Obama Acts Against Free Press, President of the Associated Press Says

05/16/2013 - 08h13

The world president of the Associated Press, Gary Pruitt, was visiting Latin America when he became involved in one of the biggest scandals of the Obama administration: the monitoring of phone calls of some 100 AP journalists, a major news agency with offices in 110 countries.

The Justice Department doesn't comment on the case, but extra officially the goal was to identify the source of an AP news report of May 2012 on a Yemen-based Al Qaeda plan to explode an airplane to the U.S.

During his stay in São Paulo, Pruitt told Folha that national security reasons don't justify an "illegal" action. He believes Obama is more aggressive with the press than his predecessor, George Bush (2001-2009).

Folha - How do you define what the US government did with Associated Press?

Gary Pruitt - They secretly subpoenaed and obtained a wide range of phone records from the Associated Press. And we thought the scope of that was overbroad and, as a result, illegal.

The US government says it has the right to do it.

The US government has the right to conduct criminal investigations, but when it involves the news media, there are rules that they are required to follow, with very narrow exceptions. And in this case they claimed that they didn't need to contact us, and they claimed that their search was narrowly drawn. We disagree, we think that the search was overbroad, involving 20 numbers of the Associated Press including general numbers, home numbers, fax numbers, used by as many as 100 journalists. So we don't think it was narrowly drawn and we think they should have come to us in advance.

They are required to do that unless they feel that coming to us in advance would substantially threaten the integrity of the investigation. We don't think that standard was [respected] either because these were phone records held by a third party [body], the phone service provider. We could not have tampered with them or changed them, so they could have to come to us and talk to us without any danger the records they saw have been tampered with.

Had they come to you, would you have helped them?

When they contacted us, and it happens to all news media in the United States, what we try to do is to negotiate with them, to narrow the focus, and see if there are other ways to get the information without compromising the free press rights, the free speech rights of the news media. And usually we work that out.

Has it happened before?

Is has happened before, in some cases in the US that I am aware of. But we have never had a case like this, in any of the other media we have talked to in the US that had such a broad sweep in terms of time and phone numbers involved.

Are you considering to take legal action against the US government?

We have to consider all options. Right now, we filed a letter of protest, they responded, we have replied to that and we will have to see if there can be any discussion between the AP and the Justice Department. We are mainly concerned about their over-reaching tactics here and we want to make sure that something like this never happens again.

So you prefer an agreement instead of a legal action?

We prefer them to agree not to do this again and, in this case, to return the phone records and destroy them and acknowledge that this was overbroad. But we certainly think that it is important to make sure that this type of activity [will] not be repeated.

So you are not disputing the existence of the national interest, you are disputing the fact that it was employed in an abusive way.

Right. We understand that there are certain circumstances involving national security where the US government needs to investigate, we do understand that. On the other side, the US has the First Amendment of the Constitution protecting the free press and the news media, and those things need to be balanced.
The AP recognizes national security in this case, when we obtained the story about a bombing plot of an airliner bound for the US, and we were the only news organization to have obtained that story.

The US government asked us to hold it for national security reasons. And we did, we held it until the US government said the concerns had passed. So, the AP completely respects the idea that the national security is very important and we need to honor that. On the other hand, we felt that we had a national security interest as well, because we have obtained information that the US citizens should know, that there was evidence of terrorist activities against the United States. So we felt the US public should know that as well.

Do you see the situation as the US government trying to intimidate you?

The US government will not intimidate the Associated Press. We are going to be able to carry on. But I think behavior like this will intimidate potential whistleblowers within the government, and sources for journalists, if they think that they will be exposed or if they see they have risk secret government subpoenas exposing them.

What does it say about the relationship between the Obama administration and the media in general?

There have been comparisons recently between the Nixon administration and the Obama administration in their treatment of the press. I do not want to make comparisons, I would just like to say that the Obama administration and the Justice Department, in this regard, is contrary to the notion of a free, open press, which is guaranteed under the First Amendment. And I think that they taking very aggressive tactics.

To the point where free press is threatened? And do you think this in context of a 9/11 paranoia?

I do not know. I do say that the Obama administration has been more aggressive than the previous ones, even those post-9/11, in going after government whistleblowers or leaks within the government.

Why?

I cannot speak for the president. I don't know why. I wish they followed their own rules more carefully.

Are you still negotiating with them?

We have exchanged positions, but we will see what will follow after that. Do you see this being part of the political game in Washington?*

It will not be for AP. We do not want to make this political, we do not regard it as political. This is a non-partisan issue, dealing with upholding First Amendment of the Constitution.

Translated by THOMAS MUELLO

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