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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