DOJ Begged Judge to Keep Fox Reporter in Dark About Monitoring
Friday, 24 May 2013 09:19 PM
U.S. Attorney Ron Machen argued in 2010 that the traditional 30-day notice period did not apply to Rosen as Justice secretly monitored his Gmail account, according to new exhibits unsealed this week and disclosed by The Hill.
“Where, as here, the government seeks such contents through a search warrant, no notice to the subscriber or customer of the e-mail account is statutorily required or necessary,” Machen wrote in a June 2010 motion. “Thus, this court's indication on the face of the warrant that delayed notice of 30 days to the customer and subscriber was permissible was unnecessary.”
Machen, through another request granted by the court, stopped Google from telling Rosen that Justice was spying on his e-mail account, the Hill reports.
The prosecutor had demanded to see all of Rosen’s emails — including deleted messages, emails in his trash folder and all attachments sent to and from him.
The original warrant in the Rosen case was signed personally by Attorney General Eric Holder, NBC News reported this week.
Meanwhile, Fox News President Roger Ailes on Thursday blasted Justice for targeting journalists as if they were criminals and said the government's seizure of reporters' emails and phone records would not stand "the test of law."
“The administration’s attempt to intimidate Fox News and its employees will not succeed and their excuses will stand neither the test of law, the test of decency, nor the test of time,” Ailes said. “We will not allow a climate of press intimidation, unseen since the McCarthy era, to frighten any of us away from the truth.”
President Barack Obama on Thursday asked Holder to review Justice’s guidelines on leak investigations and news organizations. Holder promised a report by July 12, the Hill reports.
Reports of the FBI's tracking of Rosen's movements, phone, and email conversations with a former State Department contractor — Stephen Jin-Woo Kim — followed the disclosure last week that phone records of editors and reporters at The Associated Press had been secretly seized by Justice in another probe of leaked government information.
But unlike the AP reporters, Rosen was named as a "co-conspirator" by FBI officials in the warrant signed by Holder.
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"The Justice Department begged a federal judge to not tell Fox News reporter James Rosen that it was tracking his telephone calls and emails in a probe regarding a national security leak."
ReplyDeleteThe quote states that the judge indicated "on the face of the warrant that delayed notice of 30 days to the customer and subscriber was permissible." The judge wrote on the warrant that they delay was legally permissible. Machen states that this indication was unnecessary because when "the government seeks such contents through a search warrant, no notice to the subscriber or customer of the e-mail account is statutorily required or necessary." In other words, the judge was simply reminding Machen of something he already knew. I think Newsmax needs to get some writers who know the law, or at least can understand the meaning of the statements they quote.
--David
It does not matter what the intent of DOJ was, it was an illegal search of emails. The DOJ wanted to monitor his emails for years. A thirty day delay was illegal to start with and Justice's intent to go on for years shows how out of control this department is.
ReplyDeleteYou need to re-read the pentagon papers as it relates to freedom of press!
Another "idiot"(in your thinking) reporter
ReplyDeletehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/24/james-rosen-emails_n_3333390.html?utm_hp_ref=politics
Contrary to what some people, including you, believe, a reporter does not have an absolute shield when he is receiving an unauthorized transmission of top secret national defense information classified TS/SCI. The FBI affidavit proves beyond any reasonable doubt that he was receiving such information from Kim. It also proves that he was an "abettor" at least to the extent that he proposed their scheme to cover up the crime.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that a federal judge approved this warrant might suggest to "idiots" that the DOJ was within its legal rights to request the warrant.
I am familiar with the Pentagon Papers. As I told you, they were classified TS "sensitive", not SCI. Here is the legal statute (U.S.C. section 793(d) that governs leaks of TS/SCI information…
"Whoever, lawfully having possession of, access to, control over, or being entrusted with any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it on demand to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it…"
Note that the law says that a TS/SCI classified document may not be transmitted to "any person not entitled to receive it". I hope we can at least agree that "any person" includes Mr. Rosen!
--David
P.S. Since you claim to be very familiar with the Pentagon Papers, you should know that nothing in there that meets the definition of TS/SCI and, therefore, they were properly coded "sensitive" rather than TS/SCI and, therefore, not subject to this statute.