Posted on 05/13/2013 5:24:46 PM PDT by Nachum
Edited on 05/13/2013 5:40:13 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
May 13, 2013
Attorney General Eric Holder
Department of Justice Washington, D . C .
Dear General Holder :
I am writing to object in the strongest possible terms to a massive and unprecedented intrusion by the Department of Justice into the newsgathering activities of The Associated Press.
Last Friday afternoon, AP General Counsel Laura Malone received a letter from the office of United States Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. advisin g that, at some unidentified time earlier this year, the Department obtained telephone toll records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to the AP and its journalists. The records that were secretly obtained cover a full two month period in early 2012 and, at least as described in Mr. Machen’s letter, include all such records for, among other phone lines, an AP general phone number in New York City as well as AP bureaus in New York City, Washington, D.C., Hartford, Connecticut, and at the House of Representatives. This action was taken without advance notice to AP or to any of the affected journalists, and even after the fact no notice has been sent to individual journalists whose home phones and cell phone records were seized by the Department.
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.
That the Department underto ok this unprecedented step without providing any notice to the AP, and without taking any steps to narrow the scope of its subpoenas to matters actually relevant to an ongoing investigation, is particularly troubling.
The sheer volume of records obtained, most of which can have no plausible connection to any ongoing investigation, indicates, at a minimum, that this effort did not comply with 28 C.F.R. §50.10 and should therefore never have been undertaken in the first place. The regulations require that, i n all cases and without exception, a subpoena for a reporter’s telephone toll records must be “as narrowly drawn as possible.’’ This plainly did not happen.
We regard this action by the Department of Justice as a serious interference with AP’s constitutional rights to gather and report the news. While we evaluate our options we urgently request that you immediately return to the AP the telephone toll records that the Department subpoenaed and destroy all copies. At a minimum, we request that you take steps to segregate these records and prohibit any reference to them pending further discussion and, if it proves necessary, guidance from appropriate judicial authorities. We also ask for an immediate explanation as to why this extraordinary action w as taken, and a description of the steps the Department will take to mitigate its impact on AP and its reporters.
Given the gravity of this situation, I look forward to your prompt response.
Sincerely,
Gary Pruitt
What you missed: An open/pubblic warning to the rest of the media. Comply or be audited. But The Limbaugh Rule applies. They overreached. Arrogance at it’s finest.
They think they can act with immunity now.
[What are you talking about?]
This gets a little complicated.
Nachum had trouble posting the article because it came from a .pdf. (Note: the post has now been repaired, “So what difference does it make? :)
Hot Tobasco made a snide remark about the formatting.
Knowing how hard it is to cut and paste a .pdf file, I suggested to HT that s/he try it.
You posted about pasting the .pdf to the desktop to make it easier.
All these posts were to me when they really should have been to nachum. That’s where my post #112 came from.
Ok, so they send a letter to let ‘em know the tapped phones, even though it is not legal, and hope the ap just rolls with it? I guess considering the state of our media, anything is possible.
It still doesn’t add up, for me. Maybe it’s a message to the whistleblowers by proxy. To let them know they are being tapped?
What a sick and demented bunch of freaks we have running the country. Just so ridiculous.
Okay. Just so you know, you save it, not paste it, to your desktop or wherever. Then open that, copy and paste.
Now I sent you more stuff that Nachum could use. :)
Without any real outrage, all this will do is to keep every other journalist in line.
I’ve so stolen the WH pic.
It's OK.
I'm sure that the Just-Us Dept. is an independent entity, just like the IRS.
Never nothing to do with the brutal deaths of four Americansneglect the arms running to Al Qaeda.
Never neglect the arms running to Al Qaeda.
Put down the Math Books and head to the nearest bar, fast!
I operate (with these idiots) under the theory that the most asinine thing possible is likely mainstream Democrat ‘logic’
I have yet to be disappointed. In fact, they usually commit an act far more insane than anything I imagine.
Holy moly. Really? The Associate Press? Wow.
It more like recursive function calls of ‘theres’ in perl or Java.
I'm older than dirt - we don't need no stinkin' line numbers....
DO
READ(*,*) x
y = x*x
z = x*x*x
WRITE(*,*) x, ' square = ', y, ' cube = ', z
END DO
I’m going to be really interested in Rush’s take on this tomorrow.
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