It was a worrisome development when the Obama administration targeted Associated Press journalists’ phone lines. Now, we learn that the Trump administration did something similar to a New York Times reporter, and it’s no less worrisome.
James A. Wolfe, a 57-year-old former senior staffer for the Senate Intelligence Committee, was arrested this week and charged with lying to federal investigators about leaking classified information to reporters.
Here’s where the story takes a twist: The Department of Justice last year seized electronic communications, including encrypted messages, belonging to Ali Watkins, a New York Times (formerly Buzzfeed) reporter with whom Wolfe was in a three-year relationship.
Though the indictment does not name Watkins specifically – her relationship with Wolfe was confirmed by the Times – its description of “Reporter #2” matches up precisely with her employment and byline history.
Consider, for example, the fact that Wolfe wrote the following note to “Reporter #2” shortly after Watkins published a leak-heavy article, titled “A Former Trump Adviser Met With A Russian Spy.”
Naturally, national media have reacted angrily to news that Watkins’ communications were seized.
“All leak investigations — whether they directly target reporters or not — are a grave threat to press freedom. Whistleblowers are the lifeblood of reporting, and the Trump administration is directly attacking journalists’ rights by bringing these cases,” said the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
However, Jazz Shaw of the conservative opinion site HotAir makes a good counterpoint, arguing that this story isn’t really a case of federal investigators threatening whistleblowers.
“Wolfe wasn’t blowing the whistle. He was giving his girlfriend a juicy leak which would draw major attention while casting a cloud of negative buzz around the Trump administration,” Shaw writes. “In doing so, other people who might possibly have been involved in whatever they were investigating could have been forewarned and gone to ground.”
He added, “Digging out secrets from a committee engaged in that sort of work before they were finished and ready to release their findings isn’t whistleblowing or protecting the public. It’s damaging the process and risking other sources, all apparently in the name of generating bad headlines for the White House.”
I understand where Shaw is coming from, and this episode certainly raises legitimate questions about journalism ethics and whether Watkins had a duty to disclose her relationship with Wolfe when she reported on Senate Intelligence matters. But the feds still overreached by seizing her communications.
One can object to the ethics of Watkins’ relationship with the accused leaker, without condoning spying on reporters, an encroachment on the free press.
The various defenses of targeting of journalists in the name of plugging leaks remind me of the arguments that the Obama administration used against James Risen and James Rosen and, more importantly, the Associated Press, which the Watkins case most closely resembles.
Conservatives and select members of the press were right to rail against the Obama administration in 2013 after the AP revealed the Justice Department had secretly collected two months’ worth of personal and work-related phone calls made by AP reporters and editors.
Conservatives would be right again to rail against the government’s targeting of Watkins.
