Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Why The Department Of Justice Is Going After The Associated Press' Records

 

Why The Department Of Justice Is Going After The Associated Press' Records

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/05/13/2005021/doj-yemen-aqap/?mobile=nc

 

By Hayes Brown on May 13, 2013 at 5:31 pm

News broke on Monday that the Department of Justice secretly sought phone

records of reporters at the Associated Press, likely as part of an

investigation into several national security related leaks.

 

Last year, the Associated Press reported that an Al Qaeda in the Arabian

Peninsula (AQAP) plot had been foiled, thanks to a timely intervention on

the part of the United States. The plan, according to the AP's March 2012

story, involved an upgrade of the "underwear bomb" used in the failed

Christmas Day 2011 bomb plot that was meant to take down a passenger

airplane in Detroit, MI.

 

Why that drew the attention of the Justice Department, however, is that the

CIA was the one who foiled the plot, which the AP report made clear:

 

    The FBI is examining the latest bomb to see whether it could have passed

through airport security and brought down an airplane, officials said. They

said the device did not contain metal, meaning it probably could have passed

through an airport metal detector. But it was not clear whether new body

scanners used in many airports would have detected it.

 

    The would-be suicide bomber, based in Yemen, had not yet picked a target

or bought a plane ticket when the CIA stepped in and seized the bomb,

officials said. It's not immediately clear what happened to the alleged

bomber.

 

AP learned of the plot a week before publishing, but "agreed to White House

and CIA requests not to publish it immediately" due to national security

concerns. But, by reporting the CIA's involvement in foiling the plot, they

put AQAP on notice that the CIA had a window into their activities. The AP's

reporting also led to other stories involving an operative in place within

AQAP, and details of the operations he was involved in. That operative, it

was feared, would be exposed and targeted by AQAP as retribution for siding

with the United States.

 

John Brennan, who is now the head of the CIA, said at his confirmation

hearing that the release of information to AP was an "unauthorized and

dangerous disclosure of classified information." That the Department of

Justice would be pursuing information on these leaks is also not new, given

Attorney General Eric Holder's appointment of federal prosecutors to look

into the disclosures last year. What is surprising is the large amount of

information the Justice Department seems to have acquired in its pursuit:

 

    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.

 

The Associated Press released its letter to Holder denouncing the invasion

of their records without their consent, calling it an "unprecedented step"

and "a serious interference with AP's constitutional rights to gather and

report the news."

 

In a statement on the case, the U.S. Attorney's D.C. office claimed that

"because we value the freedom of the press, we are always careful and

deliberative in seeking to strike the right balance between the free flow of

information and the public interest" in carrying out those laws. Despite

that, this investigation appears unusually broad. And the full extent of the

Department of Justice investigation, and whether other news outlets were

targeted in the course of their inquiries, remains unclear.

 

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