• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, May 13, 2013

The Associated Press is protesting against what it calls a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” by the executive branch into newsgathering operations, after the Department of Justice secretly obtained the phone records of numerous AP reporters, as well as AP offices and bureaus in New York City, Washington, D.C. and elsewhere.
 
The DOJ disclosed that it obtained the phone records in a letter sent to the AP on Friday, prompting AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt to send a letter of protest to Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday.

The letter stated, in part: “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.”
 
Pruitt demanded that the government return the phone records and destroy any copies that may have been made.
 
Although the DOJ has not revealed why or how it got the phone records, the AP report about Pruitt’s letter of protest suggests the records were obtained from mobile service providers as part of an investigation into a possible security leak concerning a CIA operation.

The DOJ has been trying to find out who provided information about a CIA operation to foil an Al Qaeda terror plot in the first half of 2012, details of which were published in an AP story that ran on May 7, 2012. The phone records obtained by the DOJ include those for five reporters and an editor who were involved in the AP story.
 
According to the AP report, no information in the original DOJ letter indicates that reporters’ calls themselves were wiretapped.