Attorney Genral Gonzales claimed that the government has every legal
right to prosecute journalists who publish classified information,
saying national security trumps a free press. Gonzales also
said the government will track the telephone records of reporters to
find out where leaks come from.
Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for
Freedom of the Press, responded, “I can’t imagine a bigger chill on
free speech and the public’s right
to know what it’s government is up to ( both hallmarks of a democracy (
than prosecuting reporters.”
Gonzales claims that the government will not randomly check
journalists’ phone records without a warrant, but it’s hard to swallow
this after all that has been revealed about the NSA surveillance on
tens of millions of people’s phone records.
The Torturer General justified
these moves toward government control of the media by saying, “There
are some
statutes on the book which, if you read the language
carefully, would seem to indicate that that is a possibility.”
This regime seems to have an endless ability to “read the language
carefully” and find whatever it wants to, whether it’s WMD’s in Iraq,
the legal right to torture, or Christian fundamentalist religion in the
Constitution.
(Source: “Attorney Gen.: Reporters Can Be Prosecuted”, Yahoo News, 5/21/06)