In case you missed it, here’s the crux of what it dealt with.
On Tuesday, the Washington Post published a story about an Associated Press reporter who had his phone records seized by the Justice Department. The AP reporter, John Solomon, was covering the 1996 campaign finance investigation of Sen. Robert G. Torricelli, D-N.J.
Solomon’s story said prosecutors were reviewing the intercept anew in connection with the ongoing probe of Torricelli’s 1996 Senate campaign. The office of U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White subpoenaed records of calls at Solomon’s home between May 2 and May 7.
According to the paper, Justice obtained a record of Solomon’s incoming and outgoing home telephone calls for a five-day period in May, much to the chagrin – obviously – of the Post (because the paper decided to publish the story) and, not surprisingly, the AP.
AP President and CEO Louis D. Boccardi blamed it on President Bush: “We are outraged by what the Justice Department has done, and we will seek any available legal redress. … Their actions fly in the face of long-standing policy that recognizes what a serious step it is to go after a reporter’s phone records. We hope that this secret assault on the press is not an indication of the Bush administration’s attitude toward a press free of government interference.”
Other “media experts” expressed similar outrage.
“This is really disturbing,” said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press. “It shows [the Justice Department’s] willingness to try to stop leaks by turning journalists into investigators for the government.”
Are Dalglish and Boccardi wrong? No, probably not. They should be outraged anytime a government agency or law enforcement division tries to subdue the First Amendment’s freedom of the press.
But what is typical (and irritating) about this outrage is its selective nature, as pointed out by James Sanders, who was convicted – along with his wife – of “conspiracy” while trying to root out federal agency lies and misstatements pertaining to the TWA Flight 800 disaster.
The government has long maintained that the 1996 explosion of the Boeing 747 – which had just taken off from New York City’s Kennedy Airport enroute to Paris, France – was caused by faulty wiring that ignited fuel vapors in the plane’s empty center fuel tank. Officially, however, government investigators have never been able to prove that theory.
Sanders – based on multiple eyewitness accounts, including experienced military personnel, along with other physical evidence – maintained the plane was shot down, by at least one surface-to-air missile.
Yet when Sanders was getting too close for comfort in 1997 and his phone records were seized by the Justice Department, lo and behold neither the Post nor AP nor just about any other mainstream press organization bothered to report it, much less express “outrage” or worry about it.
And for damned sure hypocrites like Boccardi didn’t blame the Clinton Justice Department for expressing a hostile “attitude toward a press free of government interference.”
“The Post is somewhat exercised because the Justice Department subpoenaed the AP reporter’s phone records without following … its own mandatory guidelines when considering seizing a journalist’s phone records,” Sanders told WND.
He wonders where the outrage, disbelief and vow to seek “any available legal redress” were four years ago.
So do we, James.
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Jack Cashill