With
the AP scandal brewing, will Attorney General Eric Holder last the summer?
The DOJ appears to have broken all the rules — political, legal and ethical — of tracking down a government source of a leak. They spread a wide net, subpoenaing two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for the Associated Press.
. Mistake one: No one casts a net this wide in a search for the source of national security leaks, and even more amazingly some judge signed off on it. It is a fishing expedition that also collected phone numbers of people who AP reporters might have contacted for stories that are totally unrelated to this particular government leak. That is unacceptable and raises privacy concerns for reporters and lots of people whose only involvement is an unrelated chat with a reporter.
Mistake two: By targeting the press, the DOJ is using a third party (one that has Constitutional protections) to find the government leaker, or at the very least, intimidate others within government from sharing information with the press. I’m not saying that the press has a right to classified information. However, this is the lazy man’s investigation, one that should have stayed within the walls of the government and within much narrower guidelines.
Mistake three: Generally, law enforcement makes an effort to obtain reporters’ notes or conversations. This requires notifying the news organization — which rightly would respond “none of your business.” This would be a straight-forward request that would be answered with a straight-forward rejection. Then the government would have to decide whether they should wage a court battle.
The best I can tell, the AP learned of the probe into phone records after the fact, and the reason is the government cited an overly broad exemption that allows the government to delay notification if early notification might negatively impact the investigation.
Mistake four: Did Holder sign off on this tactic? If he did, he made a ridiculously bad decision. And if he didn’t, he still bears responsibility because the buck stops at the desk of the guy at the top, i.e., the attorney general.
Mistake five: This is less a matter of Holder and more a matter of the laws put into place after Sept. 11, 2001. The government has far greater access to phone and Internet records than most Americans imagine, and the phone companies are in a odd place — the extent to which they cooperate on records requests from law enforcement or protect customer privacy. As I recall, Congress even immunized the carriers from liability if the attorney general asserted that the companies were assisting a vital government investigation. My guess is the DOJ stretched the definition almost to the breaking point.
The buck has to stop with Holder.
http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/2013/05/with-the-ap-scandal-brewing-will-attorney-general-eric-holder-last-the-summer.html/
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