Senate Wants Answers on Jack Anderson Probe

Senators question Bush administration's openness
Posted on Tue, Jun. 06, 2006
Senators question Bush administration's openness
By Ron Hutcheson and Ely Portillo
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Professor Mark Feldstein was stunned when two FBI agents came to his house in March hoping to rummage through files that once belonged to deceased journalist Jack Anderson.

The agents left empty-handed, but the aborted search was one of several incidents that have raised concerns about the Bush administration's efforts to stamp out government leaks. At a Senate hearing Tuesday, administration critics accused the Justice Department of trampling press freedom in its zeal to protect secrets.

At stake is the public's right to know what its government is doing versus the need for secrecy to protect national security. The tension between these principles is as old as the republic.

Senators from both parties vented frustration over the administration's lack of openness. Tensions erupted at the Judiciary Committee hearing when Matthew Friedrich, chief of staff of the Justice Department's criminal division, declined to answer questions about the effort to search Anderson's old files.

"I would think the department would send somebody up here to testify that could answer our questions, if they had any respect for this committee," complained Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.

"They don't have any respect for this committee," Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said to Friedrich. "Why on earth were you sent up here? ... Is there any question you're allowed to answer?"

Friedrich said he couldn't discuss the matter because doing so could hinder efforts to prosecute Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, pro-Israel lobbyists who have been accused of passing classified information to an Israeli diplomat and a journalist. Their indictment focused on activities from April 1999 to August 2004.

The FBI agents told Feldstein they wanted to look for evidence that Rosen and Weissman had supplied classified documents to Anderson, a muckraking journalist who died in December at age 83.

The explanation made little sense to Feldstein, a George Washington University professor who's writing a book about Anderson, because Anderson scaled back his reporting after he was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 1986. Most of his notable work had been published in previous decades. He relied on assistants to provide fodder for his nationally syndicated column, which was published until July 2004. He donated his files to the university at Feldstein's urging before he died.

"As bizarre as it sounded, I could only conclude that the Justice Department had decided that it wanted to prosecute people who might have whispered national security secrets decades ago to a reporter who is now dead," Feldstein testified.

Kevin Anderson, the columnist's son, said some of his father's sources had expressed fears that their exposure "would result in political, financial and even physical harm."

To Feldstein and other critics, the FBI's interest was part of an administration pattern of intimidating journalists and government whistleblowers. They cited other developments that trouble them:

-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales suggested last month that the government could prosecute journalists for publishing classified information. Friedrich declined to say whether the department is planning any prosecutions, but said "our primary focus is on the leakers themselves."

-New York Times reporter Judith Miller spent 85 days in jail last year for refusing to reveal the identity of then-confidential source I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, a top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney. She was freed when Libby released her from their agreement, clearing the way for her testimony in an investigation into a leak that disclosed the identity of CIA employee Valerie Plame.

-CIA analyst Mary O. McCarthy was fired in April because she allegedly had unauthorized contacts with the news media and disclosed classified information.

-Last month, the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment doesn't protect government employees who are punished for exposing wrongdoing.

"By itself, what happened with the Anderson papers is a small and I think extreme case," Feldstein said. "But it is troubling because it appears to be part of a larger effort by the government to crack down on the media and the public's right to know."

Not everyone shares that view.

Gabriel Schoenfeld, editor of Commentary magazine, which bills itself as "the intellectual home of the neoconservative movement," said the Justice Department should charge reporters who revealed classified information with espionage.

He called for prosecuting the New York Times reporters who exposed the Bush administration's warrantless eavesdropping.

"It is imperative that our government and our intelligence agencies preserve the ability to conduct counterterrorism operations in secret," Schoenfeld told the committee. "The First Amendment is not a suicide pact."

Anderson, sitting next to Schoenfeld, said he'd rather go to jail than give his father's files to the FBI.

Feldstein said the agents who came to his house offered no clues as to their next move. "We're still waiting in fear to see if they come back," he said.