Intimidation tactic serves to hide all manner of government secrets.


When President Obama talked about reporters and reporting last week, he struck a conciliatory chord. Obama said he was troubled "that leak investigations may chill the investigative journalism that holds government accountable," and government needs to achieve "the right balance between our security and our open society."

OPPOSING VIEW: Threat to press freedom overstated

Impressive words. But the actions of his Justice Department have been all chill and no balance. Two recent disclosures make the department look as if it's waging war on the news media and on your right to know what your government is doing.

First came word that federal prosecutors had seized two months of records from 20 Associated Press phone lines in an investigation of a 2012 leak about a foiled Yemen bomb plot. The secret seizure ignored the department's own decades-old guidelines to notify news organizations and try to negotiate for records before going to court.

In a second instance of overreach, disclosed last week by The Washington Post, the Justice Department essentially made a crime out of routine reporting, in a case involving Fox News reporter James Rosen.

A 1980 law bars prosecutors from seizing reporters' records such as phone calls and e-mails, with rare exceptions. One is when a reporter is involved in a crime. So that's what the FBI alleged. An agent swore there was probable cause to believe that Rosen was a co-conspirator in violating the 1917 Espionage Act.

The crime?

Doing his job. In 2009, while covering the State Department, Rosen e-mailed a government contractor saying that he wanted to "report authoritatively, and ahead of my competitors" on U.S. policy, based on internal memos and analysis. The contractor, later charged with leaking information about North Korea, said he felt flattered by attention from Rosen, who was "affable, very convincing, persistent."

If that's a crime, then plenty of reporters might as well get fitted for prison garb, leaving the government unaccountable for its actions.

All told, the Obama administration has prosecuted six former or current officials for leaks — twice as many as all previous administrations combined. This is an intimidation tactic that serves to hide all manner of government secrets.

After being savaged by critics, Obama made a peace offering of sorts to the press: support for a federal shield law, which would make it easier for reporters to protect unidentified sources. That's useful. But it would have done little to prevent the Rosen warrant.

Nor does the president's order that Justice review its actions inspire much confidence. The person he put in charge of the review, Attorney General Eric Holder, is the person who signed off on the Rosen strategy.

The proven way to prevent disclosures of potentially harmful secrets is for administrations to talk to news organizations, instead of harassing them. Editors have a long history of cooperating when lives or security are at stake. Holder has taken a step in that direction, inviting some Washington journalists in today to discuss the issues.

Michael Hayden, CIA director under George W. Bush, told us that he often spoke to editors in situations involving national security, and that "more often than most people realize, the press ended up holding or changing elements or deleting elements of stories because of the conversation."

This battle isn't just about press rights. It's about the ability of citizens to know what their government is doing. New laws would help. But not as much as Holder showing more respect for the First Amendment.


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