Press Can Be Prosecuted for Having Secret Files

WP

The Bush administration said that journalists can be prosecuted under current espionage laws for receiving and publishing classified information but that such a step "would raise legitimate and serious issues and would not be undertaken lightly," according to a court filing made public this week.

"There plainly is no exemption in the statutes for the press, let alone lobbyists like the defendants," Justice Department lawyers wrote in response to a motion filed last month seeking to dismiss charges against Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, former lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

... In its Jan. 30 response unsealed this week, the government said Rosen and Weissman, as lobbyists, "have no First Amendment right to willfully disclose national defense information." The government went on to say: "Stating this, we recognize that a prosecution under the espionage laws of an actual member of the press for publishing classified information leaked to it by a government source, would raise legitimate and serious issues and would not be undertaken lightly, indeed, the fact that there has never been such a prosecution speaks for itself."

Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, who first disclosed the government filing on his Web site, http://www.fas.org/sgp , said yesterday, "The idea that the government can penalize the receipt of proscribed information, and not just its unauthorized disclosure, is one that characterizes authoritarian societies, not mature democracies."