Emails show Obama administration targeted reporter over her coverage of 'Operation Fast and Furious' scandal
- Journalist Sharyl Attkisson was an attack dog while at CBS, following the 'Fast and Furious' gun scandal that dogged the Justice Department
- Email released as part of a Freedom Of Information Act lawsuit shows DOJ communications chief saying she would pressure network higher-ups to rein her in
- 'She's out of control,' wrote then-Justice flack Tracy Schmaler, accusing her of lodging 'a bulls**t accusation' about the gun-'walking' operation
- Email conversation was with White House strategist Eric Schultz, who was later promoted to the job of principal deputy press secretary
The Department of Justice's top communications official plotted to squash a reporter who aggressively covered the agency's ill-fated Operation Fast and Furious gun scandal in 2011, previously secret emails show.
The emails, between the DOJ's then-communications chief Tracy Schmaler and White House press flack Eric Schultz, are a rare look inside the Obama administration's press control machine.
They were released Thursday while the nation was preoccupied with President Barack Obama's immigration policy announcement, as the result of a long-languishing Freedom Of Information Act lawsuit filed by the center-right watchdog group Judicial Watch.
In one message, Schmaler told Schultz that CBS journalist Sharyl Attkisson needed to be reined in, writing that she was 'calling Sharryl's [sic] editor and reaching out to Scheiffer. She's out of control.'
TARGETED: The Justice Department tried to rein in award-winning television journalist Sharyl Attkisson after she reported critically on the Fast and Furious gun scandal
Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress in 2011 that he had only learned of the deadly gun 'walking' program 'for the first time over the last few weeks,' but Attkisson published documents that proved otherwise
Schieffer refers to CBS news anchor Bob Schieffer, a journalist who has enjoyed a chummy relationship with the Obama White House. He interviewed the president two weeks ago in a rare on-camera appearance.
Schmaler hatched her plan a day after Attkisson reported on documents showing Attorney General Eric Holder was sent briefings on the Fast and Furious operation beginning in 2010. That directly contradicted his sworn statements to Congress.
In May 2011 Holder told a House Judiciary Committee panel that 'I'm not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks.'
The House of Representatives later held Holder in criminal Contempt of Congress for failing to turn over subpoenaed documents related to the scandal.
In her emails, Schmaler told Schultz that she had 'I spent much of last night explaining to everyone it's a bulls**t accusation.'
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Attkisson, who left CBS a year ago over concerns that the network was reflexively killing stories that were critical of the administration, told MailOnline that the federal government's backroom plotting was in line with what she experienced previously.
'This is just the tip of the iceberg. ... Now people have a black and white email from the perpetrators to see for themselves what I've long known,' she said.
Operation Fast and Furious was a program that the involved Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives – a subagency of the DOJ – encouraging gun dealers to knowingly sell weapons to 'straw buyers' who intended to traffick them across the Mexican border.
FIGHTING BACK: Attkisson spills the beans in a new book about how the government impedes the work of reporters
The administration intended to track the guns, hopefully to Mexican drug cartels, but lost control of two-thirds of the 2,000 firearms involved. One was the weapon that killed a U.S. Border Patrol agent, and others were tied to hundreds of deaths of Mexican nationals.
'Think about the outrage,' Attkisson said Friday. 'They are angry not that Dept. of Justice employees embarked upon an ill-advised cross-border operation to arm Mexican drug cartels, or that the Attorney General provided conflicting testimony before Congress: They're mad that I did my job and reported on it.'
The Justice Department was at one point forced to retract testimony that denied the government was knowingly 'walking' guns into Mexico.
'Also, it appears to be wholly inappropriate use of presidential executive privilege,' she said, referring to the White House's years-long delay in releasing the trove of emails.
'There is nothing in this email that legally justifies why the president would have invoked executive privilege to keep it secret from the public and Congress all this time until forced by a lawsuit to turn it over.'
Schultz did not respond to a request for comment. Schmaler could not be reached Friday.
The emails also include an indication that the Justice Department provided leaked documents to a National Journal reporter in order to counter Attkisson's reporting.
'I sent NJ's Susan Davis your way,' Schmaler told Schultz. 'She's writing on [Rep. Darrell] Issa/FandF and I said you could load her up on the leaks, etc.'
Issa, the hard-charging House Oversight Committee chairman from Califonia, was the most aggressive pit bull chasing the scandal in Congress at the time.
Schultz seemed disappointed that Davis was the only high-profile journalist to write a follow-up story that took the administration's side.
'Why do you think nobody else wrote?' he asked. 'Were they not fed the docs?'
CONSPIRATORS? Tracy Schmaler (left) and Eric Schultz (right) discussed frankly how to supply some reporters with documents while they tried to restrain others
Schultz was later promoted within the administration and now holds the position of principal deputy press secretary, briefing reporters at the White House and aboard Air Force One when Press Secretary Josh Earnest is unavailable.
Attkisson's book, 'Stonewalled,' chronicles her experiences.
Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said in a statement that the tranche of emails released Thursday 'are a road map to the Obama administration’s Fast and Furious cover-up and deadly lies.'
He told MailOnline on Friday that 'it is disturbing to see top officials at the Obama White House and Justice Department targeting a journalist for destruction because she dared published the truth.'
'I wonder: Just how big is Obama enemies list?'
'President Obama’s dishonest assertion of executive privilege over this material would have embarrassed Richard Nixon,' he said.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2844524/Emails-Obama-administration-targeted-reporter-coverage-Operation-Fast-Furious-scandal.html#ixzz5GQpf9CWf
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