Opinion: An assault on press freedom

When Mueller was a top Justice Department official he signed off on a subpoena to access the home phone records of a reporter for the Associated Press. Mueller's action defied 30-year-old departmental guidelines designed to protect the press from such intrusions. Yet this is the man we have just charged with overhauling the FBI to make the agency more publicly accountable and sensitive to civil liberties.

AP reporter John Solomon was targeted by the department because he was reporting information not available to the public, about the ongoing federal investigation of Sen. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J. In one news story, he reported that a wiretapped conversation had Torricelli discussing political fundraising with a person related to an organized crime figure. The Justice Department apparently wanted to know who was leaking this information to Solomon and subpoenaed MCI Worldcom for the records of all incoming and outgoing phone calls for Solomon during a five-day stretch in May. Solomon learned of this intrusion -- and the potential compromise of his sources -- only later, through a letter from the office of the U.S. attorney in Manhattan.

According to Justice Department guidelines that have been in place since the presidency of Richard Nixon, before the government may subpoena a reporter's work product or testimony it must pursue "all reasonable alternative investigative steps." Reporters are also to be told before their records are subpoenaed unless that would compromise the investigation. It doesn't appear as though either of these guidelines were followed before Mueller authorized the subpoena as acting deputy assistant attorney general.

Mueller's actions are part of a disturbing increase in federal government assaults on press freedom. Vanessa Leggett, a book author investigating a murder investigation, has now spent more than 40 days in a Texas jail because she refuses to turn over her interviews to a federal grand jury. And Congress is set to hold hearings after Labor Day on legislation to make the leak of any classified information a felony.

To use the press as an investigative arm of federal law enforcement is to cripple the profession of journalism. Reporters are often only able to gather sensitive information because they guarantee their sources confidentiality. By using its subpoena power to unearth those conversations, the Justice Department may be successfully uncovering a leak, but it is also ensuring that future stories important to the public interest will never be told.

One of the main concerns about Mueller during his confirmation process was that he was too much a home-team booster, that he wouldn't be cynical enough about the activity of FBI agents to question their motives and actions. Here we see Mueller authorizing a subpoena to gain access to a reporter's telephone conversations without making sure every other option had been exhausted or sufficiently weighing the benefit of finding the leak against the damage his actions could have on press freedom. We deserve better from a deputy assistant attorney general, and we certainly deserve better from the director of the FBI.

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