News agency condemns 'massive and unprecedented intrusion'

The Associated Press said on Monday the United States government secretly seized telephone records of AP offices and reporters for a two-month period in 2012, describing the acts as a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into newsgathering operations.

AP Chief Executive Gary Pruitt said in a statement that the AP was informed on Friday that the US Justice Department gathered records for more than 20 phone lines assigned to the news agency and its reporters.

"There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters," Pruitt said in the statement addressed to US Attorney General Eric Holder.

An AP story on the records seizure said the government would not say why it sought them. But it noted that US officials have previously said the US Attorney's Office in the District of Columbia was conducting a criminal investigation into information contained in a May 7, 2012, AP story about a CIA operation in Yemen that stopped an al-Qaida plot to detonate a bomb on an airplane headed for the US.

Five reporters and an editor involved in that story were among those whose phone numbers were obtained by the government, the AP said.

The disclosure threatened to set off a confrontation between free press advocates and the Obama administration, which has aggressively pursued national security leaks.

"It's alarming given the scale of it," said David Schulz, an attorney with Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz who is representing the AP. "This is a massive intrusion into the news gathering operation of one of the largest news organizations in the US. People should be concerned."

The US Attorney's Office, which notified the AP of the seizure, issued a statement on Monday saying it was "careful and deliberative" when dealing with issues around freedom of the press.

"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," the office said.

The White House was not involved in the decision to seize the AP records, Press Secretary Jay Carney said.

"Other than press reports, we have no knowledge of any attempt by the Justice Department to seek phone records of the AP," Carney said.

"We are not involved in decisions made in connection with criminal investigations, as those matters are handled independently by the Justice Department."

The seized phone records were for April and May of 2012, and AP bureaus in New York, Hartford and Washington were among those affected, as well as an AP phone at the US House of Representatives press gallery, the AP said.

Reuters-AP

(China Daily 05/15/2013 page12)