Former Attorneys General say Justice Department’s AP operation highly unusual

The Justice Department is obligated to investigate leaks that could endanger national security, but the secret seizure of Associated Press telephone records – called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” by the news organization – is unusual, according to two former attorneys general.

The Associated Press announced Monday that the DOJ obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors without the news organization’s knowledge. The records obtained by the department listed outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, for general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and for the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP.

While the subject of the probe remains unknown, the news organization suggests it may have been related to a May 7, 2012, AP story about a foiled terror plot. Officials have previously said in public testimony that the U.S. attorney in Washington is conducting a criminal investigation into who may have provided information for the AP’s story, which disclosed details of a CIA operation in Yemen that stopped an Al Qaeda plot in the spring of 2012 to detonate a bomb on an airplane bound for the U.S.

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