon and maintaining a political enemies list and treating the federal government as a tool to exact the administration’s retribution,” he adds.

“I believe the president owes an accounting to the American people,” the senator says, “when senior administration officials speak directly to the American people and utter flat-out falsehoods, as Jay Carney did when he said the State Department had never edited the talking points, when in fact ABC News has reported there were a dozen edits from the State Department of those talking points; or as the IRS did, when the head of the IRS testified before Congress that there was no targeting of political appointees when senior officials at the IRS knew for a fact they had been doing precisely that – targeting conservative groups, targeting tea-party groups, targeting Jewish groups, targeting pro-Israel groups, engaging in conduct that is completely inappropriate for an agency of the federal government.”

On Monday afternoon, the Associated Press reported that the U.S. Department of Justice had “secretly obtained two months of telephone records” from 20 phone lines assigned to reporters and editors from the global news organization. The shocking revelation comes on top of news that the IRS targeted conservative groups for special scrutiny. It will be harder for President Obama to pin the DOJ’s action on lower level bureaucrats, however, because requests to subpoena news organization records require the approval of Attorney General Eric Holder.

President Barack Obama issued a statement heralding World Press Freedom Day in May 2012, at the same time his Department of Justice was secretly obtaining phone records from Associated Press reporters and editors.

“On this World Press Freedom Day, the United States honors the role of a free press in creating sustainable democracies and prosperous societies,” Obama said in astatement on May 3, 2012. “We pay special tribute to those journalists who have sacrificed their lives, freedom or personal well-being in pursuit of truth and justice.”

The AP disclosed on Monday that the Justice Department obtained telephone records of 20 separate lines, including all outgoing calls and personal phone numbers, in April and May of 2012. The AP is the world’s largest wire service serving newspapers, websites and broadcast media.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) on Tuesday criticized the Justice Department for subpoenaing the phone records of Associated Press journalists as part of an investigation.

“I have trouble defending what the Justice Department did,” Reid told reporters at his weekly press conference. “I don’t know who did it or why it was done but it’s inexcusable. It’s an issue I feel very strongly about.”

“All I know is it’s wrong.”

The Obama administration’s atrocious violation against the nation’s free press is the sort of thing you see in communist regimes or dictatorships (like China and Cuba), a deplorable act few imagined would ever take place in the United States.

For a period of two months, the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) secretly obtained the phone records of reporters and editors at one of the nation’s largest news organizations, the Associated Press (AP), in an apparent effort to pin down the source of a leak. This includes records for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters and editors as well as general office numbers for the news organization in several states.

No one ever imagined that Big Brother would watch this closely. Even the president’s staunchest supporters, like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which has colluded with the DOJ on a variety of matters, chastised the administration. In a statement posted on its website the famously liberal civil rights group reminds that the media’s purpose is to keep the public informed and it should be free to do so without the threat of unwarranted surveillance.

“The Attorney General must explain the Justice Department’s actions to the public so that we can make sure this kind of press intimidation does not happen again,” said Laura Murphy, the director of the ACLU’s Washington D.C. branch. The head of the group’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, Ben Wizner, called the DOJ’s violation “an unacceptable abuse of power,” pointing out that freedom of the press is a pillar of our democracy.

Indeed the Obama administration’s actions “shock the American conscience and violate the critical freedom of the press protected by the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights,” according to the Newspaper Association of America, the nonprofit that represents thousands of publications in the U.S. and Canada. “Americans demand a full accounting,” the group’s president says.

Sharyl Attkisson, the Emmy-award winning CBS News investigative reporter, says that her personal and work computers have been compromised and are under investigation.

“I can confirm that an intrusion of my computers has been under some investigation on my end for some months but I’m not prepared to make an allegation against a specific entity today as I’ve been patient and methodical about this matter,” Attkisson told POLITICO on Tuesday. “I need to check with my attorney and CBS to get their recommendations on info we make public.”

In an earlier interview with WPHT Philadelphia, Attkisson said that though she did not know the full details of the intrustion, “there could be some relationship between these things and what’s happened to James [Rosen],” the Fox News reporter who became the subject of a Justice Dept. investigation after reporting on CIA intelligence about North Korea in 2009.

On Sunday, The Washington Post reported that the Justice Dept. had searched Rosen’s personal e-mails and tracked his visits to the State Dept. The court affadavit described Rosen as “at the very least, either as an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator” of his government source, presumably because he had solicited classified information from that source — an argument that has been heavily criticized by other journalists.

The New York Times editorial board has condemned the Obama administration for threatening press freedom in the wake of revelations that the Justice Dept. seized phone records belonging to Fox News reporter James Rosen.

“With the decision to label a Fox News television reporter a possible ‘co-conspirator’ in a criminal investigation of a news leak, the Obama administration has moved beyond protecting government secrets to threatening fundamental freedoms of the press to gather news,” the board wrote in an editorial published on Wednesday.

Noting past Obama administration intrustions into press freedom, including the Justice Dept.’s seizure of Associated Press phone records, the board accused the Obama administration of “a heavy tilt toward secrecy and insufficient concern about a free press.”

Dana Milbank, The Washington Post columnist, also condemned the Obama administrationon Wednesday.

“The Rosen affair is as flagrant an assault on civil liberties as anything done by George W. Bush’s administration, and it uses technology to silence critics in a way Richard Nixon could only have dreamed of,” Milbank wrote.

Addressing the intense criticism his administration has taken recently for its aggressive targeting of leaks, President Barack Obama said in a speech Thursday at National Defense University that the focus should be on those who have broken the law and not journalists who are simply doing their jobs.

“As Commander-in Chief, I believe we must keep information secret that protects our operations and our people in the field. To do so, we must enforce consequences for those who break the law and breach their commitment to protect classified information,” Obama said, according to text as prepared for delivery. But a free press is also essential for our democracy. I am troubled by the possibility that leak investigations may chill the investigative journalism that holds government accountable. Journalists should not be at legal risk for doing their jobs. Our focus must be on those who break the law.”

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Eric Holder personally signed off on the warrant that allowed the Justice Department to search Fox News reporter James Rosen’s personal email, NBC News’ Michael Isikoff reported Thursday.

The report places Holder at the center of one of the most controversial clashes between the press and the government in recent memory. The warrant he approved named Rosen as a “co-conspirator” in a leak investigation, causing many to warn that the Justice Department was potentially criminalizing journalism. The warrant also approved the tracking of Rosen’s movements in and out of the State Department, as well as his communications with his source, Stephen Kim.

The Justice Department later said that it did not intend to press any charges against Rosen.

The attorney general is usually required to approve requests to search journalists’ materials, but that rule does not extend to email records.

“We have a message for Attorney General Holder over a thttp://huffingtonpost.com,” read a message from the Huffington Post political Twitter account earlier this evening.

The website’s home page is one big splash calling for Eric Holder’s exit from the Obama administration, suggesting that the news reported earlier by NBC News was the final straw for liberals who are critical of Obama’s attorney general.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush defended using government wiretaps without court authorization.

The House Judiciary Committee is investigating whether Attorney General Eric Holder lied under oath during his May 15 testimony on the Justice Department’s (DOJ) surveillance of reporters, an aide close to the matter told The Hill.

The panel is looking at a statement Holder made during a back and forth with Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) about whether the DOJ could prosecute reporters under the Espionage Act of 1917.

“In regard to potential prosecution of the press for the disclosure of material – this is not something I’ve ever been involved in, heard of, or would think would be wise policy,” Holder said during the hearing.

However, NBC News reported last week that Holder personally approved a search warrant that labeled Fox News chief Washington correspondent James Rosen a co-conspirator in a national security leaks case.

The panel is investigating whether NBC’s report contradicts Holder’s claim that he had not looked into or been involved with a possible prosecution of the press in a leaks case.

Former Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod on Tuesday called the Justice Department’s surveillance of Fox News chief Washington correspondent James Rosen “disturbing.”

“I do think there are real issues regarding the relationship with the media on this leak matter,” Axelrod said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “The notion of naming a journalist as a co-conspirator for receiving information is something that I find very disturbing.”

Earlier this month, reports surfaced that the DOJ had seized Rosen’s personal emails and used other surveillance methods to investigate whether he was complicit in a leak of classified information.

CBS Statement:

A cyber security firm hired by CBS News has determined through forensic analysis that Sharyl Attkisson’s computer was accessed by an unauthorized, external, unknown party on multiple occasions in late 2012. Evidence suggests this party performed all access remotely using Attkisson’s accounts.

While no malicious code was found, forensic analysis revealed an intruder had executed commands that appeared to involve search and exfiltration of data.

This party also used sophisticated methods to remove all possible indications of unauthorized activity and alter system times to cause further confusion.

CBS News is taking steps to identify the responsible party and their method of access.”