DOJ obtains AP phone records

DOJ seized logs for five Fox News phones, possibly James Rosens’ parents’ house
POSTED AT 9:21 PM ON MAY 21, 2013 BY MARY KATHARINE HAM


Well, you know how it is. When a reporter misbehaves, an administration sometimes has to call his parents…or, just seize their phone logs.

Bret Baier revealed Tuesday that, according to Department of Justice documents, one of the numbers listed in DOJ’s demands “also relate to James’ parents’ home in Staten Island.” I can’t yet find a Fox follow-up story on the revelation, but the Staten Island area code, 718, shows up twice in DOJ’s filing in the Stephen Jin-Woo Kim case. The documents are posted here by the New Yorker.

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/05/...s-phones-possibly-james-rosens-parents-house/

 

Magistrate who OKd warrant against James Rosen was previously criticized on Fox News

Published by: Dan Calabrese on Tuesday May 21st, 2013


By DAN CALABRESE - Agendas.

When the Obama Justice Department wanted to get a warrant so they could read the e-mails and review the phone records of Fox News reporter James Rosen, they went to U.S. Magistrate Alan Kay, who granted the warrant on the basis of the DOJ's claim that Rosen may have been guilty of criminal conspiracy. That flies in the face of all legal history concerning reporters who doggedly pursue information, even classified information.

Yet Kay granted the warrant. Why would he do that? Well he may not be a big fan of Fox News.

In 2006, Kay issued a ruling favorable to Guantanamo Bay detainees and highly critical of the Bush Defense Department in their treatment of the detainees. According to Kay's Wikipedia page, Fox News quoted extensively on the air from Kay's ruling in the case of Salim Muhood Adem v. George W. Bush. I have not seen the segment, but knowing Fox News - particularly on issues like Gitmo in the post-9/11 years - I think it's a pretty safe guess that they weren't quoting Kay's ruling as a means of praising his decision.

This is crucially important. In order to secure the warrant that allowed them to read his e-mails, the Obama Justice Department accused Rosen of criminal conspiracy, and in order to make that stick - against all legal precedent - they had to find a judge who was willing to buy the argument. Kay was their man.

Ann Marimow of the Washington Post explains how unusual this is:

The case centers on Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a former State Department arms expert accused of passing details to Rosen from a classified report within hours of its release to a small circle within the intelligence community. Investigators also targeted Rosen, calling him a co-conspirator in an affidavit seeking a search warrant for Rosen’s personal e-mails.

In the affidavit, FBI agent Reginald Reyes said Rosen “asked, solicited and encouraged Mr. Kim to disclose sensitive United States internal documents and intelligence information.” He added, “The reporter did so by employing flattery and playing to Mr. Kim’s vanity and ego.”

That detail particularly irked media lawyers and transparency experts, who said the Justice Department had crossed a line by equating routine reporting practices with possible criminal activity.
​

The FBI did not ultimately charge Rosen with a crime, only using the insinuation that he had committed one to justify the warrant they were after to read his e-mails and get access to his phone records.

Do you realize what this means? It means that any member of the media who seeks out information could be similarly charged with a crime in order to justify such a tactic. It means that if Obama doesn't like a particular reporter's line of reporting or analysis, all he has to do is tell Eric Holder to contrive something that wreaks of criminality, then find a like-minded judge, and that reporter's personal communications can be seized and monitored by the government.

As Marimow points out, there is no history of journalists being charged with criminal activity for doggedly pursuing information, regardless of the tactics they use to get it. So what made DOJ think such an accusation was justified here? Maybe because they knew they were going to a judge who wasn't a fan of Fox News.

How creepy is this? As far as I'm concerned, this is an even bigger scandal than the one involving the IRS, which is not small. If they can do this to James Rosen, they can do it to anyone. And apparently they're more than willing.

http://www.caintv.com/obama-doj-accused-james-rosen

 

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>For the record, I would totally seize the phone records of journalists. If North Korea had journalists. And phones.</p>&mdash; KimJongNumberUn (@KimJongNumberUn) <a href="https://twitter.com/KimJongNumberUn/status/335533018020192256">May 17, 2013</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

 

Can this feeling that we had together, suddenly exist between?

the neocons at the New Yorker have questions 67 & 68 (and 25 or 6 to 4):

--
Here, then, are some questions for Obama to answer:

1. Without getting into the details of individual cases, have you discussed with Attorney General Holder the Administration’s over-all attitude toward pursuing leakers? If so, what was the guidance you gave him?

The record shows that the Obama Administration has brought more prosecutions against leakers than any previous Administration. Officials, Holder included, have said this reflects circumstances, and a backlog of cases inherited from the Bush Administration, rather than an active policy. But, so far, we know little about any internal discussions on this issue.

2. Is it right for a federal prosecutor pursuing the source of a leak to subpoena the phone records not just of an individual reporter but of entire news organizations?

Obama has said there is an “important balance” to be struck between preventing the leaks of classified information and defending the freedom of the press, but he hasn’t given much indication of where this balance should be struck. In the A.P. case, we now know, the subpoena that Machen obtained was even broader than was initially reported. In addition to the phone lines at five A.P. offices, it included five reporters’ cell-phone lines, three home phone lines, and two fax lines. In the Rosen case, as Ryan Lizza reported, Machen seized the records of more than thirty phone lines, at least five of which appear to have been at Fox News.

3. Are you O.K. with a prosecutor subpoenaing phone records from the White House?

In the A.P. case, we don’t know whether Machen seized such records, but the F.B.I. did interview John Brennan, the C.I.A. director, who was President Obama’s senior adviser on counterterrorism when the alleged leak occurred in May of last year. In the Rosen case, the prosecutor sought the “subscriber records” for two White House numbers. That wouldn’t have included the full details of all calls made from these lines, but it would have helped him to determine which White House official was using them.

4. Is a reporter who receives classified information breaking the law?

It’s one thing to say journalists shouldn’t be prosecuted for doing their jobs. But in the affidavit seeking a search warrant for Rosen’s Gmail account, an F.B.I. agent said there was “probable cause” to believe he had violated Section 793 of the U.S. Criminal Code. In making this argument, the government claimed that it wasn’t confined by the Privacy Protection Act of 1980, which explicitly says the government cannot obtain a search warrant for a journalist’s work materials except in certain cases, one of which is when he or she has unlawfully received “information relating to the national defense, classified information, or restricted data.” So which is it, Mr. President? Is receiving classified information a criminal act, or is your Administration simply making that argument to get around the privacy laws?

5. Why didn’t the Justice Department inform the A.P. that it was seeking the phone records?

In a post last week, my colleague Lynn Oberlander, the New Yorker’s general counsel, pointed out that the failure to inform the A.P. about the subpoena—and thus the failure to give the news organization a chance to oppose its granting in the courts—appeared to run contrary to prior court rulings, and to the Department’s own rulings, which say it should notify a media company in advance of a subpoena unless such a notification would threaten the integrity of the investigation. In this case, it’s hard to see where such a threat resided. The suspicion lingers that a frustrated prosecutor, struggling to make progress in his investigation through normal channels, decided to launch a secret fishing expedition.

6. Do you still have confidence in the Attorney General’s handling of leak cases?

Under Justice Department guidelines, prosecutors seeking a subpoena have to obtain the prior approval of the Attorney General. Last week, Holder revealed he had recused himself from the A.P. case, citing the fact that the F.B.I. had interviewed him about it. He had a bit of difficulty recalling precisely when he recused himself and whom he told about that decision. Still, he defended his department’s handling of the investigation, saying the leak about the Yemen bomb plot “put the American people at risk” and was “one of the most serious leaks I’ve ever seen.” Now that the Rosen case has come to light, a case in which Holder presumably didn’t recuse himself, and in which the threat to national security appears to have been minimal, he has yet to say why he approved of the seizure of journalists’ e-mail accounts and phone records.

7. When it comes to national security, are you saying that freedom of the press doesn’t apply?

In response to the furor about the A.P. story, the White House said it supported a federal shield law to protect reporters and their confidential sources. But passage of such legislation might well not make much difference in cases such as the A.P. and Rosen ones. Back in 2009, as the Huffington Post reported last week, when Senator Chuck Schumer was trying to get a federal shield law through Congress, the Administration demanded a broad exemption for leaks involving national security. Nothing Obama has said in the past week or so suggests that he has changed his attitude on this issue.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blo...ma.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter