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Media wants to unseal files involving leak to Fox News reporter

A press freedom group is trying to unseal still-secret court files about a federal investigation that snared a State Department intelligence analyst for leaking North Korean nuclear information to Fox News reporter James Rosen.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press is asking a federal judge in Washington to make public search warrants and some surveillance orders issued in connection with the case that led to analyst Stephen Kim receiving a 13-month prison sentence in 2014.

A motion the group filed Friday says a few search warrants related to the case were unsealed in 2013, but others appear to still be under seal — some seven years after Kim gave Rosen information that the U.S. was expecting North Korea to carry out new nuclear tests. The Reporters Committee is also seeking records of two other kinds of surveillance-related orders: a type used to request non-content data from websites and another used to seek similar information about cell-phone and landline calls.

The search warrant records that were already unsealed caused a firestorm when it was revealed that prosecutors labeled Rosen as a 'co-conspirator' when they obtained an order to search a gmail account he used. That and the revelation that prosecutors obtained call records for Associated Press phone lines in another leak case led to an outpouring of criticism and, eventually, to a Justice Department policy that officials said would make it harder to obtain such orders without giving advance notice to the news outlets involved.

Kim was indicted in 2010 on charges of leaking classified information to Rosen and of lying to investigators. Rosen was never charged with a crime. Kim ultimately pled guilty in the case as part of a plea bargain conditioned on the 13-month sentence.

Reporters Committee litigation director Katie Townsend said her group is troubled by the pervasive secrecy surrounding surveillance requests, but especially so in a case where a leak to a journalist was being investigated. She also noted that such filings often remain under seal indefinitely after the related investigations are concluded.

"We ... have a particular interest in the Kim investigation given that Mr. Kim was prosecuted for allegedly disclosing national defense information to Mr. Rosen, who was then a reporter for Fox News. Obtaining access to the remaining sealed material will help the press and the public better understand how the government investigated the Kim case, and how it pursues leak cases involving the media," Townsend said. "There is additional material that remains under seal, notwithstanding the fact that Kim was sentenced long ago. That material should be unsealed."

The motion to unseal the related files was directed to U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who oversaw Kim's case.