News Subpoena Outcry Grows

Pressure built Monday on the Justice Department to explain its “extraordinary” subpoena of a wire-service reporter’s home telephone records three months before he was informed of the action.

Writing to Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, the head of Associated Press called the subpoena of reporter John Solomon’s records “an extraordinary strike against the press.” In his letter, Louis D. Boccardi, AP’s president and chief executive, asked for a full explanation.

Solomon, in a story in May, quoted unnamed law enforcement sources as saying a government wiretap in 1996 had picked up a conversation that may relate to an investigation of Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.). The subpoena apparently was aimed at determining who told Solomon about the wiretap.

Another press group also lodged a protest with Ashcroft, saying the issuance of such subpoenas inhibits press freedom.

“Central to any democratic society is the free flow of information,” said Johann P. Fritz, director of the International Press Institute. “In seeking retribution for information provided to the media, the government is hindering the flow of that information and journalists will find it increasingly difficult to find people willing to speak on matters of import.”

Both statements follow requests for information about the subpoena from Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), a veteran member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has oversight jurisdiction over Ashcroft’s department.

Grassley asked the Justice Department last week how many subpoenas, if any, it had issued in recent years without notifying reporters in advance. Prior notice would have allowed AP to challenge Solomon’s subpoena in court.

Grassley also said he wants to know how many of the subpoenas were aimed at discovering a reporter’s sources.

First Amendment lawyers say it is rare for a reporter not to be notified beforehand of a phone-record subpoena, except in cases where the journalist is the target of a criminal investigation, which is not the case here.

Grassley’s office said Monday the senator has requested that the department answer later this month. Department officials declined immediate comment on the latest protests.

Susan Dryden, a department spokeswoman, has said journalists’ telephone records have been subpoenaed 13 times in the last decade. She said she did not know how many times advance notice was given.

Solomon’s story on May 4 quoted unnamed officials as saying Torricelli was overheard five years ago on a federal wiretap talking to a relative of a suspected organized crime figure in Chicago. The story said prosecutors were reviewing the intercept anew in connection with the probe of Torricelli’s 1996 Senate campaign.

The department obtained Solomon’s records for a five-day period after the story appeared but did not notify him of the action until Aug. 20. Regulations involving subpoenas for reporters’ notes or records require Justice Department officials to “strike the proper balance between the public’s interest in the free dissemination of ideas and information and the public’s interest in effective law enforcement and the fair administration of justice.”

Boccardi said in his letter that “it staggers the imagination to think that in President Bush’s Justice Department one reaches that level of gravity with an effort to find a leaker on a tangential five-year-old matter on which Sen. Torricelli was accidentally involved.”

He asked Ashcroft to explain why the subpoena was thought to be necessary, what other steps were taken to obtain the information before the subpoena, why officials waited three months to notify Solomon and whether any other records about Solomon were obtained.

Ashcroft has recused himself from the Torricelli investigation because Torricelli provided campaign funds for Ashcroft’s opponent last year when Ashcroft lost his campaign for reelection to the Senate from Missouri.