Chris Hedges: Monitoring of AP Phones a "Terrifying" Step in State Assault on Press Freedom

The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges joins us to discuss what could mark the most significant government intrusion on freedom of the press in decades. The Justice Department has acknowledged seizing the work, home and cellphone records used by almost 100 reporters and editors at the Associated Press. The phones targeted included the general AP office numbers in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Hartford, Connecticut, and the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery. The action likely came as part of a probe into the leaks behind an AP story on the U.S. intelligence operation that stopped a Yemen-based al-Qaeda bombing plot on a U.S.-bound airplane. Hedges, a senior fellow at The Nation Institute and former New York Times reporter, calls the monitoring "one more assault in a long series of assault against freedom of information and freedom of the press." Highlighting the Obama administration's targeting of government whistleblowers, Hedges adds: "Talk to any investigative journalist who must investigate the government, and they will tell you that there is a deep freeze. People are terrified of speaking, because they're terrified of going to jail."

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is heading to Capitol Hill today, where he's expected to be grilled over the Justice Department's decision to secretly seize the work, home and cellphone records used by almost a hundred reporters and editors at the Associated Press. On Tuesday, Holder defended the move as a necessary step in a criminal probe of leaks of classified information.
The phones targeted by the subpoena included the general AP office numbers in New York City; Washington, D.C.; and Hartford, Connecticut; and for the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery. The records were from April and May of 2012. Among those whose records were obtained were Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman, three other reporters and an editor, all of whom worked on a story about an operation conducted by the CIA and allied intelligence agencies that stopped a Yemen-based al-Qaeda plot to detonate a bomb on an airplane headed for the United States.
AMY GOODMAN: The Associated Press had delayed publication of the story 'til May 7, 2012, at the government's request. One day before the AP story was finally published, a U.S. drone strike in Yemen killed Fahd al-Quso, a senior leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Attorney General Holder, who says he recused himself from the leak probe, defended his department's actions.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Attorney General Eric Holder, speaking Tuesday. In a letter to Holder, AP's CEO Greg Pruitt protested the government's seizing of journalists' phone records. He wrote, quote: "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."
AMY GOODMAN: In an editorial today, The New York Times strongly criticized the Justice Department's move. The editors wrote, quote: "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."
Well, we're joined right now by a former Pulitizer Prize-winning journalist from The New York Times. He's now a senior fellow at The Nation Institute and author, along with Joe Sacco, of the book Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt. We're joined by Chris Hedges.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Chris.
CHRIS HEDGES: Thank you, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: Your response to this revelation about theabout what happened with AP and the U.S. government?
CHRIS HEDGES: Well, it's part of a pattern. That's what's so frightening. And it's a pattern that we've seen, with the use of the Espionage Act, to essentially silence whistleblowers within the governmentKiriakou, Drake and others, although Kiriakou went to jail onpled out on another chargethe FISA Amendment Act, which allows for warrantless wiretapping, the National Defense Authorization Act, which allows for the stripping of American citizens of due process and indefinite detention. And it is one more assault in a long series of assault against freedom of information and freedom of the press. And I would also, of course, throw in the persecution of Julian Assange at WikiLeaks and Bradley Manning as part of that process.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Chris Hedges, you wrote in the recent article that was published, your article "Death of Truth" in Truthdig and Nation magazineyou also write about the significance of the Espionage Act and how often it's been invoked, and you say that it eviscerates the possibility of an independent press. So could you talk about the Espionage Act and how it also is somehow related to this AP story?
CHRIS HEDGES: Well, it's been used six times by the Obama administration. It was written in 1917 and wasis our Foreign Secrets Act. It is never meantit was not designed to shut down whistleblowers, first used against Daniel Ellsberg in the Pentagon Papers. So, three times from 1917 until Obama takes office in 2009, six times. And if you talk to investigative journalists in this country, who must investigate the inner workings of government, no one will talk, even on background. People are terrified. And this is, of coursethe seizure of two months of records, of AP records, is not really about going after AP; it's about going after that person or those people who leaked this story and shutting them down. And this canard that it endangered American life isyou know, there's no evidence for this. He's notyeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, the news conferences that Eric Holder and the White House held yesterday were interesting. This is White House spokesperson Jay Carney questioned Tuesday about the AP spying scandal and the Obama administration's prosecution of whistleblowers.
AMY GOODMAN: And the questions of Jay Carney about the spying scandal on AP just continued.
AMY GOODMAN: That is Jay Carney, the White House press spokesperson, who used to be the Washington bureau chief of Time magazine. Your response, Chris Hedges?
CHRIS HEDGES: Well, I find, you know, all of these measures to essentially shut down the freedom of information, including the persecution of Assange and Manning, as symptomatic of a reconfiguration of our society into a totalitarian security and surveillance state, one where anyone who challenges the official narrative, who digs out cases of torture, war crimeswhich is, of course, what Manning and Assange presented to the American publicis going to be ruthlessly silenced. And I find the passivity on the part of the mainstream press, publications like The New York Times, The Guardian, El País, Der Spiegel, all of which, of course, used this information, and turning their backs on Manning and Assange, to be very shortsighted for precisely this reason. If they think it's just about Manning and Assange, then they have no conception of what it is that's happening. And, you know, everyone knows, within the administration, within the National Security Council, the effects of climate change, the instability that that will cause, the economic deterioration, which is irreversible, and they want the mechanisms by which they can criminalize any form of dissent. And that's finally what this is about.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And what do you think allowed this to happen, Chris Hedges? You think it's related to, you've suggested in your piece, the war on terror, that it gave kind of sanction, in a way, to this kind of crackdown on journalists?
CHRIS HEDGES: Well, you know, it becomes the same paradigm in the war against communism. It's an excuse to ferret out and destroy legitimate movements that challenge centers of power. And that's, of course, how the war on terror has worked in exactly the same way. But we are seeing environmental activists, Occupy activists, people who function, like Manning, as a whistleblower being caught up in this war on terror and silenced through these rules.
So what they do is they pass, you know, for instance, Section 1021 of the NDAA. They pass it in the name of the war on terror, but then they can use it. Anybody can become a terrorist. I mean, in the trial in federal court, which we brought againstin the Southern District, we used, in the Stratfor-leaked emails that were put out by WikiLeaks, where they were trying to link a group that was close to Occupy, US Day of Rage, and al-Qaeda. That's precisely what happened. So when we allow this kind of thing to go forward, we essentially shut down any ability not only to ferret out what's happening internally within the mechanisms of power, but to protest or carry out dissent.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to go back to another clip of the news conference of Attorney General Eric Holder being questioned on Tuesday.
AMY GOODMAN: That's Attorney General Eric Holder. Chris Hedges, I wanted you to respond to him and then talk about your recent trip. Well, you just came back from London, where you met with Julian Assange in the Ecuadorean embassy, and then you came here and went to Pennsylvania and met with Mumia Abu-Jamal.
CHRIS HEDGES: It was a good week. Yes. I mean, I find what's happening terrifying, truly frightening. And when you look closely at all of the documents that were purportedly given to WikiLeaks by Bradley Manning and published through Assange, none of them were top-secret. I mean, as a former investigative reporter for The New York Times, it was my job to go and find out often top-secret information. And that's why I can't understand the inability of the traditional press to grasp that we are now in the last moments of an effort to, in essence, effectively extinguish press freedom. And if youI mean, AP is anlike The New York Times, an amazingly cautious organization, but read the comments. I mean, they get it, internally. But, unfortunately, you know, they have divided us against ourselves, andand this isyou know, what we've undergone, as John Ralston says and as I've said many times, a kind of corporate coup d'état.
What we are seeing is a system put into place where it's all propaganda. And anybody who challengesI mean, look, this constant reference to a shield law is absurd, because they just violated the shield law by not going to court and informing AP of a subpoena but doing it secretly. So, I mean, you've got to hand it to the Obama administration. They're far more clever than their predecessors in the Bush administration, but they're carrying out exactly the same policy of snuffing out our most basic civil liberties and our most important press freedoms. And that's because they know what's coming, and they are going to legally put in a place by which any challenge to the centers of corporate power become ineffectual or impossible.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: But how do you think this is already impacting the work of journalists?
CHRIS HEDGES: Well, talk to any investigative journalist who must investigate the government, and they will tell you that there is a deep freeze. People are terrified of speaking, because they're terrified of going to jail. And Kiriakou is now sitting for 30 months in a prison in Pennsylvania. So
AMY GOODMAN: And Kiriakou is?
CHRIS HEDGES: That's the former CIA official who purportedly gave information to The New York Times. And, you know, they've subpoenaed Risen's records, both for his book and
AMY GOODMAN: James Risen of The New York Times.
CHRIS HEDGES: Right, of the Times. I mean, so, it is
AMY GOODMAN: For reporting on warrantless wiretapping.
CHRIS HEDGES: Exactly. And
AMY GOODMAN: Which they held onto, a story they held onto for more than a year and that took the
CHRIS HEDGES: Well, that gets into the cowardice of The New York Times, but that's another show. Yeah, it was about to come out in the book, and then the _Times_' Bill Keller ran it, becausebut they had held it. And so, yeah, I think we're in a very, very frightening moment.
AMY GOODMAN: And the fact that thesethe phones werethe logs were taken of these different phones that more than a hundred AP reporters used, reporters and editors, shows who is calling them and who they're calling.
CHRIS HEDGES: Right, that's what they want.
AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about the significance of that.
CHRIS HEDGES: Right. Well, what they're clearly
AMY GOODMAN: These aren't tape-recorded conversations.
CHRIS HEDGES: Right. And, I mean, having done that kind of work, I'm almost certain that whoever gave the AP this information didn't give it to them over the phone. But what they're doing is finding outmatching all of the phone records to find out who had contact with someone in an AP bureau, whether that was in New York or Hartford or Washington or wherever else, and then they will probably use the Espionage Act to go after them, as well. That wouldthat's certainly what the Obama administration has done since its inception.
AMY GOODMAN: Very briefly, can you talk about your visit with Julian Assange and then your visit with journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal?
CHRIS HEDGES: Well, I mean, I have tremendous respect for Julian Assange and what he's done. Again, even within the liberal intelligentsia, who should know better, they've turned their back on him. You know, whatever the sexual misconduct charges in Sweden were, it certainly wasn't rape, but there was something. But that has been used
AMY GOODMAN: Well, they aren't charges, but he's wanted for questioning.
CHRIS HEDGES: Well, he's actually not been charged at all, so that's right, in a legal sense. But, you know, that kind of character assassination has left him very much alone. And I think the courage of a Manning, the courage of an Assange, the courage of a MumiaI mean, how that man remains unbroken. I was there with Cornel West and the theologian James Cone. I mean, it was a privilege for me. I mean, three of the probably greatest African-American intellectuals in the country, and certainly radicals. It'syou know, those people who hold fast to thea kind of moral imperative, or hold fast to the capacity for dissent, whether that's Manning, who exhibitedI was in the courtroom when he read his statementtremendous courage, poise, whether that's Assange, whether that's Mumia, let's look at where all those three people are, because for all of us who speak out, that's where they want us to be, as well. And that gets back to this AP story, because that is exactly the process that we are undergoing and whereif they win, where we're headed.

After AP leak controversy, White House pushes for media-shield law
By Kasie Hunt, NBC News

Under fire for secret subpoenas of Associated Press phone records, the Obama administration has asked a key senator to revive legislation that would enhance protections for journalists trying to protect their sources.

A White House official called Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on Wednesday to ask him to reintroduce the media shield law that he supported in 2009 but that never received a vote on the Senate floor. The push comes in the wake of Department of Justice subpoenas of a broad swath of AP's phone records, including several main numbers used by more than 100 reporters.

"This kind of law would balance national security needs against the public's right to the free flow of information. At minimum, our bill would have ensured a fairer, more deliberate process in this case," Schumer said in a statement.

The shield law would insulate journalists from fines and prison time when they refuse to reveal their sources in court cases. It allows journalists to appeal to a federal judge when they don't want to give up their sources to subpoena -- and let the judge decide whether public interest in the journalist's story outweighs the interests of the government.

But the bill also says that in some national security matters, this "balancing test" wouldn't be applied.

That's in part because of White House concerns about the law. In 2009, the White House objected to the shield law's use in national security situations -- like the one the AP believes triggered the secret subpoenas. The wire service reported in 2012 that a double agent had foiled a bomb plot in Yemen.

Attorney General Eric Holder on Tuesday called that leak "a very, very serious leak."

"This is among the top two or three serious leaks that I've ever seen," he said.

Adele

I just heard on the Martin Bashir program on MSNBC-TV about 45 minutes ago, from an investigator
(don't recall name) that the investigation of the AP calls was followed to the letter of the current laws.
The calls' sites of sources and endings were recorded, but not the content of the calls. This is what
I understood from the investigator's report on the Martin Bashir program, that no current laws were
broken. This would put a little different light on this issue.

However, the administration is eager to strengfthen the rights of journalists to protect their sources,
as they should. Don't forget that many of these current laws are holdovers from the Bush administration
when privacy rights and sources were not necessarily protected.

Adele

Adele Edisen Wrote:However, the administration is eager to strengfthen the rights of journalists to protect their sources,
as they should. Don't forget that many of these current laws are holdovers from the Bush administration
when privacy rights and sources were not necessarily protected.

Adele

Adele, does this then suggest that the national security state is ignoring the wishes of the Obama Administration and that this, in turn, indicates that there is a power struggle going on between the Pentagon, intel and law enforcement agencies on the one hand, and a not very powerful president on the other?

This seems to be further suggested by the following extract from above:

Quote:Under fire for secret subpoenas of Associated Press phone records, the Obama administration has asked a key senator to revive legislation that would enhance protections for journalists trying to protect their sources.

A White House official called Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on Wednesday to ask him to reintroduce the media shield law that he supported in 2009 but that never received a vote on the Senate floor. The push comes in the wake of Department of Justice subpoenas of a broad swath of AP's phone records, including several main numbers used by more than 100 reporters.


"This kind of law would balance national security needs against the public's right to the free flow of information. At minimum, our bill would have ensured a fairer, more deliberate process in this case," Schumer said in a statement.

Or is the latter simply a deflection device to make the prez look an okay guy?

David Guyatt Wrote:

Adele Edisen Wrote:However, the administration is eager to strengfthen the rights of journalists to protect their sources,
as they should. Don't forget that many of these current laws are holdovers from the Bush administration
when privacy rights and sources were not necessarily protected.

Adele

Adele, does this then suggest that the national security state is ignoring the wishes of the Obama Administration and that this, in turn, indicates that there is a power struggle going on between the Pentagon, intel and law enforcement agencies on the one hand, and a not very powerful president on the other?

This seems to be further suggested by the following extract from above:

Quote:Under fire for secret subpoenas of Associated Press phone records, the Obama administration has asked a key senator to revive legislation that would enhance protections for journalists trying to protect their sources.

A White House official called Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on Wednesday to ask him to reintroduce the media shield law that he supported in 2009 but that never received a vote on the Senate floor. The push comes in the wake of Department of Justice subpoenas of a broad swath of AP's phone records, including several main numbers used by more than 100 reporters.


"This kind of law would balance national security needs against the public's right to the free flow of information. At minimum, our bill would have ensured a fairer, more deliberate process in this case," Schumer said in a statement.

Or is the latter simply a deflection device to make the prez look an okay guy?

David In my opinion it's the latter. Obama will say or do anything to cover his lying ass. His admin has prosecuted more whistle blowers than all other administrations combined. What you see if not what you get. The Constitution is meaningless to this guy. If I hear one more Dem say "but he's a nice guy" I will puke.
Hitler liked dogs too.

Dawn

Quote:Or is the latter simply a deflection device to make the prez look an okay guy?

EXACTLY!

And,I hope that the journalists in this country will finally wake up and realize that they are no longer protected by the American Constitution,just like the rest of us.

In fact,I'd like to see this incident as the final downfall of the deathmasters,"Obummer" and Holder.

The Fourth Estate.......Fight back!!!!!

And here is the level of deceit that is "Obummer".

Published on Thursday, May 16, 2013 by Democracy Now!

IRS Commissioner Forced to Resign over Extra Scrutiny of Right-Wing groups

The Obama administration has forced out the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, Steven Miller, in the uproar over the extra scrutiny of tea party and other right-wing groups seeking to become tax-exempt. The IRS singled out organizations with the terms "tea party" or "patriots" in their names while investigating who qualifies as social welfare organizations under U.S. tax law. At the White House, President Obama vowed to punish those responsible.


Photo: Politico

President Obama: "It is inexcusable and Americans are right to be angry about it and I am angry about it. I will not tolerate this kind of behavior in any agency, but especially in the IRS given the power that it has and the reach that it has in all of our lives. Today, Secretary [Jack] Lew took the first step by requesting and accepting the resignation of the acting commissioner of the IRS because given the controversy surrounding this audit it is important to institute new leadership that can help restore confidence going forward."


The IRS turned to the controversial vetting process after becoming flooded with applications for tax-exempt status in the aftermath of the 2010 Supreme Court decision Citizens United. Groups such as Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS claimed to be social welfare organizations while spending tens of millions of dollars on political operations...

Well,look here...The IRS chief was already going to leave in June anyway.

"Obummer"-"It is inexcusable and Americans are right to be angry".
"Me"-Damn Right"

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...tatus.html

AP Monitoring Raises Fears of Government Overreach: How Far Will Obama Go to Crack Down on Leaks?

David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and president of Investigative Reporters and Editors, joins us to discuss the growing scandal over the Justice Department's seizure of telephone records from Associated Press editors and reporters. The action came as part of a probe into the leaks behind an AP story about how U.S. intelligence thwarted a Yemen-based al-Qaeda bombing plot on a U.S.-bound airplane. "This is a very troubling aspect of this administration it is hostile to the news media," Johnston says. "They're behaving much more like a corporation than like the people's government."

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We're speaking with David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who's also the current president of Investigative Reporters and Editors. I wanted to ask you about another matter, a big story this week in Washington. The Justice Department has admitted to seizing the work, home and cellphone records of almost 100 Associated Press reporters and editors. The action came as part of a probe into leaks behind an AP story about how U.S. intelligence thwarted a Yemen-based al-Qaeda bombing plot on a U.S.-bound airplane. During testimony before the House on Wednesday, Attorney General Eric Holder was asked about the probe and why the AP was not notified of the subpoenas beforehand.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Attorney General Eric Holder speaking about the Justice Department's seizure of the telephone records from AP editors and reporters. David Cay Johnston, you've said of the probe that journalists have a duty to watchdog the government and hold it accountable without surveillance or other interference. Talk about the probe and the attorney general's defense at the hearing.
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, one of the important things to keep in mind about this, Amy, is that AP found out about this information, told the government what it had, and as responsible news organizations do, when the government said, "Please, we're in the middle of an investigation. Hold off," they held their story. Then the White House notified them that the next day it was going to go public about this, basically extending to AP the courtesy, because they had behaved well, of letting them break the story that they had held.
Now, the outrage you're hearing from some members of Congress that this is something terrible the AP has doneand there are members of Congress saying thatis beyond belief, particularly for people who claim to be concerned about the Constitution, which, after all, includes a First Amendment to protect our religious, free speech, petition, assembly and press rights.
In this case, I don't think that the attorney general is correct. I don't think the exceptions apply here. There were no exigent circumstances. This was looking at something after the fact. And, you know, according to the FBI, they did 550 interviews, and they don't know who the leaker is. That's officially what they're looking for: who spoke to the AP. If they don't know, it suggests that in fact this may well be a story that came through some odd factor. I mean, the world is full of news stories that come about not because somebody issued a press release.
But this is a very troubling sign. The 4,200 members of Investigative Reporters and Editors, that I'm privileged to be the board president for, I'm sure will discuss this next month at our annual meeting in San Antonio, and we are taking steps to try and find out how far this reached and what the government is going to be doing in the future.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, speaking of that, during an interview with NPR on Tuesday, Eric Holder said he did not know how many other times his Justice Department had subpoenaed records of reporters.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, it sounds like if he takes them very seriously, he would remember how many he had actually signed off on. But your comment?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, let meyeah, Juan, let me suggest, I mean, that he was asked of how many as a number, and I believe they're going to be giving a written answer back to that. So I'm willing to cut him some slack about that.
But the Obama administration has been very, very troubling about all of these issues. Remember that President Obama in 2008 campaigned on a transparency and openness in government. I wrote a pieceI think I'm the first national journalist who wrote a highly critical piece of President Obama, nine days after he took office, about the simple matter of calling the White House press office. And I've been calling White House press offices back to Nixon. And I just asked the first person who answered the phone, you know, "What's your name?" And immediately it was: "What do you want that for?" And I literally had people hang up. They wouldn't say who they were. I mean, you don't know if you're talking to a secretary, an intern or a press secretary, or somebody who walked by and picked up a telephone.
And since then, I and many other journalists have observed that this administration, despite its public rhetoric, has repeatedly and continually been very difficult to deal with. I rate them worse than the Bush administration. And every single story that I wrote at The New York Times, with one exception, had Bush people on the record by name, rank and serial number. So, this is a very troubling aspect of this administration. It is hostile to the news media. It seems to have an attitude that if they don't like the question, they don't have to answer it. And it makes it very difficult and cumbersome to get responses from there. They're be having much more like a corporation than like the people's government.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain what the press shield law is? The Obama administration asked, apparently, Senator Schumer yesterday to reintroduce legislation that would help reporters protect the identity of their sources from federal officials. This is rather ironic that the Obama administration is calling for this law. But explain it.
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, the idea here is that reporters should be exempted from having to both identify sources that they have to the government as well as from the kind of surveillance that went on with the AP after the fact. I don't think there's any chance we're going to get a surveillance law passed by this Congress, by the way; I think it's absolutely zero.
But historically, governmentsthe American administrations have treated the press, certainly in the modern era, the last hundred years, with some deference about these matters; and at the same time, they have sometimes been very tough. Let's remember that Bill Keller, the editor of The New York Times, was summoned to the White House office and literally threatened with the death penalty over investigative work The New York Times has done. At the same time, President Kennedy said the biggest thing he regretted, or one of the biggest things he regretted, was that he had gotten The New York Times to hold off on a story that it was going to run dealing with the Bay of Pigs.
Many of the things we need to know come from leakers and what the press reports the government doesn't want to know. The government leaks every day anything it wants out. It's what administrations don't want to get out that we need to focus on. And if we want to be a free people, we need to have a robust press, and we need to have a press that's aggressive, that doesn't let officials work from press releases and canned statements, and doesn't let them get away with not answering questions. We need to have a much more aggressive press corps, the kind of press corps that we had in the past, but certainly, I don't think, have now.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But also, this hundredgetting records on a hundred reporters and editors, I mean, that's obviously a situation where they got much more than theyeven if they were trying to find a particular leaker, they got much more information. And I would think that would send a pall throughout anybody who's dealing with the AP or anyone else who is providing information to an AP reporter.
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Yeah, the chilling effect here of thisthis is a massive fishing expedition, and I don't mean with awith a line. This was a huge seine they put out trying to draw in everythinghome records of reporters. Now, they didn't record the calls; they just got records of calls, looking for whoever was leaking. But that's the exact problem: It's not that the AP reporters are intimidated; it's that sources won't come to people, and the government can operate as a power unto itself. We created our government, in this, the Second American Republic, to serve the people. We begin our Constitution with those words: "We the people." And we need to make sure that the government never, ever, ever is run by people who think it is a power unto itself.
Now, that doesn't mean that the government has to be powerless and that there aren't exigent circumstances. You know, if the government thinks that someone is about to expose something that will cause real physical harm, I would be right up front saying, "OK, make them delay, if need be, for public safety." But this has got to be very carefully looked at and watched at on a case-by-case basis, what the lawyers call facts and circumstances.
AMY GOODMAN: What's interesting about the Obama administration asking Chuck Schumer to reintroduce the bill is, looking at The New York Times in 2009, Chuck Schumer is quoted as saying, "The White House's opposition to the fundamental essence of this bill is an unexpected and significant setback. It will make it hard to pass this legislation." Final comment, David Cay Johnston?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, I think, though, that you're seeing this administration trying to respond to all the criticisms it's getting. Remember, 10 days after the president took office, the Republicans on Capitol had a meeting, and they said thatcame out of it, and there have been accounts written of this, that their purpose was going to make sure this president didn't succeed. You're now seeing the president apparently recognize that he is under this tremendous pressure by people who don't care about the welfare of the government as much as they doin the people, as much as they do destroying him. So, you're seeing some shifts in position. They're good shifts. I'm glad we're having them. But I don'tcannot imagine that this Congress, particularly the House, is going to pass legislation to protect the news media, even though the news media is a broad range of groups, from the far right to far left, to absolutely straight news in the middle. The hostility to news by members of Congress, on both sides, but particularly right-wing Republicansit's just not going to happen.

Let me ask each of you. What would you have done if there was a disruption, or 'leak', or a perceived (or a real) attempt to spy on the media to expose their sources of information? That is, if you were President? How would you handle these types of situatiions?

The President cannot know everything that is going on in the country, or even in his own administration. He has asked that Charles Schumer re-introduce legislation which did not pass in the Senate in 2009 to protect media workers and their sources. Remember that the Republicans, on the night of his inauguration in January of 2009, pledged to make Obama a one-term president.

I would think that you might want to reassure the American people in whatever way you could. Since you could not change the past, you could certainly change the future so that these errors, if that's what they were, would not happen again.. It's rather difficult when the President is under fire by the opposing party, eager to destroy his presidency. and the chances of a presidential nominee in 2016.

Think of what FDR had to do while fighting off the powerful fascists who still wanted to cast him out, even after their 1933-34 plot failed. Yet he was re-electred four times!

Adele

[TABLE="width: 100%"]
[TR]
[TD="width: 84%"][TABLE="width: 100%"]
[TR]
[TD="width: 55%"]

[/TD]
[TD="width: 45%"][/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

The AP Seizures and the Frightening Web They've Uncovered

By Alfredo Lopez
OpEdNews Op Eds 5/16/2013 at 13:55:07 [/TD]
[TD="width: 16%"] [/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]



"Paranoia," said Woody Allen, "is knowing all the facts." By that measure, we're becoming more and more "paranoid" every day.

This week, we learned that the Obama Justice Department seized two months of records of at least 20 phone lines used by Associated Press reporters. These include phone lines in the AP's New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn offices as well as the main AP number in the House of Representatives press gallery, the private phones and cell phones belonging to AP reporters and a fax line in one AP office.

The government effected this massive seizure "sometime this year" according to a letter from the Justice Department to AP's chief counsel this past Friday (May 10). The letter cites relevant "permission" clauses in its "investigative guidelines" and makes clear that it considers the action legal and necessary.

In many ways, this is the most blatant act of media information seizure in memory. It affects over 100 AP journalists and the countless people those journalists communicated with by phone during those two months. It violates accepted constitutional guarantees, the concept of freedom of the press and the privacy rights of literally thousands of people. Predictably and justifiably, press, politicians and activists have expressed outrage.

But as outrageous as the admitted facts are, the story's larger implications are even more disturbing. It's bad enough that the Obama Administration has grossly violated fundamental constitutional rights, acknowledged the violation and defended their legality. Even worse is that likelihood that the intrusion will probably be ruled legal, that it has been ongoing against other targets for some time and that this is only the tip of the intelligence-abuse iceberg.


by US Embassy New Zealand




The facts are still tumbling out daily but here's what we know. While the Justice Department's letter of notice to AP didn't provide the reason for the seizure, the date of the seizure or the dates of the data seized, the timing hints strongly that this is tied to a major investigation of "whistle-blowing". Last year, the AP used unnamed sources in a story about a Central Intelligence Agency effort to disrupt a Yemen-based terrorist plot to bomb an airliner. The AP, at the government's request, held that story for several days but published it on May 7, 2012 after it was confident the plot had been foiled. Because the AP's story ran a day before Federal officials were scheduled to announce their "victory", it's logical to assume Associated Press honchos knew the government would be unhappy.

So they were probably not surprised that, led by the U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen, federal investigators spent a year aggressively searching for the people who leaked the information. That's vintage Obama. With six government "whistle-blowers" in jail or being prosecuted, federal law-enforcers have prosecuted twice as many whistle-blowers as
all previous Administrations combined over the course of two and a quarter centuries. But until now, the media-savvy Obama people have been careful to restrain their pursuit of the corporate press, limiting confrontations to an occasional request or demand for one source revelation.

That's why these revelations are so shocking to media professionals and advocates. As AP's CEO Gary Pruit told Attorney General Eric Holder in his letter of complaint this week, "These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-months period, provide a road map to AP's news gathering operations and disclose information about AP's activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know."

There, in a nutshell, is the problem. For the corporate media, there is such still a thing as "no conceivable right to know". Up to now, part of Obama's information policy has been that mainstream media qualifies for First Amendment protection but "alternative" journalists and the news organizations they work for, as well as bloggers, activists, writers and others who work independently of major news organizations and who use the Internet as the free vehicle of communications it was invented to be have absolutely no protections. Since 2009, this government is known to have taken action against Internet activists and truth-tellers: seizing servers, email records and virtually all forms of on-line communications and then prosecuting people in over a dozen cases based on some of those seizures. There's been very little action taken against the corporate press, which for its part has largely ignored or blacked out any reporting on the government attacks on its smaller media competitors.

This "favored status" commercial media has enjoyed has now been trashed. The "protected press" is as exposed as the rest of us. In answering Pruit's letter, the Justice Department said as much. "We must notify the media organization in advance unless doing so would pose a substantial threat to the integrity of the investigation," U.S. Attorney's Machen spokesman William Miller explained, in a remark that went way beyond the traditional exemption for protecting lives. He added, "...we are always careful and deliberative in seeking to strike the right balance between the public interest in the free flow of information and the public interest in the fair and effective administration of our criminal laws."

In fact, there was no urgency involved in the government's assault on AP's news operation -- the incident in question was over -- and seizure of this kind of information has traditionally been allowed only if a subpeona is issued, after the targeted media parties have had a chance to challenge the government intrusion in court. The courts, after all, constitute one of the protections of privacy and free speech we citizens have. Under our Constitution, the courts, not the government, are supposed to decide what is "the right balance," as Miller put it.

Most of us lost those protections with the Patriot Act and the Justice Department's updated guidelines which allow the government to engage in secret seizure if its investigators believe there is a real "security threat". In fact, it is only required to announce that seizure when "it is determined that such notification will no longer pose a clear and substantial threat to the integrity of the investigation." In other words, they can seize anything without a subpeona if they think they should seize it without a subpeona.

That I have learned personally and this is either a disclaimer or a claim to authenticity. Last year, the FBI snatched a server belonging to May First/People Link (my organization) from its location. We believe they were investigating some nut using anonymous servers (servers that don't maintain records of who used them) to mail threatening emails to students at the University of Pittsburgh. We maintain one such server for our colleagues at Rise-Up.

The AP case applies the suspension of our rights to the "established" media, finalizing a remarkably swift collapse of balance of power protections by removing the courts from the equation.

It's a moment described in the famous Civil Rights Movement saying, quoted by Angela Davis: "If they come for me in the morning, they'll come for you at night." After years of chipping away (largely without protest or even acknowledgement from the mainstream corporate media), at the rights of what the Administration considers the most dangerous and uncontrollable information source -- the Internet and the activists and independent journalists who thrive on it like Wikileaks or Mayfirst, the web hosting service I helped found -- they've now knocked on the door of the mainstream media.

To get a feeling for how dangerous this is, all one must do is trace how these investigations unfold and visualize the investigative web that is developing.

First, they get the phone records. In this case, the phone companies apparently just gave it to them. Protestations that these include "only" phone numbers called and nothing else collapse upon careful examination. Seized cell phone records (and their logs of emails, websites visited and texts sent) are now in the Justice Department's hands along with all the numbers called by over 100 reporters on 20 phone lines. Starting with the phone numbers called, investigators can then go to commercial email providers (like Google's Gmail) and seek records of everyone who the reporters contacted. After all, they can now search the providers' databases against the acquired names and phone numbers!

Email on AP's servers wasn't seized -- that could never be done "secretly". But some AP reporters probably use their non-company email as well and investigators can go after that. Internet providers are under enormous pressure to give up those records and many, like Google, will do so voluntarily upon official government request. They've already done it for the Chinese government to help it go after its critics.


So anybody who gets a phone call from one of the seized lines during this period can now be investigated more aggressively without subpeonas using the powers of investigation the government already has and information it has already gathered in secret from reporters who had promised them anonymity.

Where is the limit? Without a court hearing, there is none. If an AP reporter called your phone or emailed you from a targeted cell phone, the government now knows it and your phone number (and possibly email address) is now part of the investigation. That gathered information now includes your name, address, phone number, calls you received and calls you made. If they got to the email, all of that is theirs. No matter what those phone calls or email messages from your cell phone are about, they are a part of a government investigation into a major security leak.

Once you're in the mix, the government can then declare you an investigation "target" and legally seize read all your email and seize all the email of anybody your wrote. All of this activity is legally covered and, based on past government practice, can be done without informing you.

What's more there are now indications that the government isn't stopping there. According to the Washington Post, you don't even need to be part of an investigation.

"Every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications," the Post reported in its extraordinary series on government intelligence. "The NSA sorts a fraction of those into 70 separate databases."

The Guardian's Glen Greenwald argues that such numbers are only possible if the government is recording every phone call, text and email being transmitted in this country. Several FBI whistle-blowers and former agents, he points out, have attested to that scope of activity.

To say you will be part of a prosecution or that the investigation would reach such lengths may, at this point, border on paranoia. But not long ago most of us would have considered paranoid the idea that such collection of data is even taking place. "Mass surveillance is the hallmark of a tyrannical political culture," Greenwald wrote. To deny the danger in all this is to trust that the government won't abuse this power or consider your completely legal activities to be dangerous.

Does the Obama Administration deserve that trust? Its stated position is that the government can collect and use any information of this type if there is a security reason to do so. The issue is what is a "security reason" and, since courts have been effectively removed from the process, that definition is completely in the hands of the Justice Department, Homeland Security, the FBI and the National Security Agency. If one of those agencies says you have no right to privacy, you don't.

There are many people in this country working in opposition to the government. Many of them oppose policies and challenge laws. Many of them have relationships with similar activists in other countries and take up issues that affect those other countries. Should we really feel comfortable giving some government functionary the power to decide if our activities are "dangerous" or "pose a threat"? This is an Administration that has criminally charged Internet activists for violating terms of service agreements, smeared the reputations of countless legitimate activists in all kinds of movements and kept scores of people in Guantamo's prison for years without charges, in most cases knowing and even conceding that they are innocent of any. Does that track record offer any assurance that they will be judicious and restrained with your information?

Should we trust them with the powers they have amassed? Clearly not, because, given the facts we already know, mistrust isn't paranoia; it's knowing the facts.