ABC Reporter: Learning Govt. Was Tracking Our Calls Makes Me Feel...As If We Are Drug Dealers Or Terrorists"...

CNN Posted May 21, 2006 12:43 PM
READ MORE: Investigations, New York Times, CIA, Washington Post

From the May 21 Edition of CNN's Reliable Sources:

KURTZ: What other news organizations are being -- having their phone calls tracked, according to your informant?

ROSS: We were told reporters at "The New York Times" and "The Washington Post," and it seemed consistent with the information we know, that the CIA has made several criminal referrals to the Department of Justice, the FBI, based on stories that the "Post" and the "Times" have run about CIA secret prisons and the Jim Risen story at "The New York Times" about NSA wiretapping. In both cases, those agencies have confirmed that criminal investigations have begun. And when we checked with the FBI, they put out a statement that essentially said, we take logical investigative steps, starting with the phone records of the government agencies. And then you sort of read through and parse out what they say, it seems that if they go after reporters, they say they do it in a legal fashion.

KURTZ: Not exactly a hard denial. Were you given any names of journalists who might be on the receiving end of this?

ROSS: Other than Esposito and Ross, no. But I'm assuming your colleague, Dana Priest, and Risen and others at the "Times," who have done a lot of important work that involved information that the CIA, I assume, presumes to be classified and they see that as a violation of the law. And that starts the process by which they essentially can use provisions of the Patriot Act if they chose, or just a grand jury, to pursue it.

And it makes me feel, in a way -- and this is, I think, the disturbing part -- as if we are drug dealers or terrorists trying to traffic in information, and should we be using bags full of quarters like old Mafia capos to avoid having our phone calls traced? I don't think I'm doing anything wrong; I don't think any other reporter is, either. We're trying to cover these stories, which are difficult, but which are very important.

Read the full transcript here.