Thread: Obama owes explanation for media snooping

Obama owes explanation for media snooping


Constitution expert blasts White House's unprecedented war on journalists



Famed constitutional attorney Floyd Abrams is deeply troubled by the Justice Department’s controversial seizure of Associated Press phone records and the targeting of a Fox News reporter as a criminal, and he says the White House reaction to the stories is woefully insufficient.
In his lengthy career of trying First Amendment cases, Abrams defended the publishers of the Pentagon Papers, Al Franken against the Fox News Channel and tobacco companies against the Food and Drug Administration.
The Justice Department is under heavy scrutiny for seizing phone records for more than 20 phone lines connected to Associated Press reporters without trying to secure cooperation from AP in the first place. Days later, it was revealed that James Rosen of Fox News was branded a criminal and a co-conspirator in a State Department leak over a story on North Korea.
Abrams said there is always a tension between the prying role of the press and the protecting role of the government, but he believes the recently revealed actions of the Justice Department go beyond previous federal attempts to limit information seen by the public.
“The notion that in the name of finding out who leaked information that more or less anything goes in an effort to find that out. That’s something new. That sort of breaches the wall that has historically existed,” Abrams told WND. “It’s a new and troubling development.”
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney responded to both the Associated Press and Rosen stories by saying the administration respects the right of an unfettered press to pursue stories but that there needs to be a balance with national security concerns. While he’s optimistic that federal officials will shape up as a result of these controversies, Abrams said the reaction from the White House is less than reassuring.
“Yeah, I mean that’s true that you need a balance and it’s true, of course national security matters a lot, a lot, a lot. The fact is it’s just not an answer to what they’ve done. They can protect national security by giving AP notice in advance and letting them go to court and fight it out. They can protect national security without defaming and branding journalists as criminals,” he said. “I think they’ve got to lighten up a little bit and be a little more realistic about the proposition that leak investigations are not the single greatest priority of any administration, or they shouldn’t be.”
According to Abrams, leak investigations are often justified, but the Justice Department made a big mistake by never trying to solicit cooperation from the AP.
“As a general proposition, you’ve got to tell the press organization. You’ve got to talk to them. You have to try to come to some sort of agreement,” Abrams said. “If you can’t, and I don’t think they could have here, that gives the press organization a chance to go to court and have a judge decide how to weigh this factor and that factor, you know how much does the government need it as against what is the intrusion into the freedom of the press.
“I do fault the Justice Department for not giving them notice, for not giving them a chance to go to court. The only possible justification that I can think of, certainly on the record here, is that the department said they were doing it because it would interfere with the investigation. I don’t know how. I’m not persuaded of that at all,” he said.
His skepticism was bolstered by subsequent reporting that the Associated Press honored CIA requests to hold the story on a terrorist plot to bomb an airliner out of Yemen near the one-year anniversary of the mission that killed Osama bin Laden. The AP honored that request and held the story until the CIA confirmed the security threat had passed. The Obama administration then requested a delay of another day so it could break the news. The organization rejected that request and ran the story ahead of the White House announcement.
“The AP really played by the rules, and by the rules I mean the responsible rule of journalists behaving the way we would like them to,” said Abrams, who argued that the AP was fully justified in rejecting the White House request and publishing the story whenever it wanted once the CIA gave clearance.
“Whether any of this after that was in retribution is hard to tell, but it just makes the whole thing even more suspicious in terms of whether there was that sort of national security need to behave as the department did. It’s not a little thing for them to go to the telephone company and gather records of a news organization without permission,” he said.
As alarmed as Abrams is by the Justice Department’s treatment of the Associated Press, he’s even more uneasy about the department declaring Rosen a criminal and getting a warrant for his phone and email records and those of Fox News executives and even Rosen’s parents.
“I think this one’s even worse than the AP story. I’ve read the redacted version that is available of the application that the Department of Justice made in court. They basically accused the journalist of being a criminal, literally a criminal, for doing the interviewing that they did and trying to persuade someone to give them a story,” Abrams said. ”Journalists at their best are prying, are asking questions, are trying to get information. Treating them like criminals, branding them as criminals is absolutely unacceptable.”

http://www.wnd.com/2013/05/obama-owe...edia-snooping/


Hey media how do you think we feel when you don't publish all the news, not what your told to print or say, now you are upset, join the crowd!!!!! Remember when we did have truth in media...many eons ago what happened there!!!!

Holder OK'd search warrant for Fox News reporter's private emails, official says


Chip Somodevilla / Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images file
Attorney General Eric Holder agreed to a review of Justice Department guidelines for investigations involving journalists, President Barack Obama said Thursday.


By Michael Isikoff
National Investigative Correspondent, NBC News
Attorney General Eric Holder signed off on a controversial search warrant that identified Fox News reporter James Rosen as a “possible co-conspirator” in violations of the Espionage Act and authorized seizure of his private emails, a law enforcement official told NBC News on Thursday.


The disclosure of the attorney general’s role came as President Barack Obama, in a major speech on his counterterrorism policy, said Holder had agreed to review Justice Department guidelines governing investigations that involve journalists.
"I am troubled by the possibility that leak investigations may chill the investigative journalism that holds government accountable," Obama said. "Journalists should not be at legal risk for doing their jobs."
Rosen, who has not been charged in the case, was nonetheless the target of a search warrant that enabled Justice Department investigators to secretly seize his private emails after an FBI agent said he had "asked, solicited and encouraged … (a source) to disclose sensitive United States internal documents and intelligence information."
Obama's comments follow a firestorm of criticism that has erupted over disclosures that in separate investigations of leaks of classified information, the Justice Department had obtained private emails that Rosen exchanged with a source and the phone records of Associated Press reporters.
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Holder previously said he recused himself from the AP subpoena because he had been questioned as a witness in the underlying investigation into a leak about a foiled bomb plot in Yemen. His role in personally approving the Rosen search warrant had not been previously reported.
A Justice Department spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Department of Justice later issued a statement about the review of media guidelines: “This review is consistent with Attorney General Holder's long-standing belief that freedom of the press is essential to our democracy," it said. "At the same time, the attorney general believes that leaks of classified information damage our national security and must be investigated using appropriate law enforcement tools. We remain steadfast in our commitment to following all laws and regulations intended to safeguard national security as well as the First Amendment interests of the press in reporting the news and the public in receiving it."
The law enforcement official said Holder's approval of the Rosen search, in the spring of 2010, came after senior Justice officials concluded there was "probable cause" that Rosen's communications with his source, identified as intelligence analyst Stephen Kim, met the legal burden for such searches. "It was approved at the highest levels-- and I mean the highest," said the law enforcement official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. He said that explicitly included Holder.
Kim has since been indicted on charges that he leaked classified information to Rosen about how North Korea would respond to a United Nations resolution condemning the country's nuclear program. He has denied the charges.
In an affidavit in support of a search warrant to Google for Rosen's emails, an FBI agent wrote that the Fox News journalist -- identified only as "the Reporter" -- had "asked, solicited and encouraged Mr. Kim to disclose sensitive United States internal documents and intelligence information."
"The Reporter did so by employing flattery and playing to Mr. Kim's vanity and ego,” it continued. “Much like an intelligence officer would run a clandestine intelligence source, the Reporter instructed Mr. Kim on a covert communications plan that involved" emails from his gmail account.
The affidavit states that FBI agents had tracked Rosen’s entrances and exits of the State Department in order to show that they had coincided with Kim’s movements. Based on that and other findings, the affidavit by FBI Agent Reginald B. Reyes, stated, “There is probable cause to believe that the Reporter has committed a violation” of the Espionage Act “at the very least, either as an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator of Mr. Kim.”
It also said that Google was specifically instructed not to notify “the subscriber” -- Rosen -- that his emails were being seized.
In new documents disclosed Thursday, the Justice Department sought and obtained approval to keep the search warrant, which was approved by a federal magistrate, under seal. It was unsealed in November 2011, but never made a part of the docket of Kim’s case and went unnoticed until this week.
Justice officials have since said they do not intend to criminally charge Rosen, but media groups have condemned the issuance of the search warrant itself.
"The Justice Department's decision to treat routine newsgathering efforts as evidence of criminality is extremely troubling and corrodes time-honored understandings between the public and the government about the role of the free press," said Bruce Brown, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
In his speech Thursday, Obama reiterated his determination to pursue leak investigations. "We must enforce consequences for those who break the law and breach their commitment to protect classified information," he said.
But, he said, "Our focus must be on those who break the law," not journalists. He said he was calling on Congress to pass a media shield law and had raised the issue with Holder, "who shares my concern."
As part of the Justice Department review of guidelines, the president said, Holder will convene a group of media organizations to hear their views and “report back to me by July 12th."
NBC News Chief Justice Correspondent Pete Williams contributed to this report.


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First Amendment Clause-Trophobia

Jonah Goldberg | May 24, 2013
















"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."


That's the full text of the First Amendment. But (with apologies to the old Far Side comic), this is what many in the press, academia and government would hear if you read it aloud: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, blah blah blah, or abridging the freedom of the press, blah blah blah blah."


Don't get me wrong: The revelation that the Obama Justice Department has gone to unprecedented lengths to hamper or punish journalists is real news. DOJ trawlers dropped a gill net over the Associated Press in the hope of landing a single fish.


James Rosen, a reporter for Fox News (where I am a contributor), is the first journalist ever treated as a criminal under the Espionage Act. Other reporters at Fox -- a news outlet the president has spent years trying to delegitimize -- have been investigated by the DOJ as well.


The press can always be counted upon not just to speak up for itself, but to lavish attention on itself. "We can't help that we're so fascinating," seems to be their unspoken mantra.


And that's fine. What's not fine is the way so many in the press talk about the First Amendment as if it's their trade's private license.
The problem is twofold. First, we all have a right to commit journalism under the First Amendment, whether it's a New York Times reporter or some kid with an iPhone shooting video of a cop abusing someone.


I understand that professional journalists are on the front lines of the First Amendment's free press clause. But many elite outlets and journalism schools foster a guild mentality that sees journalism as a priestly caste deserving of special privileges. That's why editorial boards love campaign finance restrictions: They don't like editorial competition from outside their ranks. Such elitism never made sense, but it's particularly idiotic at a moment when technology -- Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Vine, etc. -- is democratizing political speech.


The second problem is that the First Amendment is about more than the press. In public discussion, First Amendment "experts" and "watchdogs" are really scholars and activists specializing in the little slice dedicated to the press. The Newseum, a gaudy palace in the nation's capital celebrating the news industry, ostentatiously reprints the entire First Amendment on its facade. But if the curators of the Newseum are much interested in the free exercise of religion or the rights of the people peaceably to assemble, I've seen no evidence of it.

White House press secretary and former journalist Jay Carney repeatedly insists that the president is a "strong defender" and "firm believer" in the First Amendment.


Even if that were true when it comes to press freedoms -- and that's highly debatable -- it's absurd when it comes to the rest of the First Amendment, with the small exception of the "establishment of religion" clause. Deeply secular, the press is ever watchful that the government might force someone to listen to a Christian prayer.


But when it comes to the constitutional right to exercise your faith freely, the press drops its love of the First Amendment like a bag of dirt. The president's health-care plan requires religious institutions to violate their core beliefs. To the extent that such concerns get coverage at all, it's usually to lionize "reproductive rights" activists in their battles against religious zealots.


The IRS scandal and the DOJ's assault on the press may be two separate issues, but they are both about the First Amendment. The groups the IRS discriminated against wanted to exert their First Amendment rights to assemble, to petition government and to speak freely. Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dubbed angry voters at local town hall meetings "un-American."


Some Americans wanted to exercise their religious conscience. (James Madison, author of the First Amendment, said, "Conscience is the most sacred of all property.") The IRS told one pro-life group in Iowa that it had to promise -- on pain of perjury -- not to protest Planned Parenthood. That is an outrageous assault on the First Amendment as disgusting as anything aimed at the AP or Fox News.
By all means, journalists should be outraged by the president's attitude toward the press. But if you're going to call yourself a defender of the First Amendment, please defend the whole thing and not just the parts you make a living from.






http://townhall.com/columnists/jonah...hobia-n1605033