The White House’s continuing attempts to gag its critics are getting more and more Nixonesque. From the Washington Post:
U.S. Gets Subpoena to Force ACLU to Return Leaked Memo
By Dan Eggen, Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 14, 2006; Page A08
Federal prosecutors are demanding that the American Civil Liberties Union turn over all copies of a secret document it has obtained, in what is apparently the first time a criminal grand jury subpoena has been used in an attempt to seize leaked material, the ACLU and legal experts said yesterday.
Prosecutors obtained the subpoena Nov. 20, saying their demand was part of an investigation into an alleged violation of the Espionage Act of 1917.
The ACLU says that the 3 1/2 -page document contains no information that should be classified and that the memo is only “mildly embarrassing” to the government. Some legal scholars said the case bears similarities to events in the “Pentagon Papers” case more than three decades ago.
The subpoena issued in the Southern District of New York provides the latest example of the Justice Department’s aggressive use of the anti-spying law, a broadly worded and little-used statute that has become the bedrock in a series of leak-related investigations by the Bush administration.
In a motion filed in federal court, the ACLU called the subpoena an “unprecedented abuse” of the government’s grand-jury powers that violates the First Amendment and is aimed at suppressing information rather than investigating a crime.
The civil liberties group — which has been sharply critical of the Bush administration’s terrorism and detainee policies — said it is prohibited from disclosing the contents of the document. But it described the document as “nothing more than a policy, promulgated in December 2005, that has nothing to do with national defense.”
“No official secrets act has yet been enacted into law, and the grand jury’s subpoena power cannot be employed to create one,” the ACLU wrote in its brief, which was filed with U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff.
Officials at the Justice Department in Washington referred questions about the case to the office of U.S. Attorney Michael J. Garcia in New York. A spokeswoman there confirmed the subpoena but declined to comment further.
First Amendment advocates and experts in national security law said the subpoena represents a dramatic bid by the government to punish or intimidate media organizations and advocacy groups that attempt to publicize government policies and actions.
Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Arlington-based Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, called the subpoena “disturbing,” saying it would be easy for the government to attempt a similar move against a news outlet that had obtained a sensitive document as part of its investigative work.
“It shows me a pattern of aggressiveness to retrieve information that has escaped from the bubble,” Dalglish said. “It’s intimidation. It’s trying to use all sorts of different methods at their disposal to stop proliferation of leaks from the federal government and to prevent public oversight of the executive branch.”
[My emphasis]
Read more: US Politics, Civil liberties, Espionage Act, Censorship
