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 outgoing calls
for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, for
general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn.,
and for the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press
gallery, according to attorneys for the AP. It was not clear if the
records also included incoming calls or the duration of the calls.
In all, the government seized the 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 where 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. Officials
have previously said in public testimony that the U.S. attorney in
Washington is conducting a criminal investigation into who may have
provided 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. (Continues at AP)
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