The Justice Department on Tuesday defended its decision to subpoena phone records from Associated Press bureaus and reporters, saying the requests were limited and necessary to investigate a leak of classified information regarding a severe threat to national security, CNN reported.
The AP revealed Monday that federal agents had collected two months of telephone records for some of its reporters and editors without notifying it of the subpoena.
In a letter to Gary Pruitt, the news service's president, Deputy Attorney General James Cole has said the Justice Department balanced the public's right to know with the realities of national security.
"Any subpoena that is issued should be drawn as narrowly as possible, be directed at relevant information regarding a limited subject matter and should cover a reasonably limited period of time," Cole wrote. "We are required to negotiate with the media organization in advance of issuing the subpoenas unless doing so would pose a substantial threat to the integrity of the investigation. We take this policy, and the interests that it is intended to protect, very seriously and followed it in this matter."
The AP has said it believes the investigation focuses on its account of a foiled plot to bomb a U.S. airliner in May 2012, CNN reported. In response to Cole, Pruitt wrote that government officials "assured us that the national security concerns had passed" before it ran the story.
"Indeed, the White House was preparing to publicly announce that the bomb plot had been foiled," Pruitt wrote. "The White House had said there was no credible threat to the American people in May of 2012. The AP story suggested otherwise, and we felt that was important information and the public deserved to know it."
"We've never seen anything along the size and scope of this particular investigation," AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll said.
Federal agents collected records from more than 20 lines, including personal phones and AP phone numbers in New York; Hartford, Connecticut; and Washington, news reports said.
Carroll said the phone lines were used by about 100 journalists.
Holder said Tuesday that he had stepped aside to avoid any potential conflict of interest in the case and left the decision to subpoena the phone records to Cole. He said his recusal was necessary because he had been questioned by FBI agents as part of the leak probe and wanted to make sure "that the investigation was seen as independent," a comment that has raised lots of eyebrows on Capitol Hill.
The story the AP says is at the center of the probe broke the news that the CIA had thwarted an al Qaeda plot to blow up a U.S.-bound jetliner around the anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden by American commandos. Sources later told CNN that the operative who was supposed to have carried the bomb had been inserted into al Qaeda's Yemeni affiliate by Saudi intelligence, and that the device had been handed over to U.S. analysts.
"It put the American people at risk, and that's not hyperbole," Holder said. "It put the American people at risk, and finding who was responsible for that required very aggressive action."
White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters, that, "the president is a strong defender of the First Amendment and a firm believer in the need for the press to be unfettered in its ability to conduct investigative reporting and to facilitate a free flow of information," Carney said. "He also, of course, recognizes the need for the Justice Department to investigate alleged criminal activity without undue influence."
Obama has received considerable flack on both sides of the aisle regardin this scandal, coalesced with others including the IRS reported targeting of right-wing groups.
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