Washington Post, via Drudge:
When the Justice Department began investigating possible leaks of
classified information about North Korea in 2009, investigators did more
than obtain telephone records of a working journalist suspected of
receiving the secret material.
They used security badge access records to track the reporter’s
comings and goings from the State Department, according to a newly
obtained court affidavit. They traced the timing of his calls with a
State Department security adviser suspected of sharing the classified
report. They obtained a search warrant for the reporter’s personal
e-mails.
The case of Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, the government adviser, and James
Rosen, the chief Washington correspondent for Fox News, bears striking
similarities to a sweeping leaks investigation disclosed last week in
which federal investigators obtained records over two months of more
than 20 telephone lines assigned to the Associated Press.
At a
time when President Obama’s administration is under renewed scrutiny for
an unprecedented number of leak investigations, the Kim case provides a
rare glimpse into the inner workings of one such probe.
Court
documents in the Kim case reveal how deeply investigators explored the
private communications of a working journalist — and raise the question
of how often journalists have been investigated as closely as Rosen was
in 2010. The case also raises new concerns among critics of government
secrecy about the possible stifling effect of these investigations on a
critical element of press freedom: the exchange of information between
reporters and their sources.
“Search warrants like these have a
severe chilling effect on the free flow of important information to the
public,” said First Amendment lawyer Charles Tobin, who has represented
the Associated Press, but not in the current case. “That’s a very
dangerous road to go down.” (continue reading at Washington Post)
Via Twitchy (Twitchy is forever)
Related:
Jonathan Karl of ABC News is evidently a Republican, and liberals think it’s a horrible scandal that a Republican could be employed as a reporter: “Didn’t he see the ‘No Republicans Allowed’ sign?”
Meanwhile, Jason Richwine’s recent resignation from the Heritage Foundation, a subject I haven’t previously discussed, yields a secondary story that is either amusing or frightening, depending on whether you take Harvard students seriously: (continue reading at The Other McCain)
On the other scandals stalking Obama:
Final must reads of the day:
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