CNN's John King questioned whether DOJ 'crossed a line.' Journalists fume over DOJ raid on AP

Journalists on Monday called the news the Justice Department seized records from phone lines assigned to Associated Press offices and its reporters over a two month period “chilling” and a “dragnet to intimidate the media.”

The AP reported the Justice Dept. obtained records that listed incoming and outgoing calls and the duration of those calls for work and personal phone numbers of AP reporters and phone lines for AP offices in New York, Hartford, Conn. and Washington, as well as the main number for AP reporters in the House of Representatives press gallery. The government seized records — which listed incoming and outgoing calls and the call’s length — for more than 20 separate lines assigned to the AP and its reporters, according to the AP.


Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren told POLITICO in an email that the DOJ’s seizure “sounds like a dragnet to intimidate the media,” not a criminal investigation.

( Also on POLITICO: Government seizes AP phone records)

“What is stunning is the breadth of the seizure!” Van Susteren said. “If you read the AP President’s letter to DOJ, and if his letter is accurate, the seizure was very broad: 2 months of telephone records involving many who work at AP! 20 phone lines, home and cell? NY, DC, Connecticut employees? That doesn’t sound like a criminal investigation, that sounds like a dragnet to intimidate the media. The US Attorney’s issued statement about the secret seizure was blah, blah, blah. It doesn’t say anything. The DOJ better be following the law and the Constitution.”

In a statement on Monday, the DOJ wrote “we take seriously our obligations to follow all applicable laws, federal regulations, and Department of Justice policies when issuing subpoenas for phone records of media organizations.”

“Those regulations require us to make every reasonable effort to obtain information through alternative means before even considering a subpoena for the phone records of a member of the media,” the statement read. “We must notify the media organization in advance unless doing so would pose a substantial threat to the integrity of the investigation. Because we value the freedom of the press, 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.”

Meanwhile, CNN’s John King — who worked for the AP for 12 years — questioned on “The Situation Room” whether the government may have crossed “a line” and done “something inappropriate” with its seizure of the phone records. The AP, he said, “is justifiably outraged.”

“This very chilling, this is very chilling,” he said on CNN. “The government gets angry about leaks of classified information. I understand that, and they have ways to investigate them. But did they cross a line here? Did they do something inappropriate here, did they possibly do something that went over legal barriers here? When this happens, however it happens, it sends a chilling message from the government to people in our business and the AP, I think, is justifiably outraged.”

The AP’s president and CEO, Gary Pruitt, called the action “a massive and unprecedented intrusion by the Department of Justice into the newsgathering activities of The Associated Press.”

“We regard this action by the Department of Justice as a serious interference with AP’s constitutional rights to gather and report the news,” Pruitt wrote in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday.

And CNN’s Wolf Blitzer noted that “all of us as journalists react negatively when we hear these stories” and asked CNN’s chief political analyst Gloria Borger about the legality behind the DOJ’s action.

“Although if you look it from the other side, if there was a serious leak about an al-Qaeda operation or whatever, they’re trying to find out who may be leaking this information to the news media, do they occasionally have the right to secretly monitor our phone calls?” Blitzer asked.

“That’s a matter up for discussion,” Borger replied. I remember during the Scooter Libby stuff during the Bush administration, there were phone records, there were e-mails, et cetera, et cetera. So, you know, I think this is chilling for journalists because you have to have that kind of privacy in order to do your work.”

Several journalists also tweeted their reactions to the AP story, with the New York Times’ public editor Margaret Sullivan calling the report “disturbing” and Marty Baron, the executive editor of The Washington Post, dubbing it “shocking, disturbing.” MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, meanwhile, asked in response to the story, “What is going on with this administration?” And Markos Moulitsas, founder of the liberal Daily Kos blog, wrote to his followers, “People looking for an Obama scandal, this one spying on the AP is the first legit one.”