Justice Department subpoenaed AP phone records, news service says

(CNN) — The Justice Department secretly collected two months of telephone records for reporters and editors at The Associated Press, the news service disclosed Monday in an outraged letter to Attorney General Eric Holder.

The records included calls from several AP bureaus and the personal phone lines of several staffers, AP President Gary Pruitt wrote. Pruitt called the subpoenas a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into its reporting.

“These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP’s newsgathering operations and disclose information about AP’s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know,” wrote Pruitt, the news agency’s CEO.

The AP reported that the government has not said why it wanted the records. But it noted that U.S. officials have said they were probing how details of a foiled bomb plot that targeted a U.S.-bound aircraft leaked in May 2012. The news agency said records from five reporters and an editor who worked on a story about the plot were among those collected.

The subpoenas were disclosed to the news agency on Friday, Pruitt wrote. In all, federal agents collected records from more than 20 lines, including personal phones and AP phone numbers in New York; Hartford, Connecticut; and Washington, he wrote.

“We regard this action by the Department of Justice as a serious interference with AP’s constitutional rights to gather and report the news,” he told Holder. Pruitt demanded that the department return all records collected and destroy all copies.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Washington responded that federal investigators seek phone records from news outlets only after making “every reasonable effort to obtain information through alternative means.” It did not disclose the subject of the probe.

“We must notify the media organization in advance unless doing so would pose a substantial threat to the integrity of the investigation,” it said. “Because we value the freedom of the press, we are always careful and deliberative in seeking to strike the right balance between the public interest in the free flow of information and the public interest in the fair and effective administration of our criminal laws.”

Federal agents have launched several investigations into leaks of classified information in the past few years. Holder announced in June 2012 that he had assigned two U.S. attorneys to lead investigations into the possible leaking of state secrets, and members of Congress have complained about disclosures of electronic warfare campaigns against Iran, U.S. drone attacks overseas and Obama’s personal involvement in “kill lists” of militants in Yemen and Pakistan.

But Pruitt wrote that most of the records collected from the AP “can have no plausible connection to any ongoing investigation,” and the American Civil Liberties Union called on the Justice Department to explain its actions.

“Obtaining a broad range of telephone records in order to ferret out a government leaker is an unacceptable abuse of power,” Ben Wizner, the head of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, said in a written statement. “Freedom of the press is a pillar of our democracy, and that freedom often depends on confidential communications between reporters and their sources.”