WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said yesterday he did not make the controversial decision to secretly seize telephone records of the Associated Press but defended his department’s actions in the investigation of what he called a “very, very serious leak.”
The decision to seek phone records of one of the world’s largest news-gathering organizations was made by Deputy Attorney General Jim Cole, Holder said.
Holder, speaking at a press conference, said he recused himself from the matter to avoid a potential conflict of interest because he was interviewed by the FBI as part of the same leak investigation that targeted the AP records.
That seizure, denounced by critics as a gross intrusion into freedom of the press, has created an uproar in Washington and led to questions over how the Obama administration is balancing the need for national security with privacy rights.
Combined with a separate furor over the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative political groups for extra scrutiny, it also is stoking fears of excessive government intrusion under President Barack Obama.
The White House has said it had no advance knowledge of the IRS or Justice Department actions.
Lawmakers from both parties on Tuesday criticized the Justice Department’s decision to obtain the AP records. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called the action “inexcusable.”
But in a letter to AP president Gary Pruitt, Cole on Tuesday defended the department’s unusual action against a member of the media, saying it was a necessary step in the year-old criminal probe of leaks of classified information.
A law enforcement official said the probe is related to information in a May 7, 2012, AP story about an operation, conducted by the CIA and allied intelligence agencies, that stopped a Yemen-based al Qaeda plot to detonate a bomb on an airplane headed for the United States.
Cole declined Pruitt’s request to return the records.
“We strive in every case to strike the proper balance between the public’s interest in the free flow of information and the public’s interest in the protection of national security and effective enforcement of our laws,” he wrote. “We believe we have done so in this matter.”
Pruitt, in a statement responding to Cole’s letter, said “it does not adequately address our concerns,” which include that the subpoena’s scope was “overbroad under the law” and that the AP was not notified in advance.
The AP story at issue, he said, contradicted White House assertions that there was no credible threat to the American people in May 2012 around the first anniversary of the killing of al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.
