Obama Administration turns against the Free Press

[American Patriot]

May 14, 2013
The Law Behind the A.P. Phone-Record Scandal

Posted by Lynn Oberlander

The cowardly move by the Justice Department to subpoena two months of the A.P.’s phone records, both of its office lines and of the home phones of individual reporters, is potentially a breach of the Justice Department’s own guidelines. Even more important, it prevented the A.P. from seeking a judicial review of the action. Some months ago, apparently, the government sent a subpoena (or subpoenas) for the records to the phone companies that serve those offices and individuals, and the companies provided the records without any notice to the A.P. If subpoenas had been served directly on the A.P. or its individual reporters, they would have had an opportunity to go to court to file a motion to quash the subpoenas. What would have happened in court is anybody’s guess—there is no federal shield law that would protect reporters from having to testify before a criminal grand jury—but the Justice Department avoided the issue altogether by not notifying the A.P. that it even wanted this information. Even beyond the outrageous and overreaching action against the journalists, this is a blatant attempt to avoid the oversight function of the courts.


It is not, again, as if the government didn’t have options. The D.C. Circuit (in a 2005 opinion upholding a finding of contempt against the Times’s Judith Miller and Time’s Matt Cooper for refusing to testify about who had disclosed Valerie Plame’s identity as a C.I.A. operative) has held that there isn’t a First Amendment privilege for journalists to refuse to testify before a criminal grand jury, as has the Second Circuit (in a 2006 case in which the government was trying to find out who told the Times about a planned raid on two foundations suspected of providing aid to terrorists). In the wake of the decisions, there was a renewed effort to pass a federal shield law—though the proposed law would not have provided absolute protection in cases of national security—but, with the rise of WikiLeaks, that discussion died.


The Times’s case provides the facts most similar to the A.P.’s. The prosecutor had asked the Times to provide phone records; when the Times refused, he threatened to get the records directly from the phone companies. The Times then went to court and sought a declaratory judgment that its records were protected by reporter’s privilege. The Second Circuit ruled that phone records—even those held by a third party, such as a phone company—were subject to the same common-law privilege that would apply to the journalists’ own records. However, the court noted that there wasn’t a constitutional privilege to refuse to disclose such records to a criminal grand jury, and that any common-law privilege would be not absolute but “qualified”—meaning that it could be overcome by a compelling government interest. The Circuit, however, declined to define the privilege, other than to say that it wouldn’t stand up in the case before it.


Crucially, though the Times lost that case, 2–1, all of the judges agreed that government could not act unilaterally, without judicial review. As Judge Sack said in dissent:

For the question… is not so much whether there is protection for the identity of reporters’ sources, or even what that protection is, but which branch of government decides whether, when, and how any such protection is overcome.

He added, “Judge Winter’s opinion makes clear that the government’s demonstration of ‘necessity’ and ‘exhaustion’ must, indeed, be made to the courts, not just the Attorney General.”


In the A.P.’s case, though, the latter is exactly what did happen. (Though since Eric Holder, the Attorney General, said Tuesday that he recused himself, that demonstration wasn’t even made to him, but to someone else in the Department of Justice.) The Department of Justice chose to avoid the court system—and its independent check on the Department’s power—by serving its subpoenas directly on the phone companies without telling the A.P. In so doing, it apparently relied on an exception to its own policy of notifying a media company in advance of a subpoena if doing so “would pose a substantial threat to the integrity of the investigation.”


If, as has been reported, the grand jury is investigating the leak of information concerning the C.I.A. foiling in Yemen of an Al-Qaeda plot to bomb an airliner heading to the United States, it is hard to understand how a later request for phone records would pose a threat to the integrity of the investigation. This request for two months of records was ostensibly made after the calls were made. If the government had a suspicion that one of its employees was the leak, it could go to a court itself and seek a wiretap of that employee. (Of course, they would have to make a showing of probable cause, which they were able to skip by going directly to the A.P.’s phone companies.) There would seem to be no reason not to let the media organization know that it wanted phone records of calls already made—after all, what was the rush? Let the courts decide whether the Justice Department really needs those records or not.


Lynn Oberlander is the general counsel of The New Yorker.



Photograph by J. Scott Applewhite/AP.

[American Patriot]

Justice official defends AP phone records subpoenas

By Michael Pearson and Matt Smith, CNN
updated 8:55 AM EDT, Wed May 15, 2013




Holder: Most serious leaks I've ever seen


STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• NEW: AP exec: "We've never seen anything along the size and scope" of this probe
• AP says its Washington bureau chief was among those whose records were subpoenaed
• Deputy attorney general says leaks were limited and necessary
• Holder says the seriousness of the leak required "very aggressive action"

Washington (CNN) -- The Justice Department on Tuesday defended its decision to subpoena phone records from Associated Press bureaus and reporters, saying the requests were limited and necessary to investigate a leak of classified information.


The AP revealed Monday that federal agents had collected two months of telephone records for some of its reporters and editors without notifying it of the subpoena.
In a letter to Gary Pruitt, the news service's president, Deputy Attorney General James Cole said the Justice Department had balanced the public's right to know with national security.


"Any subpoena that is issued should be drawn as narrowly as possible, be directed at relevant information regarding a limited subject matter and should cover a reasonably limited period of time," Cole wrote. "We are required to negotiate with the media organization in advance of issuing the subpoenas unless doing so would pose a substantial threat to the integrity of the investigation. We take this policy, and the interests that it is intended to protect, very seriously and followed it in this matter."


Justice officials haven't specified the leak that triggered the probe, but the AP has said it believes the investigation focuses on its account of a foiled plot to bomb a U.S. airliner in May 2012.


AP blasts feds for phone records search

AP CEO: 'No justification' for seizure
WH says it didn't know about AP searches
Abrams: That's not America at its best
Issa: Justice probe into AP 'disturbing'



In response to Cole, Pruitt wrote that government officials "assured us that the national security concerns had passed" before it ran the story.


"Indeed, the White House was preparing to publicly announce that the bomb plot had been foiled," Pruitt wrote. "The White House had said there was no credible threat to the American people in May of 2012. The AP story suggested otherwise, and we felt that was important information and the public deserved to know it."


Speaking Tuesday evening to CNN's Erin Burnett, AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll said the news service is "shocked" by what unfolded.


"We've never seen anything along the size and scope of this particular investigation," she said.


In all, federal agents collected records from more than 20 lines, including personal phones and AP phone numbers in New York; Hartford, Connecticut; and Washington, he wrote in a letter of protest to Attorney General Eric Holder.


Among those staffers whose phone records were subpoenaed was the news service's Washington bureau chief, Sally Buzbee, AP spokeswoman Ellen Hale said Tuesday. Investigators sought call records from five other reporters and an editor, the AP reported Monday.


Carroll said the phone lines were used by about 100 journalists, casting a "very broad net" of AP operations "that have, as far as I know, no particular connection to the story that they (authorities) seem to be investigating."


Holder said Tuesday that he had stepped aside to avoid any potential conflict of interest in the case and left the decision to subpoena the phone records to Cole. He said his recusal was necessary because he had been questioned by FBI agents as part of the leak probe and wanted to make sure "that the investigation was seen as independent."


The story the AP says is at the center of the probe broke the news that the CIA had thwarted an al Qaeda plot to blow up a U.S.-bound jetliner around the anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden by American commandos. Sources later told CNN that the operative who was supposed to have carried the bomb had been inserted into al Qaeda's Yemeni affiliate by Saudi intelligence, and that the device had been handed over to U.S. analysts.


Holder said the leak being investigated was one of the most serious he has ever seen.


"It put the American people at risk, and that's not hyperbole," he said. "It put the American people at risk, and finding who was responsible for that required very aggressive action."


It's not the first time the Justice Department has taken flak for seeking the phone records of an AP reporter. In 2002, Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley criticized the department for its subpoenas of John Solomon, an AP writer who had written about an investigation into then-Sen. Robert Torricelli, D-New Jersey. The subpoena also spurred a protest from the journalism association Investigative Reporters and Editors.


The Obama administration has launched several high-profile leak probes, leading to the prosecution of two government employees accused of revealing classified information.


Thomas Drake, a former National Security Agency official, was sentenced to one year of probation and 240 hours of community service in 2011, while former CIA officer John Kiriakou was sentenced to 30 months in prison after admitting to identifying a covert intelligence officer.


Documentary filmmaker Robert Greenwald, whose previous movies have criticized the war in Iraq, Fox News and Walmart, called the administration's pursuit of leakers "an effort to silence and scare whistleblowers, and to get the press to be quiet and do what it wants them to do."


"This is a systemic, continuing problem," said Greenwald, whose latest film, "War on Whistleblowers," focuses on the issue. "It's not a one-off, and it's not an accident, sadly."


CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said Monday that the subpoenas were likely legal, but go further than previous administrations in pursuing private information of journalists.
"I have never heard of a subpoena this broad," Toobin said.


The White House had no knowledge of any attempt by the Justice Department to seek the records, spokesman Jay Carney said Tuesday.


"We are not involved with the White House in any decisions made in connection with ongoing criminal investigations as those matters are handled appropriately by the Justice Department independently," Carney told reporters at a news conference.


Carney said the administration supports the right of the press to pursue investigative journalism, but said a balance must be struck between that right and national security interests.


"The president is a strong defender of the First Amendment and a firm believer in the need for the press to be unfettered in its ability to conduct investigative reporting and to facilitate a free flow of information," Carney said. "He also, of course, recognizes the need for the Justice Department to investigate alleged criminal activity without undue influence."

[American Patriot]

Holder’s Recusal From Leak Case Wasn’t Done In Writing

Igor Bobic 2:44 PM EDT, Wednesday May 15, 2013

Attorney General Eric Holder testified Wednesday that his recusal from a criminal investigation into an administration leak of classified information last year was not done in writing.


Asked by Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL) whether he thought it might be appropriate to memorialize such an action as a matter of record, Holder concurred.


"I guess it might be helpful," he said before the House Judiciary Committee.


The Justice Department faces increased scrutiny for subpoenaing the phone records of Associated Press journalists during April and May of 2012, an action the news organization characterized as a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into its operations. Holder told lawmakers that Deputy Attorney General James Cole authorized the subpoenas as part of the criminal investigation.

[American Patriot]

Dana Milbank: Asleep at the wheel
By DANA MILBANK
Updated: 05/15/2013 02:37:58 PM EDT

WASHINGTON -- President Passerby needs urgently to become a participant in his presidency.

Late Monday came the breathtaking news of a full-frontal assault on the First Amendment by his administration: word that the Justice Department had gone on a fishing expedition through months of phone records of Associated Press reporters.

And yet President Obama reacted much as he did to the equally astonishing revelation on Friday that the IRS had targeted conservative groups based on their ideology. He responded as though he were just some bloke on a bar stool, getting his information from the evening news.

In the phone-snooping case, Obama didn't even stir from his stool. Instead, he had his press secretary, former Time magazine journalist Jay Carney, go before an incensed press corps Tuesday afternoon and explain why the president will not be involving himself in his Justice Department's trampling of press freedoms.

"Other than press reports, we have no knowledge of any attempt by the Justice Department to seek phone records of the Associated Press," Carney announced.

And now that Obama has learned about this extraordinary abuse of power, he's not doing a thing about it. "We are not involved at the White House in any decisions made in connection with ongoing criminal investigations," Carney argued.

Reuters correspondent Jeff Mason asked how Obama felt about "being compared to Richard Nixon on this."

The press secretary laughed. "People who make those kinds of comparisons need to check their history," he said.

Carney had a point there. Nixon was a control freak. Obama seems to be the opposite: He wants no control over the actions of his administration. As the president distances himself from the actions of "independent" figures within his administration, he's creating a power vacuum in which lower officials behave as though anything goes. Certainly, a president can't know what everybody in his administration is up to, but he can take responsibility, he can fire people and he can call a stop to foolish actions such as wholesale snooping into reporters' phone calls.

At the start of Tuesday's briefing, the AP's Jim Kuhnhenn pointed out that in all the controversies of the moment -- the Benghazi "talking points," the IRS targeting and the journalists' phone records -- "you have placed the burden of responsibility someplace else. ... But it is the president's administration."

President Passerby, however, was not joining the fray. Carney repeated Obama's assertion that the IRS' actions would be outrageous only "if" they are true. Never mind that the IRS has already admitted the violations and apologized.

The press secretary said repeatedly that "we have to wait" for a formal report by the agency's inspector general before the most powerful man in the world could take action. By contrast, Carney didn't think it necessary to wait to assert that nobody in the White House knew about the IRS activities until "a few weeks ago." (They apparently didn't tell the boss about the matter until Friday.) Tuesday night, Obama issued a statement saying he had seen the I.G. report and directed Treasury Secretary Jack Lew "to hold those responsible for these failures accountable."

The response to the deep-dive into AP phone records also got the President Passerby response: "He cannot comment specifically on an ongoing criminal investigation or actions that investigators at the Department of Justice may or may not have taken."

It didn't matter to Carney that the Justice Department had already admitted the actions in a letter to the AP. "But we know it happened, just as the IRS admitted what it had done," Fox News' Wendell Goler protested.

"Again, it would be inappropriate to comment," said Carney, one of the 42 times he used the words "appropriate" or "inappropriate" in his hourlong briefing. One of the few things Carney thought it appropriate to say was that Obama thinks the press should be "unfettered."

NPR's Ari Shapiro asked Carney to square Obama's belief in an unfettered press with the fact that he has prosecuted twice as many leakers as all previous administrations combined.

Carney said Obama's love of press freedom "is backed up by his support for a media shield law." This would be the shield law that died in Congress in 2010 because of Obama's objections.

Alexis Simendinger, from RealClearPolitics, challenged Carney to harmonize the refusal to meddle in an "ongoing investigation" with Obama's comments on the Trayvon Martin case last year, when a Justice Department investigation was ongoing.

"Come on," Carney replied with scorn, repeating the excuse that "we have no knowledge" of the phone snooping "beyond the press reports that we've read."

And that's just the problem.

[American Patriot]

Plot Thickens on AP Records Scandal

By Chris Stirewalt
Power Play
Published May 17, 2013
FoxNews.com

“We did not publish anything until we were assured by high-ranking officials with direct knowledge of the situation, in more than one part of the government, that the national security risk was over and no one was in danger. The only deal was to hold the story until any security risk was resolved.”


-- Associated Press spokeswoman Erin Madigan White talking to the Washington Post about the agency agreeing to hold a story about a foiled terror plot.


The Associated Press is suggesting that the reason the agency’s reporters and lawyers were the targets of a sweeping records seizure by the Department of Justice is not that national security was at risk, but rather the publicity the administration was seeking.


In a move familiar to reporters covering covert operations, the CIA had asked the AP to hold off on the May 2012 scoop about a foiled effort by Islamist militants in Yemen to try another underwear bomb, like the one a militant botched in 2009.

Convincing reporters and voters to take it easy on something that happened in Libya and is bound to be confusing and secretive is a lot easier than doing so on more straightforward stories about corruption in the IRS and bullying the press.

The Washington Post reports today that after sitting on the story for five days, AP got the all clear from the CIA on national security on May 7, 2012. But there was a still a problem: the White House was planning to announce the operation the next day and the AP story would step on the big announcement.


The spy agency then made a proposal: wait one more day and then the AP could have the story as an exclusive for an hour. The Post says that while the news service was mulling the idea, a White House official called and nixed the one-hour exclusive, telling AP that they could have five minutes of exclusivity before the administration started pushing out the story.


Remember the timing here. This was just after President Obama had celebrated the one-year anniversary of the killing of Usama bin Laden and the administration was or would soon be pushing out stories about kill lists and a decimated al Qaeda. As Republican Mitt Romney was trying to mount his general election challenge, Team Obama was very much focused on burnishing the president’s commander-in-chief credentials.


A story about the CIA infiltrating a group of Islamist militants in Yemen and foiling an attack on the homeland, therefore, would be a thing of great political value, especially if it could be unveiled just so. If the AP went with a less glorious version of events not only would it deny the administration the chance to depict the mission in the most favorable light, it would also turn an announcement into a confirmation. It is hard to get news organizations to bite on a story about something that didn’t happen, and even harder when the thing that didn’t happen has already been reported by the nation’s largest wire service.


AP said no, and went with the story anyway. By the time John Brennan, now Obama’s CIA director but then the president’s top counterterrorism adviser, could make it to ABC News to trumpet the operation, the story was quickly becoming old news.


The strong inference from the AP is that it was not national security but election-year public relations that led to the fight with the White House and that the secret, unprecedented (we think) raid on Associated Press records was something of a reprisal for not playing ball on the timing of the announcement.


Reporters are also familiar with deals cut on publicity lines. Campaigns and agencies often look to avoid having a partial story step on a larger announcement timed for maximal attention. It is far from uncommon to have a flack offer more details and special access in exchange for holding off just a bit longer.


But in those cases, the penalty for not doing the deal is professional. If a reporter won’t cut a deal, he or she can expect the cold shoulder on the next story. Then the reporter has to decide if the scoop is of a high enough value to risk future access. But that’s different than a direct reprisal.


The AP blew off the White House demand for a more beneficial release schedule and the AP ended up being the target of a massive Department of Justice data mining effort that has no doubt chilled many of the sources who provide the daily fodder for the agencies stories.


It would have been fine for the White House to have said the agency would be frozen out on future stories as punishment for not playing ball. But a massive records raid concerning a story that was part of a publicity spat looks dreadful.


The talking points from the administration now being repeated by friendly media outlets are that the president has just had a bit of an unlucky run on the scandal stuff – that he is a victim of coincidental, inevitable failures of a large and unwieldy federal bureaucracy and that Republicans are just piling on.


This echo chamber is hugely unhelpful to the administration. Now is the time to get serious, crack down and show the press and public that the president means business, especially on the AP dragnet and, most urgently, the targeting of the president’s opponents at the IRS.


Team Obama, as obsessed as ever with “winning the day” is trying to mitigate, downplay and move on. Most heinous of all the missteps here has been to treat the IRS scandal as some administrative kerfuffle.


As we learned yesterday, the guy who everyone thought was fired, wasn’t fired. He’s still on the job and will be for another week. The woman who formerly led the office at the center of the scandal has been tasked with enforcing the president’s health law, of all things. This reflects a lack of concern and a misunderstanding of the severity of this moment for the president.


Telling an anxious public that you’re working on it and are now ready to talk about economic stimulus policies and immigration is only going to make it worse. A slightly early retirement for a couple of bureaucrats is not going to cut it. The president’s adversaries were the victims here so he needs to do more than he would if it was his allies in the IRS crosshairs.


What has mostly worked on Benghazi – going slow and waiting for critics to overreach – will not work with the other two scandals. Convincing reporters and voters to take it easy on something that happened in Libya and is bound to be confusing and secretive is a lot easier than doing so on more straightforward stories about corruption in the IRS and bullying the press.


And Now, A Word From Charles

“The president's answer to that question, it was Clintonian. He was asked if anybody in the White House knew. He just said ‘I.’ He should have said ‘nobody knew.’ He said just ‘I.’ He didn't say when he was asked about the IRS actions, he didn't say ‘I didn't know about the IRS actions.’ He says ‘I didn't know about the IG report.’ If you didn't know about any of this and never heard any complaints, then he would have said I’ didn't know anything about this at all.’”

-- Charles Krauthammer on “Special Report with Bret Baier.”
Chris Stirewalt is digital politics editor for Fox News, and his POWER PLAY column appears Monday-Friday on FoxNews.com. Catch Chris Live online daily at 11:30amET at http:live.foxnews.com.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013...#ixzz2TZXtN1ze

[American Patriot]

Thus this was NOT about "National Security" it was about "Politics".

[American Patriot]

And it continues....


Fox News reporter under investigation... for trying to get information.


Originally published May 19, 2013 at 9:34 PM | Page modified May 20, 2013 at 6:53 AM Records give rare look at how feds probed one reporter

In 2009, the Justice Department did more than get a working journalist’s phone records in trying to find the source of classified information leaking out about North Korea.
By Ann E. Marimow





WASHINGTON —
When the Justice Department began investigating possible leaks of classified information about North Korea in 2009, investigators did more than obtain telephone records of a working journalist suspected of receiving the secret material.


They used security-badge access records to track the reporter’s comings and goings from the State Department, according to a newly obtained court affidavit. They traced the timing of his calls with a State Department security adviser suspected of sharing the classified report. They obtained a search warrant for the reporter’s personal emails.


The case of Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, the government adviser, and James Rosen, the chief Washington correspondent for Fox News, bears striking similarities to a sweeping leaks investigation disclosed last week in which federal investigators obtained records over two months of more than 20 telephone lines assigned to The Associated Press.


At a time when President Obama’s administration is under renewed scrutiny for an unprecedented number of leak investigations, the Kim case provides a rare glimpse into the inner workings of one such probe.


Court documents reveal how deeply investigators explored the private communications of a working journalist.


Obama last week defended the Justice Department’s handling of the investigation involving the AP, which is focused on who leaked information to the news organization about a foiled plot involving the al-Qaida affiliate in Yemen. AP executives and First Amendment watchdogs have criticized the Justice Department in part for the broad scope of the phone records it secretly subpoenaed.


“The latest events show an expansion of this law-enforcement technique,” said attorney Abbe Lowell, who is defending Kim on federal charges filed in 2010 that he disclosed national-defense information. A trial is tentatively scheduled for 2014.


The Kim case began in June 2009, when Rosen reported that U.S. intelligence officials were warning that North Korea was likely to respond to United Nations sanctions with more nuclear tests. The CIA had learned the information, Rosen wrote, from sources inside North Korea.


The story was published online the same day that a top-secret report was made available to a small circle within the intelligence community — including Kim, a State Department arms expert with security clearance.


The FBI used the security-badge data, phone records and email exchanges to build a case that Kim shared the report with Rosen soon after receiving it, records show.
In the documents, FBI agent Reginald Reyes described in detail how Kim and Rosen moved in and out of the State Department headquarters a few hours before the story was published June 11, 2009.


The court documents don’t name Rosen, but his identity was confirmed by several officials, and he is the author of the article at the center of the investigation. Rosen and a spokeswoman for Fox News did not return messages seeking comment.


Reyes wrote that there was evidence Rosen had broken the law, “at the very least, either as an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator.” That fact distinguishes his case from the probe of the AP, in which the news organization is not the likely target.


Using italics for emphasis, Reyes explained how Rosen allegedly used a “covert communications plan” and quoted from an email exchange between Rosen and Kim that seems to describe a secret system for passing information.


Court documents show abundant evidence gathered from Kim’s office computer and phone records, but investigators said they needed to go a step further to build their case, seizing two days’ worth of Rosen’s personal emails — and all of his email exchanges with Kim.


Privacy protections limit searching or seizing a reporter’s work, but not when there is evidence that the journalist broke the law against unauthorized leaks. A federal judge signed off on the search warrant.


In the hours before Rosen’s story was published, Kim was one of more than 95 people who saw the intelligence report through a classified database, according to court documents.


Kim’s phone records showed that seven calls lasting from 18 seconds to more than 11 minutes were placed between Kim’s desk telephone and Rosen’s cellphone and desk phone at the State Department, according to the court documents. Investigators pulled at least two months of phone records from Kim’s desk and found 36 calls with numbers associated with Rosen.


Investigators also scrutinized computer records and found that someone who had logged in with Kim’s user profile viewed the classified report “at or around” the same time two calls were placed from his desk phone to Rosen, according to the documents.


Two months later on an August evening, diplomatic security secretly entered Kim’s office and found a copy of Rosen’s article next to his computer.
Kim, who worked in a secure facility, was subject to daily office inspections.


The Fox News article was also in “plain view” during follow-up visits in late September.


Kim initially told the FBI in an interview that month that he had met the reporter in March but had not had contact since.


Later, Kim admitted to having additional contacts, according to the affidavit.

[American Patriot]

Justice Department obtained records of Fox News journalist

Published May 20, 2013
FoxNews.com

The Justice Department obtained a portfolio of information about a Fox News correspondent's conversations and visits as part of an investigation into a possible leak, The Washington Post reported Monday -- in the latest example of the government seizing records of journalists.


The information follows the charge that the department secretly obtained two months of phone records from Associated Press journalists as part of a separate leak probe.


In the case involving Fox News' James Rosen, a government adviser was accused of leaking information after a 2009 story was published online which said North Korea planned to respond to looming U.N. sanctions with another nuclear test.


The Post reported that federal investigators, in pursuing the case, obtained email records from Rosen -- but also records of his visits to the State Department headquarters by tracking security-badge information. According to the article, a court affidavit said they used the badge records to log his visits as well as the movements of the adviser, Stephen Jim-Woo Kim.


An FBI agent said in the affidavit that the visits suggested a "face-to-face" meeting.


The documents reportedly show investigators seized two days of Rosen's personal emails, including exchanges with Kim, as well as two months of phone records from Kim's office.


The seizure of records from the AP offices also spanned two months.


AP President Gary Pruitt said on CBS' "Face the Nation" Sunday that the AP records grab was not only unconstitutional but damaging to the operation of the press.


"It will hurt," he said. "We're already seeing some impact. Officials are saying they're reluctant to talk."

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013...#ixzz2TqgEAohB

[American Patriot]

James Rosen Of Fox News Was Spied On By Justice Department in 2009

• Maxime Fischer-Zernin
• in
• Politics,
• National Security
• 26 minutes ago

James Rosen Of Fox News Was Spied On By Justice Department in 2009



In the wake of last week's news that the Department of Justice subpoenaed personal and work telephone records from more than 20 Associated Press reporters, new reports have emerged claiming the Obama administration engaged in similarly questionable behavior in 2009 by tracking Fox News chief Washington correspondent James Rosen's emails concerning movements in the State Department following a leak of classified information about North Korea.


Although materially unrelated to the AP and IRS scandals, this latest incident is further evidence of a trend of targeting conservative groups and infringing upon the press's First Amendment rights in sweeping investigations of leaks under a president who once claimed he would lead "the most open and transparent [administration] in history."


The Washington Post's Ann E. Marimov outlines the scheme used by the DOJ to track down Jin-Woo Kim, the 2009 leaker: "The Justice Department used security badge access records to track the reporter’s comings and goings from the State Department … They traced the timing of his calls with a State Department security adviser suspected of sharing the classified report. They obtained a search warrant for the reporter’s personal emails."


The most controversial part of this latest revelation may be the insinuations that the press is somehow acting criminally in these leaks. The DOJ labeled Rosen a "co-conspirator”" because he arranged to receive the leaked material. This same logic was used by the prosecution in the Bradley Manning WikiLeaks case, who said that had he passed information to the New York Times instead of WikiLeaks, he would still be "aiding the enemy."


While it remains an open question as to whether the First Amendment gives a reporter legal protection when soliciting information. But the culture of secrecy and intimidation under the Obama administration, which has made more leak prosecutions than all previous administrations combined and recently acquired two months of AP records without even notifying the organization, has led some to say that Obama is impeding upon the press's right and duty to monitor the government.


The Justice Department received a warrant for Rosen's private emails, and in a statement said that it abided by DOJ policy and all applicable laws. The legality of the search, however, does not mean that this administration did not act inappropriately. As University of Chicago Law Professor Geoffrey Stone said before Congress "Over time, we have come to understand that these episodes [of government excessively impeding free discourse] from our past were grievous errors in judgment in which we allowed fear and anxiety to override our good judgment and our essential commitment to individual liberty and democratic self-governance."


In response to the Rosen and the AP controversies this week, the president is attempting to revive legislation that would create a federal media shield law giving journalists protections in keeping their sources and communications with their sources confidential. This shield law was originally negotiated between the media and White House in 2009, but was sidelined due to the WikiLeaks controversy. It remains very popular in the media, Congress, and White House. Attorney General Eric Holder said of this bill, introduced by Sen. Schumer of New York, that "The focus [of law enforcement] should be on those people who break their oath and put the American people at risk, not reporters who gather this information."


While it does not appear that Rosen was targeted due to his affiliation with Fox News, the combination of scandals from this past week have almost fully eroded the press’s trust in the White House, and the proposed shield law is only the first step in the lost trust of both the media and public.

[American Patriot]

Guess that didn't take long, from trying to destroy the Second Amendment to trying to destroy the First Amendment... JUST like we all predicted.

Obama spied on press more than all past administrations combined

May 20, 2013 by Michael Dorstewitz

The seizure of two months worth of telephone records from Associated Press reporters without notice is nothing new for the Obama administration. It’s been running roughshod over the press since the year Barack Obama assumed office.


Fox News chief Washington correspondent James Rosen. Photo credit twitter.com



A case in point is that of Fox News chief Washington correspondent James Rosen and his dealings with former State Department security advisor Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, uncovered by The Washington Post.


Trouble for Rosen began when he wrote that U.S. intelligence officials felt that North Korea’s response to U.N. sanctions would be yet more nuclear tests. The Justice Department surmised Rosen received that information from Kim.


In order to confirm this assumption, it seized Rosen’s phone records without notice or hearing. It also tracked the timing of the reporter’s State Department visits through his security badge records as well as the timing of his calls with Kim. They eventually secured a search warrant for Rosen’s personal emails.


“Search warrants like these have a severe chilling effect on the free flow of important information to the public,” said First Amendment lawyer Charles Tobin, according to the Post. “That’s a very dangerous road to go down.”


The Justice Department has been prosecuting a case against Kim on this matter since 2010. Kim’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said of the AP scandal, “The latest events show an expansion of this law enforcement technique. Individual reporters or small time periods have turned into 20 [telephone] lines and months of records with no obvious attempt to be targeted or narrow.”


In an affidavit included in the Kim case court documents, FBI agent Reginald Reyes wrote that Rosen had broken the law “at the very least, either as an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator.”


This is a bare assertion by the agent without referencing any authority. First Amendment freedom if the press guarantees would suggest otherwise.


Nevertheless, the Obama administration hasn’t just engaged in this and similar tactics against the press more than any other administration — it has done so more than all other administrations combined.

[American Patriot]

Saw this on FNC...

Brit Hume: ‘Chilling’ Search Of Fox Reporter Shows DOJ Treats ‘Ordinary News Gathering As Crime’

by Andrew Kirell | 11:45 am, May 20th, 2013 video » 4 comments








Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume had strong words to describe the news that his colleague James Rosen was subject to a federal leak investigation, telling America’s Newsroom that the story may indicate that the Obama Justice Department wants to treat ordinary news-gathering activities as a crime.


As we reported earlier this morning, Fox News’ chief Washington correspondent Rosen was investigated in 2009 after being suspected by Justice of receiving secret information from government sources on North Korea. As part of their investigation, Justice tracked his movements within the State Department, traced the timing of telephone calls with State Department sources, and obtained a warrant to search his personal emails.


Hume told Fox host Martha MacCallum that this procedure was “unusual” because, in this case, “the investigation spilled over into a search through Rosen’s personal emails.” In order to obtain those, the DOJ had to go to a judge to issue subpoenas for the emails by alleging that Rosen was “involved in a criminal conspiracy” of sorts.


If the DOJ believed that, Hume said, this means “the Obama-Holder Justice Department is now prepared to treat the ordinary news-gathering activities of reporters trying to seek information from government officials as a crime.”


“I’m not saying it’s unprecedented,” he cautioned, “but I can’t think of a case where that’s happened before… It takes the whole AP thing and casts a new light on the attitude of this Justice Department towards the news gathering activities of First Amendment-protected news organizations.”


Hume noted that the DOJ “probably had a right” to search Rosen’s movements within the State Department, given that is one of the purposes of having the access cards. However, “where this crosses a clear and bright line,” he said, “is when they subpoenaed the phone records based on a pretext that this activity was criminal.”


He reiterated: “That places this administration in the position of saying normal news gathering activities are criminal. That is chilling.”
Watch the segment below, via Fox News:
– –
>> Follow Andrew Kirell (@AndrewKirell) on Twitter



http://www.mediaite.com/tv/brit-hume...ring-as-crime/

[American Patriot]

BREAKING: WashPost Reports Obama DOJ Also Spied on James Rosen of Fox News

By Tim Graham | May 20, 2013 | 07:16 87 144 Reddit0 7

A A

The Washington Post on Monday reported that Obama’s Department of Justice was investigating journalists before they started wiretapping the Associated Press – for one, Fox News correspondent James Rosen in 2010. Their headline wasn't "Obama Team Also Spied on Fox News." Fox wasn't in the headline, on A-1 or on A-12, where the story continued.

Newly obtained court documents “reveal how deeply investigators explored the private communications of a working journalist — and raise the question of how often journalists have been investigated as closely as Rosen was in 2010.” Reporter Ann Marimow began:


When the Justice Department began investigating possible leaks of classified information about North Korea in 2009, investigators did more than obtain telephone records of a working journalist suspected of receiving the secret material.

They used security badge access records to track the reporter’s comings and goings from the State Department, according to a newly obtained court affidavit. They traced the timing of his calls with a State Department security adviser suspected of sharing the classified report. They obtained a search warrant for the reporter’s personal e-mails.

The case of Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, the government adviser, and James Rosen, the chief Washington correspondent for Fox News, bears striking similarities to a sweeping leaks investigation disclosed last week in which federal investigators obtained records over two months of more than 20 telephone lines assigned to the Associated Press.


The Kim case began in June 2009, when Rosen reported for Fox online that U.S. intelligence officials were warning that North Korea was likely to respond to United Nations sanctions with more nuclear tests. The CIA had learned the information, Rosen wrote, from sources inside North Korea.


The story was published the same day that a top-secret report was made available within a small group inside the intelligence community, including Kim, who at the time was a State Department arms expert with security clearance. "FBI investigators used the security-badge data, phone records and e-mail exchanges to build a case that Kim shared the report with Rosen soon after receiving it, court records show."


In the documents, FBI agent Reginald Reyes described in detail how Kim and Rosen moved in and out of the State Department headquarters at 2201 C St. NW a few hours before the story was published on June 11, 2009.

“Mr. Kim departed DoS at or around 12:02 p.m. followed shortly thereafter by the reporter at or around 12:03 p.m.,” Reyes wrote. Next, the agent said, “Mr. Kim returned to DoS at or around 12:26 p.m. followed shortly thereafter by the reporter at or around 12:30 p.m.”

The activity, Reyes wrote in an affidavit, suggested a “face-to-face” meeting between the two men. “Within a few hours after those nearly simultaneous exits and entries at DoS, the June 2009 article was published on the Internet,” he wrote.

The court documents don’t name Rosen, but his identity was confirmed by several officials, and he is the author of the article at the center of the investigation. Rosen and a spokeswoman for Fox News did not return phone and e-mail messages seeking comment.
The Post suggested that unlike the AP, Fox News was the likely target of the investigation:

Reyes wrote that there was evidence Rosen had broken the law, “at the very least, either as an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator.” That fact distinguishes his case from the probe of the AP, in which the news organization is not the likely target....

Privacy protections limit searching or seizing a reporter’s work, but not when there is evidence that the journalist broke the law against unauthorized leaks. A federal judge signed off on the search warrant — agreeing that there was probable cause that Rosen was a co-conspirator.

[U.S. Attorney Ronald] Machen’s office said in a statement that it is limited in commenting on an open case, but that the government “exhausted all reasonable non-media alternatives for collecting the evidence” before seeking a search warrant.

However, it remains an open question whether it’s ever illegal, given the First Amendment’s protection of press freedom, for a reporter to solicit information. No reporter, including Rosen, has been prosecuted for doing so.


The question now is whether other journalists will see Obama's Justice Department spying on Fox News as objectionable as spying on the Associated Press.


Perhaps the bland headlines meant to project Rosen as just another journalist on Obama's enemies list. The front-page headline was "Records offer rare glimpse at leak probe: Justice sought reporter's personal e-mails after N. Korea story in 2009." Inside the paper, the headline was simply "Badge data used to track reporter at State, records say."



Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-gra...#ixzz2TqjyHHnC

[American Patriot]

Remember when Fox News wasn’t ‘real news’?

By: David Harsanyi Follow @davidharsanyi
5/20/2013 11:50 AM
RESIZE: AAA

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We now know that the Justice Department kept exceptionally close tabs on Fox News reporter James Rosen in 2010, following his trips in and out of the State Department, hacking his personal emails and phone calls. Normal newsgathering activities are being treated as a criminal activity by the White House. But consider what the same White House had to say about Fox News back in 2009.
You might remember the concerted effort by White House officials to brand the right-leaning Fox News as a bogus news outlet, unworthy of attention. I’m not talking administration partners like Media Matters or Think Progress, but high ranking officials.
There was Anita Dunn, then communications director, who attempted to defang Fox coverage of the White House by claiming:

They are — they’re widely viewed as, you know, part of the Republican Party. Take their talking points and put them on the air. Take their opposition research and put them on the air, and that’s fine. But let’s not pretend they’re a news network the way CNN is.

(Does it really matter how Fox is “widely viewed” within the Beltway? Using Dunn’s formulation one could argue that network is actually more “widely viewed” by Americans than its competitors, giving it more legitimacy.)
Then there was White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who in a “State of the Union” interview with CNN’s John King, said: “It’s not a news organization so much as it has a perspective.” (see video below.)
White House senior adviser David Axelrod also claimed that Fox it “not really a news station” and that much of the programming is “not really news.”
“I’m not concerned,” Axelrod said on ABC’s “This Week” when George Stephanopoulos asked about the back-and-forth between the White House and Fox News.

Mr. [Rupert] Murdoch has a talent for making money, and I understand that their programming is geared toward making money. The only argument [White House communications director] Anita [Dunn] was making is that they’re not really a news station if you watch even — it’s not just their commentators, but a lot of their news programming.
“It’s really not news — it’s pushing a point of view. And the bigger thing is that other news organizations like yours ought not to treat them that way, and we’re not going to treat them that way. We’re going to appear on their shows. We’re going to participate but understanding that they represent a point of view.

My question is this: If Fox wasn’t real news — and any outlet displaying a right-of-center ideological disposition was to be treated as a Republican Party agent — why didn’t anyone inform the Department of Justice? Or, was Fox News targeted because it was viewed as a GOP mouthpiece?


http://www.humanevents.com/2013/05/2...cked-fox-news/

[MinutemanCO]

This is like a scandal-fueled belt fed machine gun. They're running and gunning. I think what we're witnessing, as all of you have already observed, is the fundamental transformation of a constitutional republic into a Marxist state, fast track. One scandal after another leading to (at least in this case) a comprehensive state run media service. What's next? Public executions?

[American Patriot]

I would expect them to start doing surreptitious arrests before they start publicly executing folks.

After all, at first it's MUCH easier to hide people than to kill them outright - because you can explain away an incarceration by making crap up. It's more difficult to explain to a family why a perfectly law-abiding citizen suddenly cease to live by government decree.

[MinutemanCO]

Perhaps poorly placed sarcasm on my part.

[American Patriot]

lol

No, I got it. I was merely pointing out that LOGICALLY they would do better to avoid public executions! haha

[Ryan Ruck]

This is like a scandal-fueled belt fed machine gun. They're running and gunning. I think what we're witnessing, as all of you have already observed, is the fundamental transformation of a constitutional republic into a Marxist state, fast track. One scandal after another leading to (at least in this case) a comprehensive state run media service. What's next? Public executions?

Well, in Russia, reporters tend to be very accident prone and victims of "violent crimes".

[American Patriot]

Sad thing about those reporters in Russia too. You know, they must not be very athletic or anything. Only the runts of the group get to be reporters - and man they die a lot....

[American Patriot]

Well, it appears the James Rosen story grew legs and they (the government) decided he was a criminal (co-conspirator, aider, abetter, etc) for "attempting to obtain information".

It seems to me that was precisely what the purpose of the media was - that is, "attempting to obtain information".

The news corporation has come out strongly against this and has vowed to defend Rosen no matter what.

Judge Napolitano is saying "There was no crime" but the government decided there was.