Posted on 05/13/2013 1:49:29 PM PDT by CWW
Edited on 05/13/2013 1:56:19 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative's top executive called a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into how news organizations gather the news.
The records obtained by the Justice Department listed 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, according to attorneys for the AP.
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.
In a letter of protest sent to Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday, AP President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt said the government sought and obtained information far beyond anything that could be justified by any specific investigation. He demanded 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 government would not say why it sought the records. U.S. officials have previously said in public testimony that the U.S. attorney in Washington is conducting a criminal investigation into who may have leaked information contained in a May 7, 2012, AP story about a foiled terror plot. The story disclosed details of a CIA operation in Yemen that stopped an al-Qaida plot in the spring of 2012 to detonate a bomb on an airplane bound for the United States.
Even now the White House is Hillary’s to lose in 2016 - if she can make Obama look like he’s universally corrupt it shifts the blame on Benghazi off of her and back to him, and there’ll be minimal loss in the ranks of those non-thinking Hillarybots who’ve been waiting to vote for her for going on a couple of decades now........
It's not an admin shot at AP.
Read my links about the horn-tootin' leaks back then concerning Yemen and see why the behavior of the admin then relates to the Obama admin's horn-tooting in the OBL raid and the utter lack of it in Benghazi.
Countless people were telling me that the White House was Hillary's to lose from about 2005 right up to when she lost the nomination in 2008.
JFK once said something along those lines:
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
You are correct. The reason AP phone records were sought by investigators because someone in the Obama White House, in trying to make the Prez look tough on terrorism did jhust what they did when OBl was killed- bragged. They leaked information obtained by the British the previous day, and couldn't keep their mouths shut about what they had been informed of in confidence. In patting themselves on the back for busting up a terrorist cell in Yemen, the Obama admin blew the cover off of a British-Saudi covert op against al Qaeda and the valuable British asset involved had to flee.
Yes, prescient words indeed. JFK's speech Here.
Nope. Not at all.
Tyranny is just reaching the next level of imposition.
Do you recall that after the Nazi Sturmabteilung (SA/Brownshirts)?
They were the pavers and protectors of Hitler's rise to power. They were the ones who protected the Nazis, terrorized any political opposition and intimidated the Jews and set up the pogroms to follow by preparing the German people to accept their criminalization.
Once they served their purpose, and Hitler saw them as a potential risk and rival, he ordered a 'blood purge" (night of long knives) in 1934 and threw them under the bus. Most of them were exterminated or imprisoned.
Methinks AP discovered the blueprints to their blood purge by Obama. All that remains now is Obama's order to carry it out.
And we may yet see that happen. We have a Marxist hell bent on our destruction running the office of the Presidency and the halls of power in the country.
Something like Shiite - Sunni infighting.....let the IED's commence.
“. . . the Admin wanted to find out the CIA’s sources in Yemen . . .”
Your conjecture about the narrative problem for Obama makes some sense. It would then dovetail with the motivation for the Benghazi coverup as well. “AQ has been vanquished by Obama thus ending the so-called War on Terror.”
What I then wonder about is who or what forced Machen’s hand to notify the AP that he had grabbed the phone records a year ago.
” . . . topic of the behind closed meeting . . .”
I think this is very plausible.
Voting poles...election night, one could use these phone numbers, the phone numbers that encompass every media outlet in the USA to intercept vote tallies?
Such a filter could effect the outcome of an election....
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Obama has been trying to throw both the CIA and the FBI under the bus. I think some of them may not like it.
This is a rough listing of the steps:
1. A British and Saudi led covert operation foiled an Al Qaeda shoe bomb plot in Yemen.
2. This information was given to the White House.
3. Someone in the White House decided that this could make Obama look good. That someone (or someone plural) decided to leak the information to the AP.
4. The AP publishes the information which causes the undercover British and Saudi assets to flee.
5. Someone in Obama/Holder’s Justice Department decides that it is so very important to find the leaker that they go after the phone records of the AP reporters to see whether they can find who leaked the information.
6. That someone in the Justice Department, evidently, is United States Attorney for the District of Columbia Ronald C. Machen Jr. appointed by Obama at the end of 2009.
7. All of this is occurring as Holder is desperately trying to keep Fast and Furious from harming Obama in any way, to the point that Holder is willing to subject himself to contempt of Congress charges. Holder’s loyalty to Obama cannot really be questioned.
8. None of this sees the light of day for over a year. Whoever in the White House leaked the information seems to have skated (maybe, but perhaps not). We have not been told that anyone has been fired or indicted for the breach of classified/sensitive information.
9. U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Ronald C. Machen then informs the AP that the Justice Department has collected the AP phone information.
10. The information about the phone call records comes out right in the middle of a several nasty scandals for the Obama administration.
Steps 1-4 I think follow in line with your thinking. Steps 5-10 are problematic. What am I missing? How would you describe steps 1-4 and what do you think steps 5-10 should be? How did we get to an Obama Justice Department appointee notifying the AP that the phone calls of AP reporters have been investigated?
Uh oh. They shouldn’t have went after their media allies.
I was thinking this also. If just one of these scandals/revelations is overblown or in error, the Obama administration will claim they all are and say that the republicans are on a witch hunt. Accordingly, the administration and the complicit media have bunched them together. Watch for the red herring- it's probably coming. After all, they've got to get all this crap out of the way before midterms elections.
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