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President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D.C. 20500
Dear President Obama:
The Overseas Press Club of America, an independent association of journalists that has defended press freedom around the world for more than 70 years, adds its voice to the chorus of disappointment and anger that has followed the news of the Justice Department’s wholesale intrusion into telephone records of the Associated Press. This is a truly intolerable violation of journalistic freedom to investigate and report on activities of the government and its agents. Its effect, intended or not, is to intimidate reporters whose job it is to track the actions of the government’s national security apparatus. If it had been perpetrated by an authoritarian foreign government, I am sure, Mr. President, which you would have joined in condemning it.
Many questions remain unanswered about this incident. The OPC and its Freedom of the
Press Committee urge you to get to the bottom of it and make all the details public as quickly as possible. The most important question: Why did the Justice Department seek records of more than 20 office and private telephones that could have been used by as many as 100 AP reporters? We assume that the main targets of the subpoenas were records in connection with the department’s announced investigation into the AP’s sources in its May 7, 2012 story about the CIA’s foiling of an al Qaeda plot in Yemen to bomb an airliner bound for the U.S.
Another question: Attorney General Holder now says he recused himself from the decision on whether to issue the subpoena to seize the AP’s phone records because he had been interviewed in the case by the FBI. That is unfortunate, since this is the kind of First Amendment breach that deserved attention at the highest levels of government. If it is true, as the White House has said, that the Justice Department failed to warn the President that such an explosive intrusion on press freedom had been authorized, that also is an egregious error of judgment.
Mr. President, the AP behaved quite responsibly in reporting this story. Not only did it notify all concerned in the investigation, it delayed publishing the story until the CIA said publication would pose no threat to national security. It is indefensible that your Administration, which has already prosecuted more government leakers than all previous Presidents combined, would use the full power of the Federal government to punish a news organization is this way for carrying out a legitimate investigative probe. It is mystifying to us that a President who has himself taught Constitutional law, and who came to office promising an open and transparent Administration, can tolerate such behavior.
Respectfully,
Michael S. Serrill
President
Overseas Press Club
cc:
The Hon. Eric H. Holder Jr.
Attorney General of the United States
Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0009
United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary
224 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
United States House of Representatives
Committee on the Judiciary
2138 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Gary Pruitt
President and Chief Executive Officer
Associated Press
450 West 33 Street
New York, NY 10001