Laura Malone, general counsel of the Associated Press, has found herself in the middle of a struggle with the Obama Administration over the global news organizations seized phone recordsor as AP put it: a serious interference with APs constitutional rights to gather and report the news.
Friday afternoon Malone received a letter from U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen Jr. of the District of Columbia. It said that the U.S. Department of Justice had secretly obtained two months worth of phone records earlier this year on some 20 AP phone lines in various cities.
Malone, who couldnt immediately be reached for comment, has served more than two years as acting general counsel for the AP. Prior to that she was the organizations associate general counsel for intellectual property.
After mulling over Machens letter during the weekend, the AP responded on Monday with its own letter to Attorney General Eric Holder Jr., written by chief executive Gary Pruitt.
Pruitts letter [PDF] says:
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 APs newsgathering operations, and disclose information about APs activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know.
Asking that the records be destroyed or segregated, the letter indicates the AP might seek, if it proves necessary, guidance from appropriate judicial authorities.
On Tuesday, Holder told the AP that he had nothing to do with the decision to seize the phone records. He said it was related to a criminal investigation into who leaked classified information, and that he had excused himself from the case.
Meanwhile, Holder said he has put deputy attorney general James Cole in charge of the investigation, the AP reported.
Political leaders on both sides of the aisle attacked the phone records grab, according to interviews with The New York Times.
And Ben Wizner, director of the American Civil Liberties Unions speech, privacy, and technology project, said in a statement Monday:
"Obtaining a broad range of telephone records in order to ferret out a government leaker is an unacceptable abuse of power. Freedom of the press is a pillar of our democracy, and that freedom often depends on confidential communications between reporters and their sources."