(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to United States Attorney General John Ashcroft, RSF protested the Justice Department’s subpoena of Associated Press (AP) journalist John Solomon’s telephone records. RSF asked the attorney general to do everything in his power to ensure that the Justice Department no longer threatens the confidentiality of sources. “It is unthinkable that […]
(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to United States Attorney General John Ashcroft, RSF protested the Justice Department’s subpoena of Associated Press (AP) journalist John Solomon’s telephone records. RSF asked the attorney general to do everything in his power to ensure that the Justice Department no longer threatens the confidentiality of sources.
“It is unthinkable that the confidentiality of a journalist’s sources, the only guarantee of independent, investigative journalism, is not recognized and respected by the American administration,” stated Robert Ménard, RSF’s secretary-general. “Otherwise, press professionals will soon be considered Justice Department auxiliaries.” Ménard recalled that a journalist is already serving prison time for contempt of court in Texas for refusing to reveal her sources to a federal court.
According to information gathered by RSF, in a 20 August 2001 letter, signed by US Attorney Mary Joe White, Solomon, an AP journalist, was advised that the US Attorney’s office obtained records for both his incoming and outgoing telephone calls from 2 to 7 May. This was part of an investigation into the violation of investigative secrecy. In an article published on 4 May, Solomon quoted an anonymous judicial source revealing that a federal wiretap recorded Senator Robert Torricelli discussing campaign donations. Law enforcement officers can be prosecuted for disclosing information obtained from federal wiretaps.
AP President Louis D. Boccardi declared he was “outraged” by this subpoena. He announced that he would seek all available legal redress. According to the Code of Federal Regulations, the Justice Department can subpoena journalists’ phone records only after having taken “all reasonable alternative investigative steps.” Some observers are questioning whether this provision was applied considering that the subpoena came only ten days after the publication of the article.
RSF recalls that Vanessa Leggett has been incarcerated since 20 July for “contempt of court”, after having refused to hand over her notes and recordings of interviews to a U.S District Court in Houston, Texas (see IFEX alerts of 23, 8 and 1 August 2001). This free-lance journalist had investigated the 1997 killing of a Texas millionaire’s wife, with the intention of writing a book on the subject. She had conducted an interview with the victim’s brother-in-law, suspected of the murder, shortly before he committed suicide. Leggett could be detained for a maximum of eighteen months. On 17 August, the U.S court of appeals sitting in Houston (5th Circuit) rejected Leggett’s appeal, thus upholding the contempt conviction against her. The court considered that journalists do not have the right to refuse to testify before a grand jury.
