They Track Journalists, Don't They?

Democracy Now!. Posted May 16, 2006.

A few days ago, USA Today reported that the government had amassed the call records of tens of millions of Americans. One of the people who helped break that story is Brian Ross, an investigative reporter for ABC News who also helped break the story of the U.S. government's secret prisons in Romania and Poland. Ross recently found out that the government was tracking his phone calls as well.

AMY GOODMAN: We now are joined by ABC News investigative reporter who may well be a target of this new phase of government monitoring, himself. Brian Ross is the investigative reporter for ABC News. He joins us on the line from here in New York. Welcome to Democracy Now!

BRIAN ROSS: Thank you very much.

AMY GOODMAN: It's good to have you with us. Well, tell us what you've learned.

BRIAN ROSS: Well, to start with, we were warned -- Rich Esposito and I were warned last week that the government was aware of who we were calling and that we should quickly get new cell phones that didn't come back to our names. An insider told us, a friendly insider who did not necessarily think this is a good idea. 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. That's how they essentially tracked down Mary McCarthy at the C.I.A. and got her in a polygraph and fired her based on who she was making contact with. This, for us, is quite chilling. The F.B.I. then, Amy, last night put out a statement essentially acknowledging that they are tracking phone calls of reporters. 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.

AMY GOODMAN: So, the F.B.I. is admitting this. And what are they saying further? Are they going to continue to do this?

BRIAN ROSS: That's part of a criminal investigation into who provided information to reporters, who leaked classified information, which would certainly include evidence of secret prisons or N.S.A. spying, and that's considered classified. The fact that that was leaked represents a criminal act in the view of the C.I.A., which has made referrals to the Department of Justice, and then they handed over to the F.B.I. So, essentially, they have squads of F.B.I. agents, and what they do is, according to the F.B.I. statement, they begin by getting the phone records that are easily available to them off of the government phones themselves, and then they say in this statement, which is a long sort of non-denial denial, that they take the next logical step, which is to get a reporter's phone records.

And they do this, they say, legally. What that means is they use a provision in the PATRIOT Act -- which is designed to go after terrorists, but they're using it to go after reporters -- what they call a national security letter. Essentially, it's a letter an F.B.I. agent writes, takes it to a phone company -- or anywhere, really -- but takes it to a phone company, and the phone company is then required under the provisions of the PATRIOT Act to turn over the information, and also a phone company is required not divulge to the customer, me or anybody else, that the records have been sought by the government.

AMY GOODMAN: And these national security letters, or NSLs, are not signed by a judge?

BRIAN ROSS: They are not signed by a judge.

AMY GOODMAN: Why do you think they're going after you, Brian Ross?

BRIAN ROSS: There are two stories that I know by talking to people who have been interviewed that the C.I.A. considers to be evidence of criminal behavior on the part of someone. Our story on the C.I.A. secret prisons, the Washington Post broke that story. They did not report the two countries. We came along and with our own sources reported the two countries where the prisons had been were Poland and Romania, and this set off quite a firestorm inside the C.I.A.

As well, we reported on an attack in Pakistan using a C.I.A. Predator with missiles attached to it, the one that killed 18 people there, looking for the number two man in al-Qaeda, al-Zawahri. We got word of that very early and reported it, and that infuriated the C.I.A., because it embarrassed them with the Pakistanis. They hadn't quite made up the cover story they used when the C.I.A. operates inside Pakistan. Generally, the Pakistanis will say it was a bomb they set off or something to cover the fact that the U.S. operates inside Pakistan sometimes. So those two incidents resulted in the C.I.A. being upset and asking for an investigation as to who leaked that information.

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