[Infowarrior] - FBI Acknowledges: Journalists Phone Records are Fair Game

[Richard Forno]

FBI Acknowledges: Journalists Phone Records are Fair Game

May 15, 2006 7:18 PM

Brian Ross and Richard Esposito Report:

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/05/fbi_acknowledge.html

The FBI acknowledged late Monday that it is increasingly  seeking reporters'
phone records in leak investigations.

"It used to be very hard and complicated to do this, but it no longer is in
the Bush administration," said a senior federal official.

The acknowledgement followed our blotter item that ABC News reporters had
been warned by a federal source that the government knew who we were
calling.

The official said our blotter item was wrong to suggest that ABC News phone
calls were being "tracked."

"Think of it more as backtracking," said a senior federal official.

But FBI officials did not deny that phone records of ABC News, the New York
Times and the Washington Post had been sought as part of a investigation of
leaks at the CIA.

In a statement, the FBI press office said its leak investigations begin with
the examination of government phone records.

"The FBI will take logical investigative steps to determine if a criminal
act was committed by a government employee by the unauthorized release of
classified information," the statement said.

Officials say that means that phone records of reporters will be sought if
government records are not sufficient.

Officials say the FBI makes extensive use of a new provision of the Patriot
Act which allows agents to seek information with what are called National
Security Letters (NSL).

The NSLs are a version of an administrative subpoena and are not signed by a
judge. Under the law, a phone company receiving a NSL for phone records must
provide them and may not divulge to the customer that the records have been
given to the government.