The White House on Monday defended President Obama’s support for aggressive investigations into national security leaks despite new disclosures about a 2009 case in which the Justice Department searched a reporter’s personal e-mails and attempted to track his movements.
Details of the government’s investigation of the reporter, James Rosen, the chief Washington correspondent for Fox News, emerged in a court affidavit obtained by The Washington Post. Without naming Mr. Rosen, the document describes the reporter as “at the very least, either as an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator.”
The case involved a 2009 article by Mr. Rosen about North Korea that was published on FoxNews.com. Mr. Rosen reported that intelligence officials expected North Korea to respond to the passage of a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning its nuclear and ballistic missile tests by launching another missile. He quoted a source who described missile activity in North Korea, but Mr. Rosen said he was withholding some details “to avoid compromising sensitive overseas operations.”
The Justice Department subsequently investigated the leak and indicted a government adviser, Stephen Jin-Woo Kim. He has pleaded not guilty. The government used records tracking Mr. Rosen’s use of his security badge at the State Department, apparently trying to establish his connection to Mr. Kim.
Mr. Rosen was not charged with any crime. But the suggestion that he was a “co-conspirator” appalled many of his colleagues, some of whom rallied to his defense on Monday.
Michael Clemente, the executive vice president of news at Fox News, said network officials were outraged to learn that Mr. Rosen “was named a criminal co-conspirator for simply doing his job as a reporter.” Mr. Clemente called it “downright chilling” and added, “We will unequivocally defend his right to operate as a member of what up until now has always been a free press.”
The revelations may complicate what has been a contentious relationship between the Obama administration and Fox News, whose conservative talk show hosts are among Mr. Obama’s most vocal critics. Mr. Rosen works on the news side of Fox, not the opinion side; he did not comment publicly on the affidavit’s contents.
The details about Mr. Rosen’s case came just days after The Associated Press revealed that the government had seized two months of telephone records for some of its reporters in a similar leak investigation. Under intense questioning from reporters on Monday, Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, declined to comment on Mr. Rosen’s case, but emphasized Mr. Obama’s desire to investigate serious leaks of government information.
“The president believes, I think, as all of his predecessors believed, that it is imperative that leaks that can jeopardize the lives of American men and women serving overseas should not be tolerated,” Mr. Carney said.
He added that the president seeks balance when it comes to security and the right of reporters to pursue stories without fear of investigation.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/us/politics/white-house-defends-tracking-fox-reporter.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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