[Random-bits] Brian Ross of ABC: FBI Acknowledges: Journalists Phone Records are Fair Game

[James Love]

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/05/fbi_acknowledge.html

FBI Acknowledges: Journalists Phone Records are Fair Game

May 15, 2006 7:18 PM

Brian Ross and Richard Esposito Report:

The FBI acknowledged late Monday that it is increasingly  seeking
reporters' phone records in leak investigations.

"It used to be very hard and complicated to do this, but it no longer
is in the Bush administration," said a senior federal official.

The acknowledgement followed our blotter item that ABC News reporters
had been warned by a federal source that the government knew who we
were calling.

The official said our blotter item was wrong to suggest that ABC News
phone calls were being "tracked."

"Think of it more as backtracking," said a senior federal official.

But FBI officials did not deny that phone records of ABC News, the
New York Times and the Washington Post had been sought as part of a
investigation of leaks at the CIA.

In a statement, the FBI press office said its leak investigations
begin with the examination of government phone records.

"The FBI will take logical investigative steps to determine if a
criminal act was committed by a government employee by the
unauthorized release of classified information," the statement said.

Officials say that means that phone records of reporters will be
sought if government records are not sufficient.

Officials say the FBI makes extensive use of a new provision of the
Patriot Act which allows agents to seek information with what are
called National Security Letters (NSL).

The NSLs are a version of an administrative subpoena and are not
signed by a judge. Under the law, a phone company receiving a NSL for
phone records must provide them and may not divulge to the customer
that the records have been given to the government.

May 15, 2006 | Permalink



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