Busted: Obama Administration Secretly Tapped Reporters’ Telephone Records For Months

White House Propaganda Minister Jay Carney Asked About DOJ Seizing AP Phone Records: “No Comment” – Update: Releases Statement Saying WH Had “No Knowledge” Of DOJ Seizing AP Records…

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Carney must be on suicide watch.

Via TPM:

White House press secretary Jay Carney on Monday had no comment when asked about an Associated Press report revealing that the Department of Justice secretly obtained two months of telephone records from reporters and editors employed at the international news agency in April and May of 2012.

In New York City for a fundraiser headlining President Barack Obama, Carney referred reporters’ questions to the Department of Justice, according to a pool report.

Update: Someone at the DOJ is going under the bus.

(Politico) — The White House has “no knowledge” of the Justice Department’s efforts to obtain phone records of Associated Press reporters and editors, press secretary Jay Carney said Monday.

“Other than press reports, we have no knowledge of any attempt by the Justice Department to seek phone records of the AP,” he said in a statement.

“We are not involved in decisions made in connection with criminal investigations, as those matters are handled independently by the Justice Department,” he added. “Any questions about an ongoing criminal investigation should be directed to the Department of Justice.”

A Justice Department spokeswoman referred a request for comment to Bill Miller, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington, which is conducting a probe on the leaking of information about Syria to the AP.

http://weaselzippers.us/2013/05/13/w...ds-no-comment/

Busted: Obama Administration Secretly Tapped Reporters’ Telephone Records For Months

Posted by Jim Hoft on Monday, May 13, 2013, 4:56 PM

It’s an Obama World.

http://1-ps.googleusercontent.com/h/...exyZjpJRw.webp

The Obama Justice Department secretly tapped telephone records of Associated Press reporters for two months.

The AP reported:

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, 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. It was not clear if the records also included incoming calls or the duration of 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.


http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013...ds-for-months/

The Associated Press could easily alleviate this problem simply by removing the term "illegal wiretaps" from it's style book!

W

This is another Water Gate Moment