DOJ Secretly Obtains Months Of AP Records; AP Condemns 'Unprecedented Intrusion'

[Soul Crusher]

http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-doj-ap-phones-2013-5


LOL!!!!  Obama plays dumb again.

[Soul Crusher]

Even John Stewart nailed Obama to the cross last night over this. 

[dario73]

Even John Stewart nailed Obama to the cross last night over this. 

Do you think Blacken or whork, aka the board's retards, will post a video of it? They post every other Stewart video supporting Obama.

[Soul Crusher]

Do you think Blacken or whork, aka the board's retards, will post a video of it? They post every other Stewart video supporting Obama.

Even some in the media are waking up to this vermin in the wh.

[Soul Crusher]

Inside the AP: Fear, determination
By: Dylan Byers and Katie Glueck
May 14, 2013 11:49 AM EDT
 
Reporters across The Associated Press are outraged over the Justice Department’s sweeping seizure of staff phone records - and they say such an intrusion could chill their relationships with confidential sources.

In conversations with POLITICO on Tuesday, several AP staffers in Washington, D.C., described feelings of anger and frustration with the DOJ and with the Obama administration in general.

“People are pretty mad — mad that government has not taken what we do seriously,” one reporter said on Tuesday. “When the news broke yesterday…people were outraged and disgusted. No one was yelling and screaming, but it was like, “Are you kidding me!?”

“People are ticked,” said another. “Everyone supports the reporters involved.”

(Also on POLITICO: Scandal politics sweep Capitol Hill)

The behind-the-scenes anger - and heads-down determination of the AP staff to keep doing their jobs amid the extraordinary public flap - comes as top executives from the wire service have mounted an aggressive public pushback against DOJ, calling its snooping a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” in a letter fired off to Attorney General Eric Holder. And yet something of a bunker-like atmosphere has taken hold at the AP in Washington with no bureau-wide meetings or announcements about the DOJ’s action, AP sources told POLITICO.

The AP employees interviewed by POLITICO did not want to be identified because, according to several sources, at least some journalists have been asked not to speak to the press.

“It’s a sensitive matter, our reporters aren’t giving interviews,” AP spokeswoman Erin Madigan told POLITICO when asked about the order.

(Also on POLITICO: Journalists fume over DOJ raid on AP)

Early Tuesday afternoon, an individual at the AP Washington bureau who identified himself as the facilities manager told POLITICO to stop questioning reporters outside the office and address questions to corporate communications. “You have to understand our position,” he said. “We have to have a clear and consistent message.”

The chief concern about the government probe, according to many of those journalists, is that the DOJ’s intrusion will compromise their relationships with confidential sources, some of whom now fear that their private correspondence could be obtained by the federal government.

“We all know that confidential sourcing is the lifeblood of what we do, and people can’t come to us if they think they’re going to be compromised,” one reporter said. “It’s hard enough getting sources, now we’re afraid this is going to have a chilling effect.”

“I had a source today who contacted me and joked about meeting on a park bench, but he was half-serious,” the reporter continued. “How bizarre would that be in 2013?”

(WATCH: AP exec editor: We're "distressed" DOJ seized records)

AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt described on Monday as a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” by the Justice Department. (Madigan said the company had nothing to add to yesterday’s statement.)


But reporters have not lost their resolve. If anything, they seem to feel invigorated.

“Nobody is downtrodden,” an AP reporter told POLITICO. “We really are just pushing ahead with our jobs. It’s not like we are all sitting around watching the front office meetings fretting about how we will go forward.”

The AP’s leadership has not addressed the newsroom yet. There have been no staff-wide meetings to discuss the nature of the Justice Department’s investigation, nor what the AP plans to do going forward.

“Today seemed kind of normal, we’re all working on chasing down the story,” said another reporter. “We’re kind of taking it in stride; we’re used to getting hit like this. We’re always working on stories with a degree of sensitivity.”

But both Pruitt and AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll have been very public in their opposition to the Justice Department’s move. DOJ has not disclosed its reasons for seeking the phone records, though it is believed to be in connection to a criminal investigation into the source for the AP’s May 7, 2012, story about the foiled “underwear bomber” plot.

In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday, Pruitt called the seizure of records “a serious interference with AP’s constitutional rights to gather and report the news.” On Tuesday, Carroll told MSNBC’s Morning Joe that the AP was “distressed” by the news.

Other members of the media have rallied to the AP’s defense as well.

“It’s chilling and they owe us an explanation,” NBC News Political Director and White House correspondent Chuck Todd said on Tuesday. “This is intimidation and that’s what it feels and looks like and unless they have a different explanation, there is no other conclusion to draw than a way to intimidate whistle blowers.”

“It is outrageous, totally inexcusable,” Carl Bernstein, the famous investigative reporter, said on MSNBC. “This administration has been terrible on this subject from the beginning. The object of it is to intimidate people who talk to reporters. This was an accident waiting to become a nuclear event and now it’s happened. There’s no excuse for it whatsoever. There’s no reason for this investigation, especially on this scale.”
 
© 2013 POLITICO LLC
 

[Skip8282]

Inside the AP: Fear, determination
By: Dylan Byers and Katie Glueck
May 14, 2013 11:49 AM EDT
 

 

Please, the only thing the AP is determined to do is get back on Obama's good side so they get right back on his cock.

[Soul Crusher]

Editorial
 
Spying on The Associated Press
 
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
 
Published: May 14, 2013 125 Comments
 

The Obama administration, which has a chilling zeal for investigating leaks and prosecuting leakers, has failed to offer a credible justification for secretly combing through the phone records of reporters and editors at The Associated Press in what looks like a fishing expedition for sources and an effort to frighten off whistle-blowers.
 
Justice Dept. Defends Seizure of Phone Records (May 15, 2013)



For Op-Ed, follow @nytopinion and to hear from the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, follow @andyrNYT.


On Friday, Justice Department officials revealed that they had been going through The A.P.’s records for months. The dragnet covered work, home and cellphone records used by almost 100 people at one of the oldest and most reputable news organizations. James Cole, a deputy attorney general, offered no further explanation on Tuesday, saying only that it was part of a “criminal investigation involving highly classified material” from early 2012.

Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. said he could not comment on the details of the phone records seizure, which he said was an open investigation — although he was happy to comment on the open investigation into the tax audits of conservative groups, which he said might have been criminal and were “certainly outrageous and unacceptable.”

Both Mr. Holder and Mr. Cole declared their commitment — and that of President Obama — to press freedoms. Mr. Cole said the administration does not “take lightly” such secretive trolling through media records.

We are not convinced. For more than 30 years, the news media and the government have used a well-honed system to balance the government’s need to pursue criminals or national security breaches with the media’s constitutional right to inform the public. This action against The A.P., as the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press outlined in a letter to Mr. Holder, “calls into question the very integrity” of the administration’s policy toward the press.

The records covered 20 phone lines, including main office phones in New York City, Washington, Hartford, and the Congressional press gallery. The guidelines for such subpoenas, first enacted in 1972, require that requests for media information be narrow. The reporters’ committee said this action is so broad that it allowed prosecutors to “plunder two months of news-gathering materials to seek information that might interest them.”

Mr. Holder said the leak under scrutiny, believed to be about the foiling of a terrorist plot in Yemen a year ago, “put the American people at risk,” although he did not say how, and the records sweep went far beyond any one news article. Gary Pruitt, the president of The A.P., said two months’ worth of records could provide a “road map” to its whole news-gathering operation.

Under the guidelines, the administration should have sought information from other sources. Mr. Cole said it did. But the administration made the troubling and discrediting decision not to inform The A.P. in advance. The guidelines require investigators to provide notice unless it would “pose a substantial threat to the integrity of the investigation.” That is intended to prevent destruction of evidence, an impossibility in this case.

The Obama administration has indicted six current and former officials under the Espionage Act, which had previously been used only three times since it was enacted in 1917. One, a former C.I.A. officer, pleaded guilty under another law for revealing the name of an agent who participated in the torture of a terrorist suspect. Meanwhile, President Obama decided not to investigate, much less prosecute, anyone who actually did the torturing.

The Justice Department is pursuing at least two major press investigations, including one believed to be focused on David Sanger’s reporting in a book and in The Times on an American-Israeli effort to sabotage Iranian nuclear works. These tactics will not scare us off, or The A.P., but they could reveal sources on other stories and frighten confidential contacts vital to coverage of government.


Meet The New York Times’s Editorial Board »

[Soul Crusher]

The Post’s View

Damage to press freedom likely outweighs national security gain

By Editorial Board,

Published: May 14



 WHEN THE Justice Department launched its investigation of alleged leaks of national security information by the Obama administration a year ago, we were skeptical. The history of such probes is mainly a tale of dead ends and unintended negative consequences. That this effort to criminalize a leak was launched amid an election-year uproar seemed especially inauspicious.

Our forebodings have been borne out with the revelation that federal prosecutors have undertaken a broad sweep of the Associated Press’s phone records. Whatever national-security enhancement this was intended to achieve seems likely to be outweighed by the damage to press freedom and governmental transparency.

Damage to press freedom likely outweighs national security gains.


The Justice Department’s apparent purpose is to track down the person or persons who told AP about the Central Intelligence Agency’s disruption of a Yemen-based terrorism plot. Federal prosecutors subpoenaed records for 20 separate office, home and cellular phone lines belonging to the AP and its reporters or editors. The subpoenas covered a two-month period in the first half of 2012. Crucially, they did not follow the usual Justice Department policy, which is to give news organizations a chance to negotiate or contest such a subpoena ahead of time.

That policy is rooted in sound respect for the First Amendment. It’s not legally binding — in part because the Justice Department and the press have recognized a mutual interest in resolving such matters without potentially counterproductive Congressional or judicial intervention.

In a letter to AP President and CEO Gary B. Pruitt yesterday, Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole explained that the department had no alternative means of gathering essential information. He also intimated that Justice had kept AP in the dark until a few days ago so as to avoid “a substantial threat to the integrity of the investigation.” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who recused himself from the investigation after he was interviewed by the FBI, fleshed that assertion out at a press conference Tuesday, saying at issue is one of “the top two or three most serious leaks that I have ever seen” which “put the American people at risk, and that is not hyperbole.”

Perhaps that’s so — we have no independent means of verifying Mr. Holder’s claim, though we hope reporters are working on it. As Mr. Pruitt responded Tuesday, “We held that story until the government assured us that the national security concerns had passed. Indeed, the White House was preparing to publicly announce that the bomb plot had been foiled.”The usual reason for keeping a subpoena secret is that the target would otherwise try to destroy documents. In this case, AP could not have done so even if it wanted to, since the relevant records were in the possession of its phone service providers. Without even giving AP a chance to weigh in, we don’t see how the department could intelligently weigh its prosecutorial needs against this broad subpoena’s chilling effect on reporters and their sources

Of course, if Justice Department officials are overreacting, they aren’t alone. The investigation of AP began in response to Republican outrage about the purported fact that White House officials were leaking secret information and spinning it to make President Obama look good for reelection purposes. In response, the Obama administration launched the present investigation, on top of the six (mostly unsuccessful) ones it had attempted previously — which, judging on costs and benefits visible to date, was probably six too many.

[Soul Crusher]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/15/obama-nixon-doj-ap-pentagon-papers_n_3278303.html



On Tuesday, White House spokesman Jay Carney batted away the notion that the Obama administration is behaving like Richard Nixon's.

"People who make those kinds of comparisons need to check their history," Carney said.

Try as he might, though, Carney has not been able to tamp down the idea that there is something "Nixonian" about the Justice Department's secret probe of the Associated Press.

Brian Williams, for example led off Tuesday's "NBC Nightly News" this way:

"As a lot of American adults not so fondly remember, the last time the government was found looking into the phone calls of reporters and using the IRS for political purposes, it was the Nixon era, and while times have changed and circumstances are different that subject came up at the Obama White House today as the administration now scrambles on several fronts."

Tuesday also saw james Goodale, who was the lawyer for the New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case, flatly say that Obama was worse than Nixon in his dealings with the press.

"Obama has all these things that he's done to the press on national security matters that Nixon never did," Goodale told the New York Observer.

Goodale also wrote a piece for the Daily Beast in which he drove the point home. He cited, among other things, Obama's unprecedented use of the Espionage Act to prosecute whistleblowers.




Obama, he said, "is fast becoming the worst national security press president ever, and it may not get any better."

The New York Times editorial board also weighed in on Tuesday night, harshly criticizing Obama:

The Obama administration, which has a chilling zeal for investigating leaks and prosecuting leakers, has failed to offer a credible justification for secretly combing through the phone records of reporters and editors at The Associated Press in what looks like a fishing expedition for sources and an effort to frighten off whistle-blowers.

[Soul Crusher]

Eric Holder's Justice Department Hammered By Democrats Over AP Subpoenas


Posted: 05/14/2013 5:37 pm EDT  |  Updated: 05/15/2013 10:12 am EDT




WASHINGTON -- Members of President Barack Obama's own party slammed his Justice Department's secret gathering of reporters' phone records as inexcusable and sickening on Tuesday, suggesting that Congress may have to act to protect the freedom of the press.

The Associated Press on Monday revealed that in April and May of last year, the Justice Department had seized phone records for at least six individual AP journalists and at least 20 AP phone lines, used by up to 100 reporters, as part of a leak investigation. Sally Buzbee, the AP's Washington bureau chief, was among those targeted.

AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt said the department's actions represented "a serious interference with the AP's constitutional rights to gather and report the news."

The leak investigation involved publicly revealed details of a thwarted terrorist attack, but even with the potential national security concerns, many Democrats were not giving the commander-in-chief or Attorney General Eric Holder the full benefit of the doubt.

"First let me say, it made me sick to my stomach how broad the subpoenas were," Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) told The Huffington Post. "I do think in fairness, which I know that journalists would want, I want to hear the rationale by the Department of Justice, and I want to hear the explanation. But I think under any scenario, it would appear to have a chilling effect."

"I have trouble defending what the Justice Department did," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters on Capitol Hill. "I really believe in the First Amendment. I think it's one of the great things we have as a country. I don't know who did it, why it was done, but it's inexcusable. There's no way to justify this."

Reid added that he would "look further into whether more legislative action is needed in this regard to secure freedom of the press."


Asked if Holder's claims that national security justified the secret subpoenas mattered, Reid said bluntly, "No."

"I think someone from the Justice Department could have gone to the AP and said, 'Will you help us with this?' If they said no, fine, then they could have maybe gone a step further, but I don't think this is fair to just start subpoenaing records," said Reid.

"In my career, I've stood consistently for freedom of the press from encroachment by the national security community. I'm gonna continue to do that," he added.

Other Senate Democrats were just as quick to condemn the Justice Department's actions, while demanding an explanation.

Sen. Dick Durbin, the chamber's No. 2 Democrat, said he was "troubled" by the news. "This really goes into an area of constitutional protection," he said in a response to a question from HuffPost. "Obviously I knew nothing about this. I would certainly like to hear the administration's rationale."

Durbin added that the administration was dabbling in a "delicate area."

"We're talking about national security, we're talking about classified information, protecting sources who may be risking their lives to help us," he said. "And that's up against the principle of freedom of the press."

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) told HuffPost that the matter warranted further investigation, but declined to comment on what steps should be taken absent more information about the circumstances of the probe. "[I'm] very, very concerned about it. [We] need to get more information, but it causes a significant and grave concern," he said.

"I think it's important to try and keep security leaks from occurring, and that was the context in which this occurred," Kaine added. "That is a very important and serious thing when security leaks occur, but going after the records of the press makes me very, very worried."

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was among the few senators of either party who refused to go after the Justice Department just yet. "I want to see the details -- what was their rationale, why did they do it -- before offering an opinion," he told reporters. "For me to rush to a judgment without knowing all the facts is just not appropriate."

Some Democrats pointed out that Republicans like McCain might be hesitant to criticize Holder because last year many of them called for an investigation into who was behind national security leaks to the press.

"Ironically, some of my Republican colleagues were calling on the Department of Justice to get the leakers, go after the leakers," McCaskill said. "If this was classified information that was leaked, most of the Republicans have been saying for a long time, 'You need to go after people who leak classified information.'"

[Soul Crusher]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/15/eric-holder-records_n_3278841.html

WTF! 




Amid an unprecedented effort by the Obama administration to crack down on leaks of classified information, Attorney General Eric Holder on Tuesday said he was unsure how many times he'd signed off on subpoenas to seize reporter records.

"I'm not sure how many of those cases that I have actually signed off on," Holder told NPR's Carrie Johnson. "I take them very seriously. I know that I have refused to sign a few, pushed a few back for modifications."

The comments from Holder are bound to stir up additional criticism of the Obama administration's approach to First Amendment protections for reporters. The president and his staff are already under intense scrutiny over the Department of Justice's decision to subpoena the phone records for over 100 journalists at the Associated Press. That Holder could not recall how many times he has done something similar in the past will only fan those flames.

Holder revealed Tuesday that he had recused himself from an FBI investigation into the alleged leak of classified intelligence to the AP. The leak revealed a would-be suicide bomber who was also a CIA undercover agent. The department seized records for more than 20 phone lines from AP offices in Washington, New York and Hartford, Conn., from April 2012 and May 2012.

Holder, in his press conference, remained vague about the scope of the subpoenas. "The people who are involved in this investigation who I’ve known for a great many years and who I’ve worked with for a great many years followed all the appropriate Justice Department regulations and did things according to DOJ rules,” he said. “Based on the people that I know -- I don’t know about the facts -- but based on the people that I know, I think that subpoena was done in accordance with DOJ regs."

 

[Soul Crusher]

Holder Isn't Sure How Often Reporters' Records Are Seized

by Mark Memmott

May 15, 2013 7:00 AM


http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/05/15/184138253/holder-isnt-sure-how-often-reporters-records-are-seized?ft=1&f=1001





From 'Morning Edition': Attorney Gen. Eric Holder talks with NPR's Carrie Johnson

As his Justice Department faces bipartisan outrage for searching phone records of Associated Press reporters and editors, Attorney Gen. Eric Holder says he is not sure how many times such information has been seized by government investigators in the four years he's led Justice.

During an interview with NPR's Carrie Johnson on Tuesday, Holder was asked how often his department has obtained such records of journalists' work.

"I'm not sure how many of those cases ... I have actually signed off on," Holder said. "I take them very seriously. I know that I have refused to sign a few [and] pushed a few back for modifications."

On Morning Edition, Carrie added that Holder declined to say whether there will be a review of the Justice Department's policy on searches of reporters' records.

Tuesday, NPR and other media organizations joined in a letter sent to Holder by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. In it, the news outlets ask that the Justice Department:

— "Immediately return the telephone toll records obtained and destroy all copies, as requested by The Associated Press."

— "Announce whether it has served any other pending news media-related subpoenas that have not yet been disclosed."

At a news conference Tuesday, Holder said the AP records were seized as part of an investigation into leaks about a CIA operation in Yemen that stopped an airliner bombing plot.

He will be asked about the search of the reporters' phone logs at a House Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday afternoon. Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., says "Congress and the American people expect answers and accountability."

Holder will also be questioned about the Justice Department's plan to investigate whether IRS personnel broke any laws when they gave extra scrutiny to some conservative groups' applications for tax exempt status.

Related posts from It's All Politics:

— Goodbye, Again, To Obama's Most Audacious Hope.

— Controversies Risk Starving Obama's Agenda Of Air.

[Soul Crusher]

James Cole Authorized AP Subpoenas, Eric Holder Confirms


Posted: 05/15/2013 3:09 pm EDT  |  Updated: 05/15/2013 5:07 pm EDT



 Deputy Attorney General James Cole attends a Martin Luther King Jr. commemorative event at the Justice Department on Jan. 11, 2011, in Washington. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)


Attorney General Eric Holder confirmed Wednesday that Deputy Attorney General James Cole, a longtime friend of Holder's and the number two official at the Justice Department, signed off on subpoenaing a wide range of Associated Press phone records.

Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, Holder at first said he had to "assume" that Cole signed off on the subpoenas, which came out of an investigation run from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia. But after being handed a note from an aide, Holder said he could confirm that Cole was responsible for signing off on the subpoenas because Holder had recused himself from the investigation into a leak about an undercover al Qaeda sting involving the CIA.

The AP had revealed Monday that the Justice Department informed the news organization last week that it had obtained phone records for more than 20 different AP phone lines over the course of a two-month period last year.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said the AP subpoenas appeared to be "very broad" and described the panel as anxious for an explanation. Several committee members from both sides of the aisle pressed Holder on the issue.

Holder, for his part, pledged an "after-action" review of the AP subpoena process because of the amount of attention and criticism the decision has received. It's unclear when the leak investigation will end, so such a review could be months, or even years, down the line.

In a press briefing Tuesday, Holder noted that he had recused himself from that leak investigation. In an interview with NPR the same day, the attorney general said he didn't know how many times he had otherwise signed off on subpoenaing journalists or their phone records, but said he had rejected a number of requests and required others to be modified.

Also on Tuesday, Cole wrote a letter to the AP justifying the subpoenas as "limited in both time and scope." Cole was appointed deputy attorney general in late 2010 through a recess appointment and was confirmed after a tough battle in the summer of 2011.


Holder confirmed during his testimony Wednesday that the Obama administration is backing a federal press shield law that would provide greater protections for reporters who refuse to provide information on confidential sources. He said he didn't support going after journalists or news outlets for publishing information.

"The focus should be on those people who break their oaths and put the American people at risk, not the reporters who gather this information," Holder said.

This story has been updated with Eric Holder's comments on a proposed federal press shield law.



________________________ _____________



Yeah and holder did not know,   LMFAO!!!!

[Soul Crusher]

Holder: No Written Recusal on AP Phone Record Grab
 Breitbart ^ | May 15, 2013 | Matthew Boyle

Posted on Wednesday, May 15, 2013 5:27:20 PM by LucianOfSamasota

During his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Attorney General Eric Holder said there is nothing in writing verifying he actually recused himself from the Associated Press phone records seizure scandal.

“We looked,” Holder said when being questioned by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA). “I don’t think there is anything in writing with regard to my recusal.”

Lofgren was asking Holder to explain why Deputy Attorney General James Cole had the authority to authorize the subpoena to secretly seize phone records of at least 20 AP reporters and editors over a two month period when federal code requires the Attorney General himself to sign off on such a subpoena.

Holder said that upon his recusal, the power was technically delegated to Cole, who became the acting Attorney General on this investigation.

But later in the hearing, during questioning from Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), Holder said he does not remember when he recused himself. “I’m not sure,” Holder answered when Smith asked him on which date he recused himself. “I think it was the beginning of – I don’t know exactly when. Holder said the only person he told he told about his recusal was Cole. When Smith asked whether he did that “formally, or in writing,” Holder replied “no.”


(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...

[Skip8282]

So, we've now got a DOJ who can't police themselves going out and policing the IRS.

lol...what a fucking comedy fest.

[Soul Crusher]

So, we've now got a DOJ who can't police themselves going out and policing the IRS.

lol...what a fucking comedy fest.

And soon to be enforcing Obamacare!

[Skip8282]

And soon to be enforcing Obamacare!

Oh hell it's easy now.  They'll just claim that failure to implement Obamacare jeopardizes our National Security so they're justified in doing anything they want. 

[Soul Crusher]

Oh hell it's easy now.  They'll just claim that failure to implement Obamacare jeopardizes our National Security so they're justified in doing anything they want. 

death panels

[Soul Crusher]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/16/jake-tapper-obama-leaks-ap_n_3287454.html


tells it like it is

[Dos Equis]

My question is this:  if the were leaks coming from the Obama administration, why didn't he get his own friggin house in order instead of spying on the AP? 

[Soul Crusher]

My question is this:  if the were leaks coming from the Obama administration, why didn't he get his own friggin house in order instead of spying on the AP? 

Because that is what obama does - blame everyone else for his failures and divide and conquer

[Soul Crusher]

Some question whether AP leak on al-Qaeda plot put U.S. at risk
By Carol D. Leonnig and Julie Tate, Published: May 15
For five days, reporters at the Associated Press had been sitting on a big scoop about a foiled al-Qaeda plot at the request of CIA officials. Then, in a hastily scheduled Monday morning meeting, the journalists were asked by agency officials to hold off on publishing the story for just one more day.

The CIA officials, who had initially cited national security concerns in an attempt to delay publication, no longer had those worries, according to individuals familiar with the exchange. Instead, the Obama administration was planning to announce the successful counterterrorism operation that Tuesday.

AP balked and proceeded to publish that Monday afternoon. Its May 2012 report is now at the center of a controversial and broad seizure of phone records of AP reporters’ home, office and cellphone lines. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said the unauthorized disclosure about an intelligence operation to stop al-Qaeda from detonating explosives aboard a U.S. airliner was among the most serious leaks he could remember, and justified secretly obtaining records from a handful of reporters and editors over a span of two months.

Now, some members of Congress and media advocates are questioning why the administration viewed the leak that led to the May 7 AP story as so grave.

The president’s top counterterrorism adviser at the time, John O. Brennan, had appeared on “Good Morning America” the following day to trumpet the successful operation. He said that because of the work of U.S. intelligence, the plot did not pose an active threat to the American public.

Holder said this week that the unauthorized disclosure “put the American people at risk.”

The White House and CIA declined to comment for this article. But former White House national security spokesman Tommy Vietor, recalling the discussion in the administration last year, said officials were simply realistic in their response to AP’s story. They knew that if it were published, the White House would have to address it with an official, detailed statement.

“There was not some press conference planned to take credit for this,” Vietor said in an interview. “There was certainly an understanding [that] we’d have to mitigate and triage this and offer context for other reporters.”

AP’s story about the foiled plot was at odds with the calming message the White House had been conveying on the eve of the first anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden. On April 30, the Department of Homeland Security issued a statement saying that there was “no indication of any specific, credible threats or plots against the US tied to the one-year anniversary of Bin Laden’s death.”

AP reporters had learned in the spring of 2012 that the CIA had infiltrated the al-Qaeda branch behind the plot, according to the individuals familiar with the story, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak for the record. The plot centered on an attempt to get a bomb into an assailant’s underwear, like the bomb that failed to detonate on a Christmas Day 2009 flight to Detroit.

The news service was prepared to publish its scoop on May 2, 2012. But in discussions with government officials, the CIA stressed to AP that publishing anything about the operation to obtain the bomb and thwart the plot would create grave national security dangers and compromise a “sensitive intelligence operation.”

Michael J. Morell, the CIA’s deputy director, gave AP reporters some additional background information to persuade them to hold off, Vietor said. The agency needed several days more to protect what it had in the works.

Then, in a meeting on Monday, May 7, CIA officials reported that the national security concerns were “no longer an issue,” according to the individuals familiar with the discussion.

When the journalists rejected a plea to hold off longer, the CIA then offered a compromise. Would they wait a day if AP could have the story exclusively for an hour, with no government officials confirming it for that time?

The reporters left the meeting to discuss the idea with their editors. Within an hour, an administration official was on the line to AP’s offices.

The White House had quashed the one-hour offer as impossible. AP could have the story exclusively for five minutes before the White House made its own announcement. AP then rejected the request to postpone publication any longer.

An AP spokeswoman declined to discuss details of the meeting, AP discussions with government sources or the agencies to which the reporters spoke.

“As we told Reuters a year ago, at no point did AP offer or propose a deal in relation to this story,” said spokeswoman Erin Madigan White. “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.”

Vietor said that it would be a mistake to dismiss the unauthorized disclosure because al-Qaeda failed to carry out its plot.

“We shouldn’t pretend that this leak of an unbelievably sensitive dangerous piece of information is okay because nobody died,” he said.



Sari Horwitz contributed to this report.

Discuss this topic and other political issues in the politics discussion forums.


© The Washington Post Company

[Soul Crusher]

Five questions about the AP surveillance
 

By Jennifer Rubin, Published: May 17, 2013 at 10:45 amE-mail the writer




























Attorney General Eric Holder- J.Scott Applewhite/A.P.
 
As is their pattern, defenders of the president offer a straw man in regard to the subpoena of Associated Press phone records:  Shouldn’t we investigate leaks?
 
Duh, yes. The entire question, however, revolves around the extent of the probe and its necessity. Only the Richard Nixon fan club would argue, for example, that it is okay to willy-nilly conduct surveillance of the press on a leak that wasn’t actually a threat to national security.
 
The AP issue revolves around several issues.
 
Did the AP endanger national security?
 
The Post reported:
 

For five days, reporters at the Associated Press had been sitting on a big scoop about a foiled al-Qaeda plot at the request of CIA officials. Then, in a hastily scheduled Monday morning meeting, the journalists were asked by agency officials to hold off on publishing the story for just one more day.
 
The CIA officials, who had initially cited national security concerns in an attempt to delay publication, no longer had those worries, according to individuals familiar with the exchange. Instead, the Obama administration was planning to announce the successful counterterrorism operation that Tuesday.
 
In this vein the investigation looks like a peevish retaliation against the A.P. for ruining the administration’s bragging when it finally published after the all-clear advisory. It looks even worse for the administration when you consider:
 
When the journalists rejected a plea to hold off longer, the CIA then offered a compromise. Would they wait a day if AP could have the story exclusively for an hour, with no government officials confirming it for that time?
 
The reporters left the meeting to discuss the idea with their editors. Within an hour, an administration official was on the line to AP’s offices.
 
The White House had quashed the one-hour offer as impossible. AP could have the story exclusively for five minutes before the White House made its own announcement. AP then rejected the request to postpone publication any longer.
 
Under these circumstances, it is hard to believe that the AP’s release of the story on Monday threatened national security. In fact, the news organization was explicitly told at that point that it did not. Foiling the ability of the administration to chest-thump is not the same as endangering national security.




 
What direction did the White House give?
 
We know this administration is leak-obsessed. It has prosecuted more leaks than any administration while self-leaking favorable data on the Osama bin Laden assassination to the dismay of then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Was there a standing order (or one given in this case) to go after leaks without regard to First Amendment concerns and in contravention of standing Department of Justice rules for limiting the scope of investigations invading reporters’ privacy? Did the president ever make clear (as he has in self-serving speeches after the fact) that there had to be a balance between First Amendment rights and national security?
 
What’s up with Eric Holder?
 
He needs to fess up about what actions he took before allegedly recusing himself, whom he put in charge, what direction that person was given, how others in DOJ were made aware of the recusal and whether that recusal was compromised in any way.
 
What was the deputy attorney general James Cole thinking?
 
As detailed in their letter to Cole and Holder, about 50 news organizations assert that DOJ did not follow legal guidelines on investigations that impair First Amendment rights:
 
Subpoenas of the news media for testimony and evidence are governed by the Attorney General’s guidelines found at 28 C.F.R. § 50.10 and incorporated into the U.S. Attorney’s Manual (See § 9-13.400). These guidelines were enacted in 1972 and were expanded specifically to cover telephone records in 1980. They were developed to accommodate both the interests of the government in prosecuting crime and the First Amendment interests in reporting on issues of public concern. We know this to be true because the Reporters Committee played a role in their promulgation. In this instance, where the department subpoenaed two months of records related to 20 telephone lines, including records from major AP bureaus and the home phone and cellphone records of individual journalists, the department appears to have ignored or brushed aside almost every aspect of the guidelines.
 
The news organizations then detailed the ways in which the A.P. investigation did not conform to the guidelines designed to protect the First Amendment. Cole’s reply was as amateurish as it was unilluminating. He claims narrowing the time period to two months was sufficient. He said the massive surveillance was taken after 550 interviews, but says he can’t say anything more. Why should we trust him? His squirrely response includes no mention of the negotiation with the AP described above.
 
With whom did Cole consult, and did the White House have knowledge about spying on the AP?
 
It is hard to fathom that a deputy attorney general would take on an unprecedented intrusion into a news organization on his own without consulting anyone. It is important to know with whom he consulted and if any political appointees inside or outside of the DOJ were involved.
 
The Justice Department obviously can’t and won’t investigate itself. This is precisely the reason for an independent prosecutor to be appointed. Otherwise a gross abuse of power and Holder’s own testimony can’t be investigated.
 
Congress can certainly conduct hearings, but I suspect Holder et. al won’t cooperate.
 
There is another way of getting at this: Sue the Justice Department. That’s right. In the Bivens case from 1971, the Supreme Court found there was an implied right of action for individuals to sue authorities who violated their Fourth Amendment rights. Bivens was subsequently held to apply to a variety of other constitutional violations, including the First Amendment. This is precisely the sort of case in which a Bivens action against Holder, Cole and/or others can be used both to remedy the wrong done to the AP and its employees and to conduct discovery into what occurred. I am sure attorneys would line up around the block to take the case pro bono.
 
In short, the AP case is serious and an affront to a free press. If the president won’t appoint a prosecutor independent from the Justice Department and won’t cooperate with Congress, the AP and/or the affected reporters and editors should take to the courts. Indeed, I would suggest it is their ethical obligation to do so.

[Dos Equis]

Question 6:  Why didn't the White House find the person in their own backyard who leaked info? 

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Question 6:  Why didn't the White House find the person in their own backyard who leaked info? 

This is par for the course.  The reason I'm not big on all the TSA crap.  If they kind hide behind the National Security moniker for minutiae, then they can hide behind it for this.  And then nothing ever has to be explained.  It's always gonna be, you just have to 'trust' us.

In many aspects of NS, that's fine, but they need to give a much better justification and explanation as to how the American people were in such jeopardy.