UPDATED -DOJ fought to keep Rosen’s warrant a secret; ALSO DOJ CONFIRMS HOLDER VETTED SEARCH WARRANT

by The Right Scoop

***UPDATED WITH REUTERS OFFICIAL REPORT***

If it weren’t for the Washington Post reporting this, Rosen would still not know that he was being spied on by the federal government. His personal emails, his telephone calls, etc. And it’s been almost 5 years since this began! And all over a freaking leak about N. Korea testing nukes:

THE NEW YORKER – The Obama Administration fought to keep a search warrant for James Rosen’s private e-mail account secret, arguing to a federal judge that the government might need to monitor the account for a lengthy period of time.

The new details are revealed in a court filing detailing a back and forth between the Justice Department and the federal judges who oversaw the request to search a Gmail account belonging to Rosen, a reporter for Fox News. A 2009 article Rosen had written about North Korea sparked an investigation; Ronald C. Machen, Jr., the U.S. Attorney who is prosecuting Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a former State Department adviser who allegedly leaked classified information to Rosen, insisted that the reporter should not be notified of the search and seizure of his e-mails, even after a lengthy delay.

…

Machen insisted the investigation would be compromised if Rosen was informed of the warrant, and also asked the court to order Google not to notify Rosen that the company had handed over Rosen’s e-mails to the government. Rosen, according to recent reports, did not learn that the government seized his e-mail records until it was reported in the Washington Post last week.

The new details indicate that the government wanted the option to search Rosen’s e-mails repeatedly if the F.B.I. found further evidence implicating the reporter in what prosecutors argued was a conspiracy to commit espionage.

…

The new documents show that two judges separately declared that the Justice Department was required to notify Rosen of the search warrant, even if the notification came after a delay. Otherwise: “The subscriber therefore will never know, by being provided a copy of the warrant, for example, that the government secured a warrant and searched the contents of her e-mail account,” Judge John M. Facciola wrote in an opinion rejecting the Obama Administration’s argument.

Machen appealed that decision, and in September, 2010, Royce C. Lamberth, the chief judge in the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, granted Machen’s request to overturn the order of the two judges.

THERE’S MORE INCLUDING LIST OF WHAT DOJ WANTED ACCESS TO…

Also, this is breaking now that the DOJ confirms that Holder vetted the search warrant for Rosen’s emails:

Will update with more when I have it.

UPDATE: Below is Reuters’ official report:

The Justice Department said on Friday that officials up to Attorney General Eric Holder vetted a decision to search an email account belonging to a Fox News reporter whose report on North Korea prompted a leak investigation.

In a statement emailed to Reuters, the department said the search warrant for the reporter’s email account followed all laws and policies and won the independent approval of a federal magistrate judge.


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