Justice Department Providess Reporter James Rosen With "Pretty Horrible Customer Service," i.e., They Spied on Him for Reporting the News

In an article at the Washington Post, linked at Hot Air:

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.

The case of Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, the government adviser, and James Rosen, the chief Washington correspondent for Fox News, bears striking similarities to a sweeping leaks investigation disclosed last week in which federal investigators obtained records over two months of more than 20 telephone lines assigned to the Associated Press.

It's a little worse than that-- an FBI report named Rosen as a criminal accessory for reporting the news. I imagine this was done as part of a justification for getting his personal emails.

[FBI Agent Reginald] Reyes wrote that there was evidence Rosen had broken the law, “at the very least, either as an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator.”

The claim is made that Rosen employed "covert communication" techniques to speak with his source... sort of like Bob Woodward meeting Deep Throat in parking structures late at night.

In other words: The very fact that he used any sort of technique for protecting his source becomes evidence of a crime against the State.

Shocking.

Thanks to the Obsidan Owl for the headline joke.

posted by Ace at 12:51 PM

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