It wasn’t only the Associated Press that the Justice Department was spying on, they also spied on James Rosen, a reporter with Fox News:
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.
Unlike the AP case, DOJ wasn’t only digging for information, they actually named Rosen as a criminal co-conspirator. Glenn Greenwald (a liberal, one hastens to point out, but a consistent defender of the Freedom of the Press) gives the administration both barrels:
What makes this revelation particularly disturbing is that the DOJ, in order to get this search warrant, insisted that not only Kim, but also Rosen – the journalist – committed serious crimes. The DOJ specifically argued that by encouraging his source to disclose classified information – something investigative journalists do every day – Rosen himself broke the law. . .
Under US law, it is not illegal to publish classified information. That fact, along with the First Amendment’s guarantee of press freedoms, is what has prevented the US government from ever prosecuting journalists for reporting on what the US government does in secret. This newfound theory of the Obama DOJ – that a journalist can be guilty of crimes for “soliciting” the disclosure of classified information – is a means for circumventing those safeguards and criminalizing the act of investigative journalism itself.
And it wasn’t just Rosen either. The DOJ spied on two other Fox News personnel as well, another reporter and a producer.
UPDATE: At least five different phones at Fox News, and the phone of James Rosen’s parents.
Internet Scofflaw 