Attorney General Eric Holder says he played no direct role in the Justice Department’s secret review of Associated Press phone records but called it part of an investigation into what he termed a grave national security leak.
Holder said he had removed himself from the matter because of congressional testimony he had given and his dealings with the news media. The testimony included when in June 2012 he was interviewed by the FBI in connection with the investigation into the unauthorized disclosure of classified information.
The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of Associated Press reporters and editors, as part of the investigation.
Holder said federal prosecutors are looking into the matter.
“This was a very serious leak, a very grave leak” that “put the American people at risk,” Holder told reporters at a news conference Tuesday.
Top officials with the Associated Press believe that the record taking came over a May 7, 2012 story about a failed terror plot in Yemen, which relied on confidential sources. Five editorial staff involved in reporting or editing the story were among those that had phone records taken.
Holder said he assigned Deputy Attorney General Jim Cole to handle the phone records case.
In a letter to AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt, Cole said that the Department of Justice opened the criminal investigation into the unauthorized disclosure of classified information, because “such disclosures can risk lives and cause grave harm to the security of all Americans.”
Further, the Department only obtained subpoenas to obtain the phone records after conducting over 550 interviews and reviewing tens of thousands of documents, according to Cole.
“We strive in every case to strike the proper balance between the public’s interest in the free flow of information and the public’s interest in the protection of national security and effective enforcement of our criminal laws,” he wrote. “We believe we have done so in this matter.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
