Full Letter: Team Obama Secretly Seizes AP Phone Records; News Agency Fires Back

[bsteadman]

Full Letter: Team Obama Secretly Seizes AP Phone Records; News Agency Fires Back

Birther Report
5/13/2013

Excerpt:

DOJ Secretly Seizes AP Phone Records, News Agency Fires Back Against ‘Massive And Unprecedented Intrusion’
By Andrew Kirell @ Mediaite

Reacting to the news that the Department of Justice secretly obtained two months worth of the Associated Press reporters’ and editors’ telephone records, the news organization’s CEO called the move a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into the constitutional rights of a press outlet.

According to the AP’s attorneys, the records obtained by the DOJ included the incoming and outgoing calls of the outlet’s reporters and offices on both cell and home phone lines. The company’s CEO Gary Pruitt wrote a letter of protest to Attorney General Eric Holder demanding the return of the records and destruction of all copies. He also rebuked the government agency for obtaining information far beyond what would ever be necessary in a specific investigation under the law.

He wrote, in part:

“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.”

He added that the news organization sees the records seizure as serious government overreach: “We regard this action by the Department of Justice as a serious interference with AP’s constitutional rights to gather and report the news.” [...] - More at Mediaite.

ASSOCIATED PRESS CEO'S FULL LETTER TO PURPORTED U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER:

View the complete Birther Report presentation at:

http://obamareleaseyourrecords.blogs...e-records.html

[bsteadman]

Justice Dept. Secretly Makes ‘Massive and Unprecedented’ Grab of AP Phone Records

PJ Media
Bridget Johnson
5/13/2013

Excerpt:

Another scandal dropped on the Obama administration today as the Associated Press revealed a “massive and unprecedented” grab of phone records from the news wire by the Justice Department.

The AP reported that the Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors dated April and May 2012, including 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.

AP President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt fired off a letter of protest to Attorney General Eric Holder today demanding 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 DoJ notified the AP on Friday but included no explanation for the seizure.

It included phone numbers for five reporters and an editor who were involved in this May 7, 2012, story on the thwarting of a new underwear bombing plot.

The plot was significant because the White House had told the public it had “no credible information that terrorist organizations, including al-Qaida, are plotting attacks in the U.S. to coincide with the (May 2) anniversary of bin Laden’s death,” the AP noted today.

UPDATE: White House press secretary Jay Carney, traveling on a fundraising swing through New York with President Obama, remarks to the White House press pool: “Other than press reports, we have no knowledge of any attempt by the Justice Department to seek phone records of the AP. We are not involved in decisions made in connection with criminal investigations, as those matters are handled independently by the Justice Department. Any questions about an ongoing criminal investigation should be directed to the Department of Justice.”

UPDATE: House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) weighs in: “This is obviously disturbing. Coming within a week of revelations that the White House lied to the American people about the Benghazi attacks and the IRS targeted conservative Americans for their political beliefs, Americans should take notice that top Obama Administration officials increasingly see themselves as above the law and emboldened by the belief that they don’t have to answer to anyone. I will work with my fellow House Chairmen on an appropriate response to Obama Administration officials.”

View the complete article at:

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/05/13...phone-records/

[bsteadman]

Video: White House Press Briefing Addressing Scandal Over DOJ Seizure Of AP Phone Records, IRS

Published May 14, 2013

[bsteadman]

Scarborough, Carl Bernstein Shred ‘Inexcusable’ Seizure Of AP Phone Records: ‘Beyond Incompetence,’ It’s ‘Sinister’

Mediaite
Meenal Vamburkar
5/14/2013

Excerpt:

Morning Joe opened the show on Tuesday with a roundtable discussion about the Department of Justice seizing the Associated Press’ phone records — and was joined by Kathleen Carroll, the AP’s executive editor. Arguing that the move went beyond just incompetence, Joe Scarborough charged it was “sinister.”

It’s “clearly distressing,” Carroll said, to know someone was looking at their phone records — not just regarding reporting for national security stories, but also phone calls to local officials “in the normal course of business.” Scarborough deemed it “chilling,” not only for the reporters but for their sources, which may include whistleblowers. “None of us have ever seen anything like this,” Carroll added.

“Outrageous, it is totally inexcusable,” Carl Bernstein jumped in. “The object of it is to intimidate people who talk to reporters. This was an accident waiting to become a nuclear event — and now it’s happened. There’s no excuse for it whatsoever. There’s no reason for this investigation, especially on this scale. … This is intimidation, it’s wrong, the president of the United States should’ve long ago put a stop to this in his presidency.”

Such actions are also designed to “intimidate sources,” Scarborough noted, which Bernstein deemed “inexcusable.” There “is no reason that a presidency that is interested in a truly free press and its functioning should permit this to happen,” Bernstein asserted.

Later in the segment, Scarborough recalled their earlier discussion in which they noted that the Obama administration isn’t criminal like the Nixon administration was. “I said, well, at least they’re incompetent, we all agreed on that, in these matters,” he elaborated. “But you know what, this goes beyond incompetence. This is sinister.”

View the complete article, including video, at:

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/scarborou...-its-sinister/

[bsteadman]

Is Obama Worse For Press Freedom Than Nixon?

The Daily Beast
James C. Goodale
5/14/2013

Excerpt:

James Goodale defended the New York Times during the Pentagon Papers. But Nixon had nothing on Obama, writes the First Amendment lawyer—and that’s bad news for freedom of the press.

President Barack H. Obama’s outrageous seizure of the Associated Press’s phone records, allegedly to discover sources of leaks, should surprise no one. Obama has relentlessly pursued leakers ever since he became president. He is fast becoming the worst national security press president ever, and it may not get any better.

It is believed that Obama’s Justice Department sought AP’s records to find the source of a leak that informed an AP story about a failed terrorist attack. What makes this action particularly egregious is that Justice didn’t tell AP what it was doing until two months after it obtained the records. This not only violates Justice Department guidelines for subpoenas of this sort, but also common sense, decency, and the First Amendment.

Under the guidelines, subpoenas concerning the press cannot be issued without the express approval of the Attorney General. Further, before a subpoena is issued, the government is honor bound to negotiate with the party to which it is directed.

While Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr. may have approved the subpoena, he apparently never told AP about it. In the meantime, the Justice Department for two months has had all the details of AP’s newsgathering. AP could bring a lawsuit to declare its First Amendment rights have been violated and seek a return of its records. Gary Pruitt, President of AP, has already made a demand for them.
.........................................

View the complete article at:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...han-nixon.html