Gerald Ford’s White House counsel, William E. Casselman II, said “it’s unclear at the moment” if the DOJ crossed the line but suggested that the national security risk concern must have been significant given that the FBI interviewed Holder. He said the attorney general rightly recused himself.
“Why did the FBI feel compelled to interview the attorney general? I don’t know,” he said. “So, more needs to be known.”
Cully Stimson, who manages the national security law program at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said the net was probably too broad if the government knew specifically which reporter obtained the information but went after entire news bureaus.
He said one pertinent fact could be which laws the U.S. attorney’s office relied on to get the AP records. This is secret because the subpoenas were sought through a grand jury.
“There’s a process within the Department of Justice, and there should be, for when and if you want to seek information related to reporters, broadly defined,” said Stimson. “Whether or not they followed that, we don’t know. You have to assume they did, but we don’t know.”
Former prosecutor Peter Zeidenberg — a deputy special counsel in the investigation and prosecution of “Scooter” Libby in the leak scandal surrounding Valerie Plame — defended the DOJ in the investigation of the AP. The story in question disclosed details of a CIA operation in Yemen last spring that thwarted an al-Qaeda plan to blow up an airplane.
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