The Department of Justice secretly obtained phone records for reporters and editors who work for the Associated Press news agency, including records for the home phones and cell phones of individual journalists, according to the AP, in what the agency characterized as "serious interference with AP's constitutional rights to gather and report the news."

The records, covering all of April and May 2012, were seized by the DoJ earlier this year and covered more than 20 separate phone lines. The records listed outgoing calls for both the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, as well as the general phone lines for AP bureaus in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and a main number used by AP reporters in the House of Representatives.

AP said it did not know if the records also included incoming calls and information about the duration of each call. The news agency also did not know how many journalists had used the bureau phone lines during that period.

The news organization discovered the surveillance last Friday when the office of U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen, Jr. in the District of Columbia sent AP's general counsel a letter informing her that his office had obtained the records.

The letter did not say why the feds sought the records, but AP noted that Machen's office is reportedly conducting a criminal investigation to uncover the source of information that AP published in a story on May 7, 2012 about a foiled terror plot. The story provided details of a CIA operation in Yemen that halted an al-Qaida plot to detonate a bomb on an airplane headed to the U.S.

Among those whose phone records were seized were five reporters and an editor who had worked on the story. The article was written by Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman with contributions by Kimberly Dozier, Eileen Sullivan and Alan Fram. The editor of the piece was AP's investigations editor Ted Bridis. [See update below]

The AP is still in the process of trying to identify how many phone calls were captured in the records during the 60-day period. More than 100 AP journalists are known to routinely use some of the numbers that were covered under the subpoena.

"Obtaining a broad range of telephone records in order to ferret out a government leaker is an unacceptable abuse of power," said Ben Wizner, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project. "Freedom of the press is a pillar of our democracy, and that freedom often depends on confidential communications between reporters and their sources.”

In an angry letter sent to Attorney General Eric Holder (.pdf) on Monday, AP CEO Gary Pruitt called it a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into the AP's newsgathering activities.

"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," he wrote in the letter. "That the Department undertook this unprecedented step without providing any notice to the AP, and without taking any steps to narrow the scope of its subpoenas to matters actually relevant to an ongoing investigation, is particularly troubling."

It's not the first time that prosecutors sought phone records from reporters, but instead of focusing on individual reporters in the case, the feds sought widespread seizure of phone numbers not associated with specific reporters.

The letter to the AP indicated that the phone records were obtained through subpoenas sent from Machen. Justice Department rules require the attorney general to approve the seizure of journalist records, but the AP said it did not know if the attorney general signed off on the records request in this case. The rules also say that a subpoena can be used only after investigators have made "all reasonable attempts" to get the same information through other sources, and must be narrowly directed at obtaining only "relevant information regarding a limited subject matter" and limited to a specific time period.

The AP's Pruitt demanded an explanation for why the records were sought and demanded that the Justice Department hand over the records and destroy any copies it possesses.

UPDATE 8:40pm: The letter from the U.S. attorney's office was sent by certified mail and by email to AP's general counsel, and was also emailed as a PDF attachment to the four reporters and Bridis, though not to any other reporters whose records may have been seized. The body of the email to the reporters said simply, "Please see the attached correspondence," according to a person who is familiar with the subpoena and the emails.

The letter to AP's general counsel consisted of a single sentence that said, "Pursuant to 28 C.F.R. (Section) 50.10(g)(3), the Associated Press is hereby notified that the United States Department of Justice has received toll records from April and May 2012 in response to subpoenas issued for the following telephone phone numbers." It listed 20 phone numbers, including the home phone number for Bridis, the AP editor who worked on the story that is being investigated.

Although the Justice Department usually notifies news agencies that it wants phone records before obtaining a subpoena so that the news agency can negotiate, it did not do so in this case. The citation in the letter (.pdf) refers to the section in the Justice Department guidelines that allow the feds to withhold advance notice of a subpoena if the notification will harm an investigation.

"When the telephone toll records of a member of the news media have been subpoenaed without the notice provided for in paragraph (e)(2) of this section," the guidelines read, "notification of the subpoena shall be given the member of the news media as soon thereafter as it is determined that such notification will no longer pose a clear and substantial threat to the integrity of the investigation. In any event, such notification shall occur within 45 days of any return made pursuant to the subpoena, except that the responsible Assistant Attorney General may authorize delay of notification for no more than an additional 45 days."