On Jan. 24, 2003, a new law enforcement and investigatory agency whose duties include functions taken from as many as 22 other federal agencies came into existence. The reorganization of these operations reportedly marks the biggest government bureaucratic shake-up since the creation of the Department of Defense half a century ago.
Even before the new Department of Homeland Security opened its doors, controversies arose over not just how it would operate and exercise its powers, but what level of access to information it would allow, and how it would respond to news media requests. Will new exemptions be carved out of the FOI Act, either by law or by practice? Will officials and agents feel free to tap phones of journalists, or subpoena their records during investigations? Will the new director consider procedural safeguards, like those adopted years ago by the Department of Justice, to ensure that freedom of the press will not be denied? And will those practices be followed?

But "homeland" security is not the only concern for journalists covering anti-terrorism initiatives; military actions abroad often present a greater challenge, as questions over disclosure of information, access to troops, and restraints on reporting seem to resurface anew with each conflict.

Questions and issues like these led the Reporters Committee to launch this "weblog," so that there will be a centralized site on the Internet for journalists who want to follow these issues and pass along information they learn while covering — or worse, being covered by — the new department and other anti-terrorism actions. Please submit comments and pass along tips to make this project as useful, thorough and up-to-date as possible.

A few words about what this project will not do. We do not intend to cover many of the issues that will undoubtedly come up as the Department takes shape, even if those issues are the ones generating headlines. We will cover information access and free press issues, but will not follow debates over many civil liberties issues that, while important, are outside of our domain.

Funding for the launch of this site was provided by The Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation.

May. 31, 2006

LIKE BEING FLUNG INTO A POT OF BOILING WATER. CBS News Iraq correspondent Kimberly Dozier, recovering in a U.S. military hospital in Germany from serious injuries suffered in a roadside bomb Monday, wrote in January about how journalists covering Iraq are increasingly becoming part of the story as more are injured, killed or taken hostage. "Going into Iraq," she wrote on CBS News' Web site, "is like being flung into a pot of water you can see boiling from a great height from far, far away." The risk journalists face are nothing like those facing the troops - American and Iraqi - and the Iraqi people, she wrote. So basically, if you want to tell their story, you have to take their risks. To take the metaphor a little further, if we, the journalists, are sitting in hot water, the troops we cover are hopping around on Hell's coals. Even when we spend extended time with them, we face a tiny fraction of their risk. It's even worse for their Iraqi army and police counterparts, who are getting attacked at even higher rates, with deadlier consequences. And then you've got the Iraqi people, who never signed up for combat, but are sure seeing a lot of it. And they're not restricted to tours of duty, nor do they have a ticket out. — Posted at 5:28 pm

AP CAMERAMAN AND REPORTER BEATEN IN KABUL. The worst rioting in Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, since the fall of the Taliban regime killed at least eight and injured more than 100, including an Associated Press Television News cameraman and the AP reporter who were beaten by protesters, but not severely hurt. — Posted at 5:27 pm

TWO MORE MEDIA WORKERS DEAD; ONE CRITICALLY INJURED. An exploding car bomb killed two CBS News crew members and an Iraqi interpreter and critically injured a CBS News war correspondent Monday. Cameraman Paul Douglas and James Brolan, a soundman, were killed in the attack, one of several that killed dozens of people in Iraq. Kimberly Dozier, a correspondent who had worked for long stints in CBS's Baghdad bureau, was listed in critical condition at a Baghdad hospital, where doctors were "cautiously optimistic" about her recovery. The New York Times reported that Douglas' and Brolan's deaths firmly secured Iraq as the deadliest conflict for reporters in modern times. Since the start of the war in 2003, 71 journalists have been killed in Iraq, a figure that does not even include the more than two dozen members of news media support staff who have also died, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. That number is more than the 63 killed in Vietnam, the 17 killed in Korea, and even the 69 killed in World War II, according to Freedom Forum, a nonpartisan free speech advocacy group. — Posted at 5:26 pm

REASSESSING IRAQ. Television network executives are reassessing their coverage in Iraq in the wake of a roadside blast that killed two CBS News crew members and seriously wounded reporter Kimberly Dozier, The New York Times reports. Dozier remains in intenstive care at a military hospital in Germany where she is in critical but stable condition after two operations to her legs and head, CBS News reported. — Posted at 12:50 pm

May. 24, 2006

NOW IT\'S AN OFFICIALLY BAD IDEA. Paying Iraqi journalists to produce positive stories is a bad idea that could damage American crediblity and should end, according to a Defense Department investigation of Pentagon-financed propaganda efforts, The New York Times reports. The review, headed by a rear admirel, came after last year's disclosure that the Pentgaon had paid Lincoln Group to plant pro-American articles in the Iraqi press. The most critical portion of the report concerns the military's creation in 2004 of an entity called the Baghdad Press Club, in which Iraqi journalists were paid if they covered and produced stories about American reconstruction efforts, such as openings of schools and sewage plants. The military's "direct oversight of an apparently independent news organization and remuneration for articles that are published will undoubtedly raise questions focused on 'truth and credibility,' that will be difficult to deflect, regardless of the intensions and purpose of the remuneration," the report says. — Posted at 12:08 pm

May. 23, 2006

CIA OFFICERS TO TESTIFY AGAINST LIBBY. Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald says that two CIA officers told I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, about CIA agent Valerie Plame "a month before columnist Robert Novak blew her cover in July 2003," according to the New York Daily News. According to Fitzgerald, CIA official Robert Grenier told Libby, who is under indictment for perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to the FBI, about Plame on June 11. CIA official Craig Schmall also talked with Libby about Plame on June 14, according to the Daily News. — Posted at 4:29 pm

STONE: NO NEED TO PUNISH PRESS SPEECH ON CLASSIFIED INFORMATION. University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey R. Stone submitted a letter to the House Special Committee on Intelligence in anticipation of its consideration of possible legislation dealing with the press's publication of classified information, he wrote on The Huffington Post Blog Sunday. "Even if such a law is constitutional, it is neither necessary nor wise," Stone wrote. "In more than two centuries of experience, the problem addressed by this [proposed] "law" has never actually arisen. This would be a law in search of a problem." — Posted at 3:30 pm

VOA BAGHDAD BUREAU STILL SHUTTERED. The government-funded Voice of America bureau in Baghdad remains closed six months after it withdrew its only reporter in Iraq after she was shot at during an ambush and her security guard killed, The Washington Post reports. The six-month closure raises questions about the Bush administration's insistence that conditions in the war-torn country are generally improving, according to the article. A VOA staffer familiar with the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person is not an authorized representative, said the agency had a limited budget in Iraq and could not afford the extensive security employed by major news organizations. — Posted at 10:29 am

May. 22, 2006

SECRET MILITARY SPENDING AT HIGHEST LEVEL SINCE COLD WAR. About 19 percent, or $30.1 billion, of the Pentagon's military spending is classified, according to an assessment by the independent policy-research organization, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. This figure is the highest since 1988, near the end of the Cold War, Knight Ridder Newspapers reported. — Posted at 6:29 pm

CONGRESSMEN TAKE HOMELAND SECURITY TO TASK FOR MISSED DEADLINES. Two House Democrats on the Committee on Homeland Security criticized the Department of Homeland Security last week for not releasing reports on 118 security plans for transportation and border security, The Washington Post reported. Although many of those reports were due in 2003, a DHS spokesman dismissed the Congressmen's complaints, stating that Homeland Security has issued more than 300 reports and held 972 briefings this year. — Posted at 6:25 pm

GONZALES: REPORTERS MAY BE PROSECUTED FOR PUBLISHING CLASSIFIED INFO. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales told viewers of ABC's 'This Week' yesterday that the government may prosecute reporters for publishing classified information, explaining that "there are some statutes on the book which, if you read the language carefully, would seem to indicate that that is a possibility," several papers report. Gonzales acknowledged a pending criminal investigation into the New York Times reporters who exposed the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program: "We are engaged now in an investigation about what would be the appropriate course of action in that particular case, so I'm not going to talk about it specifically," Gonzales said. "But as we do in every case, it's a case-by-case evaluation about what the evidence shows us, our interpretation of the law. We have an obligation to enforce the law and to prosecute those who engage in criminal activity," he said. — Posted at 6:23 pm

May. 21, 2006

MEMBERS OF CONGRESS BRIEFED 30 TIMES ON EAVESDROPPING PROGRAM. Since September 11, 2001, the Bush administration has briefed members of Congress 30 times on the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program, according to a declassified list. Half of the secret meetings were held in the past five months, after The New York Times reported on the secret surveillance program. — Posted at 1:58 pm

May. 19, 2006

DON\'T BURY THE LEAD. It is irresponsible for reporters in Iraq to bury a lead about dozens of innocent people getting killed in a marketplace in favor of a lead about American soldiers painting a school, Farnas Fassihi, the Middle East correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, told the graduating class of the Columbia School of Journalism Tuesday. In New York City, if you had five car bombs a day and scores of people getting assassinated and kidnapped, no metro reporter would fail to cover that as the leading news of the day. — Posted at 4:26 pm

SENATOR ASKS HAYDEN FOR LEGAL BACKING ON EAVESDROPPING PROGRAM. At the Senate Committee on Intelligence's confirmation hearing for Gen. Michael V. Hayden's bid for CIA chief, Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) asked him to provide the committee with copies of legal opinions that gave clearance for the National Security Agency to initiate the warrantless surveillance program. — Posted at 4:18 pm

FORMER NSA CHIEF SLAMS NSA PROGRAM. "This activity is not authorized," former National Security Agency (NSA) director Bobby Ray Inman said about the NSA's warrantless domestic wiretapping program. The administration "need(s) to get away from the idea that they can continue doing it," he said as part of a panel on eavesdropping sponsored by The New York Public Library, Wired reported. Analysts say Inman's critique is one of the first times a former high-ranking intelligence official has criticized the program in public. In 1978, Inman helped spearhead the effort to pass the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which criminalizes eavesdropping on Americans without a warrant, the same story says. — Posted at 4:16 pm

WHITE HOUSE TO BRIEF CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEES ON WIRETAPPING PROGRAM. The Bush administration will brief all members of the House and Senate intelligence committees on the warrantless wiretapping program. This comes after months of White House refusal to discuss the program because it would be too "risky" to reveal details, but on the eve of confirmation hearings for Gen. Michael V. Hayden's bid for the CIA director position. — Posted at 4:14 pm

OBJECTIVELY EMBEDDED. Television reporters embedded with American troops in the early days of the U.S.-led invasion in Iraq were objective, a new Indiana University study has found. — Posted at 4:12 pm

May. 17, 2006

PHONE COMPANIES DENY GIVING NSA CALLER INFORMATION. Based on an internal company review, "we have confirmed no such contract [to provide the National Security Agency (NSA) massive amounts of customer calling information] exists and we have not provided bulk customer calling records to the NSA," BellSouth said in a statement Monday, USA Today reported yesterday. Verizon also denied providing customer call data to the NSA, saying it had not been asked to do so, the Associated Press reported. AT&T has declined to confirm or deny the USA Today report last Wednesday charging the three companies with working under contract with the NSA to provide detailed calling records on tens of millions of customers, The Washington Post reported. — Posted at 5:50 pm

FEDS TRACING ABC REPORTERS\' CALLS. ABC News claimed Monday that the federal government has been tracing whom their journalists have been speaking to as part of an investigation into leaks of classified information, The New York Sun reported yesterday. While prosecutors who subpoena journalists' phone records are required to notify the reporters within 90 days of obtaining the records, ABC had received no official notice of efforts to seek their phone records, the same story reports. If the government used National Security Letters to acquire the records, however, the phone company would have to provide them without revealing to the customer that the records have been handed over to the government. "It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," a senior federal law enforcement official told Brian Ross and Richard Esposito of ABC News, according to the reporters' posting on "The Blotter" web site Monday morning. FBI spokesman Bill Carter, however, told the Associated Press that the FBI is not "tracking the phone numbers" reporters call to identify their confidential sources: "Where the records of a private person are sought, they may only be obtained through established legal process," he said. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) responded to this news yesterday, sending a letter to President Bush asking about the extent of the Bush administration's efforts to learn journalists' confidential sources within the federal government. Editor and Publisher reported D.C. journalists' reaction in a story yesterday. — Posted at 5:36 pm

WHITE HOUSE TO BRIEF CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEES ON WIRETAPPING PROGRAM. The Bush administration will brief all members of the House and Senate intelligence committees on the warrantless wiretapping program. This comes after months of White House refusal to discuss the program because it would be too "risky" to reveal details, but on the eve of confirmation hearings for Gen. Michael V. Hayden's bid for the CIA director position. — Posted at 2:43 pm

OBJECTIVELY EMBEDDED. Television reporters embedded with American troops in the early days of the U.S.-led invasion in Iraq were objective, according to a new Indiana University study. — Posted at 2:41 pm

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT ENDS INQUIRY ON WARRANTLESS WIRETAPPING. The National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers the security clearance needed to inquire about the Bush administration's warrantless eavesdropping program, ending their quest for information on the matter. The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility had wanted to investigate possible violations of ethical rules and requested the clearances in January. — Posted at 2:39 pm

HEAD OF FEDERAL INFORMATION SHARING SAYS TOO MUCH IS WITHHELD. With legal justifications for only 17 categories of withholding information, Thomas McNamara, the program manager for a new national information sharing environment, said the 65 to 70 categories the government uses to keep information from the public has no legal basis. "We should be getting that stuff out," he said to the House Homeland Security Intelligence Subcommittee. McNamara's estimate is higher than that released in a study by the Government Accountability Office in March, and he said one of his missions is to set forth a "rational, limited set of categories" under which information could be withheld. — Posted at 2:38 pm

HOUSE MINORITY LEADER PUSHES TO GET NAMES OF THOSE BRIEFED ON SURVEILLANCE PROGRAM. Nancy Pelosi, the House's democratic leader from California, continues to push the President's National Security Advisor to declassify information on who in Congress was briefed about the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program, and when. The Bush administration has repeatedly refused to provide her with this information since she first requested it in December; she drafted a new letter last week again asking for the information. — Posted at 2:37 pm

GITMO P.R. In an attempt to offset negative reports about the terrorist detention center At Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Pentagon has launched a p.r. campaign extolling the virtues of the camp: decent food, healthcare and literacy training, according to U.S. News & World Report. — Posted at 1:52 pm

SENATOR SAYS CIA DIRECTOR NOMINEE TALKED OF ALLOWING WARRANTLESS SURVEILLANCE. CIA nominee Michael Hayden told Illinois Senator Richard Durbin said he could support a congressional debate on changing the eavesdropping laws, in order to allow the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program to continue. "With all the publicity that has surrounded this program, we may be closer to the possibility of asking for a change in FISA," Durbin said Hayden told him. — Posted at 12:52 pm

May. 16, 2006

PENTAGON RELEASES 9/11 CRASH VIDEO. The first images of American Airlines Flight 77 crashing into the U.S. military's headquarters were released today under a Freedom of Information Act request by the public interest group Judicial Watch. The video, taken by Pentagon security cameras outside the building, had partially been leaked and circulated, but was only just now officially released. The Pentagon did not consult victims' families before releasing the videos on the Pentagon's Web site. View two videos here. — Posted at 4:25 pm

ACLU REQUESTS SURVEILLANCE DATA ON MUSLIMS. Another in a long line of Freedom of Information Act requests filed by the American Civil Liberties Union requests FBI surveillance information on behalf of individual Muslims and six Islamic groups in Southern California. Records released by the government have shown surveillance on peaceful activist groups including Greenpeace and the Catholic Workers. — Posted at 12:48 pm

PENTAGON NAMES ALL GITMO DETAINEES. The names, ages and home countries of everyone held at Cuba's Guantanamo Bay prison facility were released in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by The Associated Press. The list shows the U.S. Department of Defense has held 759 males and contains about 200 previously undisclosed names, but, according to AP, does not list some of the "most notorious terrorist suspects." — Posted at 12:02 pm

May. 15, 2006

GOVERNMENT TRACKING JOURNALISTS\' PHONE CALLS. According to an ABC News report, the government has begun tracking the phone numbers journalists call in an attempt to discover the journalists' confidential sources. "It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," ABC's source said. The report goes on to state that the government is also tracking phone calls for reporters from The New York Times and the Washington Post. — Posted at 3:14 pm

A WAR LIKE NO OTHER. Covering any war has its challenges, but the war in Iraq is particularly challenging for journalists, writes Jennifer Senior in New York magazine. She reports on the horror, claustrophobia and every heroism of reporters covering the conflict. Unlike in most wars, there are no front lines in Iraq, nor are there clear areas of U.S. control, except the highly fortified Green Zone. Unlike in Vietnam, where reporters retreated to the cities and then flew to areas of strife, the trouble in Iraq has a way of finding journalists - they are dying and being taken hostage mainly in cities, as they were in Beirut in the eighties. But unlike in Beirut, it's unclear who's fighting whom, and no group seems to consider the media a particularly useful asset in getting its message out. Quite the contrary. — Posted at 11:48 am

INVESTIGATE MEDIA KILLINGS, GROUP SAYS. The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders is calling on Iraq to launch a special investigation into the increase in murders of Iraqi reporters, the BBC reports. So far this month, five journalists and media assistants have been killed. — Posted at 11:34 am

ICE AGE. It's becoming the ice age for the people's right-to-know, Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., writes in the blog, The Huffington Post. "The President and his Administration are doing everything possible to impose censorship," he writes. "They know that secrecy is the fastest, most effective way to silence dissent." — Posted at 11:33 am

DOJ INVOKES STATE SECRETS IN EX-DETAINEE SUIT.. The Justice Department urged U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis Friday to dismiss a lawsuit concerning a former detainee's allegations of being wrongfully imprisoned by the CIA for five months in Afghanistan citing the once rarely invoked state secrets privilege for at least the fifth time in the past year, The Washington Post reported. Assistant U.S. Attorney R. Joseph Sher argued that Khaled el-Masri's claims could not be confirmed or denied officially without disclosing information that could harm national security, so "the case must be dismissed at the outset," The New York Times reported. — Posted at 11:32 am

LEAK INVESTIGATOR FOGGO SUBJECT OF FBI RAIDS. Federal agents raided CIA No. 3 official Kyle Foggo's home and CIA offices Friday in a widening criminal investigation into allegations of government corruption and bribery, The Washington Post reported. Foggo was placed under investigation earlier this year amid allegations he helped a friend, Brent R. Wilkes, obtain CIA contracts. Wilkes has been under investigation for allegedly bribing former congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham. Foggo, who was forced to resign last week, tightened the agency's publication rules and launched several probes of leaks to the media, the same story says. — Posted at 11:31 am

NOTES CONNECT CHENEY TO PLAME LEAK. In a brief filed in federal court on Friday, special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald produced evidence that Vice President Dick Cheney was acutely focused on ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame, according to The New York Times. Fitzgerald referenced handwritten notes by Cheney stating, among other things, "Or did his wife send him on a junket?" along the margins of a July 6, 2003 Times op-ed by Wilson, which criticized the adiministration's claims that Iraq had attempted to find uranium from Niger, according to Newsweek. The filing "states that "Libby learned of Plame's name from Cheney," according to the Washington Post. — Posted at 11:29 am

HOEKSTRA CRITICIZES LEAKERS WHILE SUPPORTING SURVEILLANCE. Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told the Los Angeles Times on Saturday that unathorized "disclosures of classified information only help terrorists and our enemies - and put American lives at risk." Hoekstra wrote in the Times to defend President Bush's domestic survelliance program and to decry stories such as Thursday's USA Today story alleging that the National Security Agency "was collecting domestic phone records." — Posted at 11:28 am

May. 12, 2006

IRAQ\'S INSPECTOR GENERAL CAN\'T MONITOR $21 BILLION IN RECONSTRUCTION FUNDS. The Republican-led Congress is now denying Iraq's special inspector general Stuart Bowen the authority to monitor the $21 billion allotted for reconstruction in the country. The job to monitor spending will instead go to the State Department's inispector general's office. Bowen and his 55 auditors in Iraq have critically reported on misuse of Iraq reconstruction funds in the past. — Posted at 2:43 pm

MOUSSAOUI\'S LIFE SPARED BY ONE VOTE. The foreman of the jury deciding the fate of 9/11-plotter Zacarias Moussauoi told The Washington Post that a lone juror's vote stood between Moussauoi's life-imprisonment and death. The panel's vote on three terrorism charges was 11 to 1, 10 to 2, and 10 to 2 in favor of the death penalty - had any one of them resulted in a unanimous vote, Moussauoi would have been killed. The Post interviewed the foreman, a Northern Virginia math teacher, on condition of anonymity because the trial judge had ordered the jurors' identities be kept secret. The deliberations were frustrating, the foreman reported, because the anonymous dissenter refused to raise contrary opinions during discussion. "I felt that many of us had been cheated by the anonymity of the 'no' voter. We will never know their reason. We will never be able to hold their reason up to the light and the scrutiny of evidence, fact and law," she told the Post. — Posted at 2:41 pm

COURT NOMINEE SAYS HE DIDN\'T KNOW OF SPYING OR TORTURE. Appellate court judge nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that as the White House staff secretary, he did not know of the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program or torture activities at the Guantanamo Bay prison facility until he read about them in the newspapers. Although his desk is near the Oval Office and he sees "most letters and documents that go in there before President Bush does," according to The Washington Post, Kavanaugh said he was not aware of these activities. — Posted at 2:38 pm

U.S. STILL REFUSES RED CROSS ACCESS TO PRISONERS. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) announced today that its request this week to interview detainees held in U.S. secret prisons overseas was again rebuffed, Reuters reports. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley were among the senior officials who discussed the request with ICRC President Jakob Kellenberger, the story says. ICRC, designated by the Geneva Conventions on warfare as the organization to visit prisoners of war, has been pushing for access to terrorism prisoners since 2004. "No matter how legitimate the grounds for detention, there exists no right to conceal a person's whereabouts or to deny that he or she is being detained," Kellenberger explained in the ICRC statement released today. — Posted at 2:21 pm

May. 9, 2006

CIA NOMINEE FLUBS FOURTH AMENDMENT STANDARD. In an appearance at the National Press Club Jan. 23, CIA Director nominee Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden misstated the Fourth Amendment search standard, insisting that it was "reasonableness," even when Knight Ridder journalist Jonathan Landay reminded him it also demands "probable cause," Editor and Publisher reported. Landay told Hayden he was concerned that the former National Security Agency Director had "crafted a detour around the FISA court by creating a new standard of 'reasonably believe' in place of probable cause because the FISA court will not give you a warrant based on reasonable belief." Both sides of the aisle have criticized Bush's pick to lead the CIA, in part because of Hayden's connection to the warrantless domestic spy program. "The debate in the Senate may end up being about the terrorist surveillance program and not about the future of the CIA or the intelligence community, which is exactly where the debate needs to be," Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) said on CBS' "The Early Show," according to The Associated Press. — Posted at 5:55 pm

SECRET DOCUMENTS USED IN MOUSSAUOI DEATH PENALTY TRIAL. To protect the government's need to keep some evidence secret to protect national security interests in the Zacarias Moussauoi death penalty trial, prosecutors and defense lawyers showed the jury two secret documents that weren't read aloud or put in the public record, crafted declassified substitutes for some documents, and required defense lawyers to use summaries distilled from captured enemy combatant interrogations instead of questioning them directly, the Associated Press reported. U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema told AP that the lawyers "had to work around classification issues that were at one point, we all thought, insurmountable," but the great majority of evidence was able to be "presented openly in a public court of law." — Posted at 5:53 pm

MOUSSAUOI SENTENCING TRIAL MATERIALS UNSEALED. U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema ordered unsealed May 2 "the transcripts of all previously sealed hearings and bench conferences not dealing with classified materials" in the trial to determine whether Zacarias Moussaoui should die or spend the rest of his life behind bars. Brinkema's order leaves secret the government's request to keep sealed approximately three pages of an April 13 hearing transcript and those three transcript pages. The federal court jury decided May 3 that Moussauoi should not be executed. — Posted at 11:33 am

MOUSSAOUI DID NOT KILL ANYONE ON 9/11, JUROR SAYS. A juror who asked to remain anonymous to avoid harassment told The Washington Post last week that some jurors decided 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui should not be executed because he did not kill anyone that day. Even though Moussauoi was a "despicable character," the juror said, "he wasn't necessarily part of the 9/11 operation." Moussauoi's gleeful testimony that he planned to attack the White House with "shoe bomber" Richard Reid helped convince the juror he was embellishing his role. "The moment he said the name Richard Reid I thought he was lying," the juror told the Post. "It seemed like Moussauoi's role in 9/11 was increasing over time." Presiding Judge Leonie M. Brinkema ordered anonymity for the jurors, but told them they could discuss their deliberations if they wished. — Posted at 10:51 am

STEADFAST AWADALLAH JUROR LEADS TO MISTRIAL. U.S. District Judge Shira A. Scheindlin declared a mistrial after juror David Lipschultz could not be persuaded by 11 other jurors that Osama Awadallah, a Jordanian college student in San Diego, should be convicted of perjury for giving contradictory testimony to a grand jury in the case of United States v. Osama bin Laden, several newspapers reported. Scheindlin refused to replace Lipschultz after jury members accused him of making up his mind before before deliberations began because he explained he was deliberating in good faith. "I believe he just disagreed with them virtually throughout the deliberations, and he wasn't able to convince them and they weren't able to convince him," Scheindlin told The New York Times. "If we go around calling that a refusal to deliberate, we're essentially not accepting dissent." — Posted at 10:50 am

May. 8, 2006

ACLU SAYS MILITARY KNEW OF ABUSE PRIOR TO ABU GHRAIB PHOTOS. Military leaders were aware of widespread detainee abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a report released by the American Civil Liberties Union. Army documents - obtained through a massive Freedom of Information Act effort by the ACLU on prisoner abuse - show 62 allegations of abuse two weeks before photos of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib prison were reported in the press in 2004. — Posted at 2:12 pm

May. 5, 2006

THE BALANCE BETWEEN STAYING SAFE AND REPORTING THE NEWS. Journalists in Iraq "spend more time every day worrying about security than reporting the news," Ann Cooper, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists said during a panel discusson at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst Thursday. The university is the alma mater of Jill Carroll, a 1999 alumna who was kidnapped in Iraq on Jan. 7 and released March 30. — Posted at 10:53 am

SAND, HEAT, CAR BOMBS AND KIDNAPPING. John Hendren, who covers the Pentagon for National Public Radio, talks about covering Iraq in a podcast sponsored by Farrell Kramer Communications. To listen, click here. — Posted at 10:52 am

May. 3, 2006

JILL CARROLL UPDATE. Journalist Jill Carroll is recovering from and writing about her 82 days in captivity, according to a note to readers from Christian Science Monitor World Editor David Clark Scott. He tells readers to stay tuned for an upcoming series by Carroll on her glimpse inside one of the most hard-line Islamic insurgent groups in Iraq. Scott also notes that almost 1,000 Monitor readers have contributed to the Allan Enwiya Fund, created for the family of Enwiya, Carroll's interpreter who was killed as she was kidnapped in January. — Posted at 2:47 pm

May. 2, 2006

SENTENCE EXTENDED FOR PATRIOT ACT CASE DEFENDANT. U.S. District Judge James Moody Jr. sentenced Sami al-Arian to an additional 19 months in prison before being deported as part of a plea bargain in exchange for pleading guilty to the lesser charge of aiding members of a militant Palestinian group, The New York Times reports. Imposing the maximum sentence allowed by law, Moody assailed al-Arian as a "master manipulator" who saw bombings in Israel "as an opportunity to solicit more money to carry out more bombings." According to The Associated Press, the failure to convict al-Arian was a "stinging rebuke for the federal government" in a case "once hailed by authorities as a triumph of the USA Patriot Act, which allowed secret wiretaps and other information gathered by intelligence agents to be used in criminal proseuctions." — Posted at 4:58 pm

FBI DIRECTOR QUESTIONED. Senators from both parties sharply questioned FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III on attempts to search the files of late newspaper columnist Jack Anderson against his family's wishes, improper surveillance of peaceful protesters and "national security letters" - which allow FBI agents to gather information on individuals without a court warrant. — Posted at 4:31 pm

1 IN 3 RECORDS AT NATIONAL ARCHIVES WRONGLY RECLASSIFIED. An audit at the National Archives showed that 36 percent of the records re-sealed by government agencies as part of their "re-classification" efforts over the past decade were improperly declared secret. Archivist Allen Weinstein announced a new program in light of the results to provide standards and oversight to reclassification efforts to curtail abuse. — Posted at 4:29 pm

LIBBY SEEKS MEDIA NOTES, ARTICLES AND RECORDS. Lawyers for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, asked a federal judge yesterday to "force several media organizations to turn over e-mails, drafts of news articles and reporters' notes" in order to ensure a fair trial for Libby, according to the Washington Post. Libby, who is facing charges of perjury and obstruction of justice regarding his answers to a grand jury investigation into the leaking of the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame, claims the evidence is necessary to "help establish his innocence at trial," according to the Post. — Posted at 4:27 pm

FBI SOUGHT THOUSANDS\' PERSONAL INFORMATION IN 2005. A Justice Department report released Friday revealed that the FBI issued more than 9,200 national security letters (NSLs) seeking detailed personal information about more than 3,500 U.S. citizens or legal residents from banks, Internet service providers and other companies, The Washington Post reports. The report, which also included information about the use of secret warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, was required under legislation that extended the USA Patriot Act. — Posted at 4:24 pm

May. 1, 2006

2005 FISA SEARCHES REACH RECORD HIGH. The latest Department of Justice annual report to Congress on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) reveals that the number of searches conducted under FISA reached a record high of 2,072 in 2005, the Federation of American Scientists reports. In 2004 there were 1,754 such authorizations. — Posted at 5:48 pm

U.S. ASKS TO DISMISS AT&T SECRET SURVEILLANCE SUIT. The U.S. government asked U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker Friday to dismiss a class-action suit brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation alleging that AT&T unlawfully collaborated with the National Security Agency in its secret surveillance program to intercept communications between the U.S. and people linked to al Qaeda. "The government intends to assert the military and state secrets privilege (that) permits the government to protect against the unauthorized disclosure in litigation of information that may harm national security interests," the government's filing said. — Posted at 5:47 pm

HAYAT JURY SWAYED BY OVERALL EVIDENCE. Hayat jury foreman Joe Cote told ABC News 10 in Sacramento that convicting Hamid Hayat on terrorism-related charges after nine days of deliberations "was physically draining." Despite the heavy pre-trial publicity in the case, Cote said he and the jurors had no preconceived notions about Hayat's guilt, News 10 reported. "The very first day of the trial, none of us thought he was guilty," Cote said. "We wanted to see what the government had to show for itself and as the events began to unfold, we began to formulate our opinions." — Posted at 5:28 pm

AMERICAN JOURNALIST FREED AFTER TWO YEARS IN AFGHAN JAIL. American journalist Edward Caraballo, a New Yorker jailed for nearly two years in Afghanistan on charges of running a private jail and torturing suspected terrorists, was freed by an Afghan government decree Sunday two months before his scheduled release, wire services report. Caraballo, a documentary film maker, waived to reporters at Kabul's international airport as he arrived in a vehicle accompanied by heavily armed security personnel. — Posted at 12:12 pm