FBI tracking reporters’ phone calls in CIA leak investigation

Other sources told Ross and Esposito that telephone calls and contacts by reporters for ABC News, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, were being examined as part of a widespread CIA leak investigation.

In an interview on the “Democracy Now!” radio program, Ross commented, “It was clear to us that somehow the government knew our records. We were told our phone calls weren’t being recorded, but just who we were calling. Now, in terms of trying to track down insiders at the government who are providing us with information, that’s really about all they need.” Ross added that the FBI had acknowledged they were tracking journalists’ phone calls. “The person I talked to said, ‘Well, it may be more like backtracking.’ But under this administration, what used to be hard to do, in going after reporters and their phone records, is now easy.”

Indeed FBI officials, according to ABC News, did not deny that the television network’s telephone records, along with those of New York Times and Washington Post reporters, had been sought as part of an investigation of leaks at the CIA. The FBI press office indicated that its inquiries into such matters begin with an 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.

In their attempted crackdown on the press, the FBI is making wide use of National Security Letters (NSLs), a provision of the Patriot Act. The NSLs are a type of administrative subpoena and are not signed by a judge. Under the provision, worthy of a police state, “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” (ABC News).

Asked why he and Esposito were being targeted, Ross suggested to “Democracy Now!” that there were two stories “that the CIA considers to be evidence of criminal behavior on the part of someone.” Following the initial Washington Post story on secret CIA prisons around the world, the two ABC News reporters revealed that the two eastern European countries hosting these facilities were Poland and Romania, “and this set off quite a firestorm inside the CIA.”

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http://wsws.org/articles/2006/may2006/abcn-m17.shtml