Presidential Threats Against the Press

One president pursued criminal charges against journalists

There are hysterical claims that if Donald Trump is again elected president he would begin jailing journalists and media personalities. This is an obsession among cable news channel personalities and media gadflies such as hosts of The View and Morning Joe.

The angst-filled bedwetters conveniently overlook the fact that Trump didn’t jail journalists the first time he was in the White House. However, as the past decade has shown, Trump is prone to exaggeration and he is guilty of hyperbole and mean tweets. But prosecuting journalists? No, not so much.

Yet, there was a president that was deeply antagonistic toward journalists and leakers who revealed government secrets. His behavior went far beyond mean tweets. Barack Obama’s administration prosecuted more people under the Espionage Act of 1917 than all previous presidents combined. In fact, more than twice as many. This doesn’t include journalists his administration threatened to prosecute if they didn’t reveal their sources.

Long before he ran for president, Obama mouthed all the right words. “When the heavy hand of the State is imposed on the press, all of us lose,” then-Senator Obama told a group of Kenyan journalists during a 2006 trip to Africa. He continued, “The media does not have a formal role in the Government, but it serves a critical function in providing information to the public so that they can hold the Government accountable.”

His real attitude toward press freedoms was on full-display after he was elected president.  His attorney-general, Eric Holder, and the pliant Justice Department became his personal Praetorian Guard to protect against disliked media reporting.

Three days into his presidency, Obama warned congressional Republicans against listening to radio host Rush Limbaugh. About the same time, Obama offered to sit down with the thug leaders of rogue nations, such as Iran’s Holocaust denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, without any preconditions. Obama believed Limbaugh posed a larger threat to Americans than a major sponsor of international terrorism.

Next, the White House launched a jihad against Fox News Channel and its hosts by first boycotting appearances on the cable channel and then by blacklisting FNC from the White House press pool. The ban ended after several days when several media outlets criticized the move.

During Obama’s freshman year as president, his administration began investigating whistleblowers and leakers such as Thomas Drake. Drake was a National Security Agency employee who was rebuffed by senior NSA officials when he reported what he believed was fraud, waste and abuse, and illegal activities by the agency. Drake then spoke to and handed over unclassified documents to a journalist. His communications were discovered when his emails were scoured in search of a leaker for a another story unrelated to Drake.

Drake’s activities occurred during the George Bush administration, but it was the Obama administration that decided to prosecute him for violating the Espionage Act of 1917 despite no presence of classified information. Documents he possessed were marked “Unclassified.” Drake was prosecuted not for spying but for speaking with a reporter. When the prosecution’s case fell apart in 2011, the Justice Department dropped all 10 espionage-related charges and Drake agreed to plea to a misdemeanor with no jail time and he agreed to not publicly disclose details of his case.

Prior to the Drake case, there were only three prosecutions under the Espionage Act. They were Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame in 1973, naval intelligence analyst Samuel Morison who leaked classified photos in 1985, and Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin who divulged intelligence to a lobbying firm in 2005.

Shamai Leibowitz was charged in 2009 with leaking classified documents to a national security blogger. Leibowitz was an FBI translator who claimed he was troubled to learn the FBI had wiretaps on the Israel Embassy in Washington, DC. Leibowitz reached a plea agreement to serve 20 months in prison and not disclose details of his alleged offense in return for dropping espionage charges.

In 2009, Army Private First Class Bradley Manning surreptitiously downloaded thousands of intelligence messages and other classified documents to external media, which he alleged documented US war crimes in Iraq. After the New York Times and Washington Post signaled their disinterest, Manning forwarded the classified material to WikiLeaks. Manning was caught, charged, convicted and sentenced to 35 years in prison. After Manning transitioned to a woman, Obama commuted the sentence after serving 7 years.

CIA officer John Kiriakou gave an operative’s name to the Washington Post. Kiriakou claimed whistleblower status. He said he was motivated to expose what he considered a torture tactic: waterboarding. When he campaigned for the presidency, Obama denounced waterboarding as torture. But in 2010, Obama no longer felt waterboarding was torture that should be exposed when it took place during his administration. Kiriakou was sentenced to 30 months in prison for violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act in return for DOJ dropping charges under the Espionage Act.

In 2013, the Obama Justice Department was attempting to learn the identity of Donald Sachtleben. He was a retired FBI special agent who continued working for the FBI as a contract employee. Sachtleben was convicted in 2013 for leaking information about an Al Qaeda bomb plot. The FBI learned of his identity by gleaning the telephone records of nearly 100 Associated Press reporters and staff.

The Justice Department prosecuted State Department official Stephen Kim for speaking with FNC correspondent James Rosen. In his conversation with Rosen, Kim referenced a document that was in circulation in the State Department. Federal authorities didn’t accuse Kim of stealing documents or accessing information for which he didn’t have authority. He merely discussed a document that was labeled in court documents of having insignificant sensitivity. This conversation led to a Rosen-authored Fox News article forecasting a possible North Korea nuclear weapons test. Kim was indicted in 2009 for committing espionage. Kim reached a plea agreement to serve 13 months in prison.

Jeffrey Sterling filed a complaint claiming to be a victim of racism by his employer, the CIA. When he didn’t get the response he anticipated he sued the agency. Then, he began sharing classified information on Iran with James Risen of the New York Times. That information ultimately was included in Risen’s published book. Sterling’s identity was learned by the government monitoring Risen’s emails, phone calls, and travel records. Sterling was indicted in 2011. He was prosecuted, convicted and sentenced in 2015 to 42 months in prison.

In 2013, Edward Snowden was labeled a spy by the Obama administration while civil rights advocates hailed him as a hero. Snowden gave thousands of documents to journalists that revealed the National Security Agency had engaged in warrantless spying on millions of Americans by bulk collecting private emails and phone calls.

Pursuing the suspected leakers was just the start for the Obama administration. In a break with decades of precedent, his Justice Department began harassing, intimidating, pursuing and criminally charging journalists for the act of being journalists.

In 2010, DOJ began tracking the movements of Fox News correspondent James Rosen. Rosen’s ‘crime’ was he was the journalist to whom Stephen Kim had been speaking. DOJ accused Rosen of being co-conspirator to violate 18 USC § 793, that is, committing espionage against the United States. The Justice Department subpoenaed Rosen’s phone records and got a warrant to sift through his personal emails. The administration wanted to know with all of whom Rosen had been speaking and what he had learned.

Using the Manning document theft as an excuse, Obama’s Attorney-General Eric Holder announced WikiLeaks was the subject of “active, ongoing criminal investigation.” Holder falsely suggested it was illegal to publish leaked classified information. That was a lie. The Supreme Court in New York Times v. United States established the precedent that news organizations are protected.

In order to not run afoul of Supreme Court precedent, the Obama administration cleverly couched its pursuit of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as a violation of computer laws rather than espionage laws. This allowed DOJ to pursue criminal charges against Assange while sparing the New York Times, Washington Post and Guardian for publishing the very same classified documents.

After the Obama administration began pursuing criminal charges against Assange, the New York Times, safe from similar prosecution, began a ‘tsk, tsk’ campaign that the newspaper really had nothing to do with Assange, despite partnering with him.

New York Times reporter James Risen was also spied upon by the Justice Department to determine his news sources. Federal authorities began the shocking act of snooping through Risen’s personal communications and financial records in order to discover his sources identities. It even looked at his credit reports. The Justice Department waged a seven-year legal battle against Risen demanding he reveal the sources for a book he authored. The DOJ also wanted to know the sources of an article Risen had written about the CIA’s attempt to hobble Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

In mid-2012, several news organizations reported Obama was personally approving a drone strike ‘kill list.’ Four Americans were killed in Obama-approved drone strikes. Embarrassed with the revelations, Obama leveled a threat at leakers and the media, “Now we have mechanisms in place where, if we can root out folks who have leaked, they will suffer consequences.” His DOJ retaliated by assigning a pair of seasoned prosecutors to discover the whistleblowers who leaked that info to journalists.

In 2013, the DOJ secretly seized the records of about 20 telephone lines used by as many as approximately 100 Associated Press employees. This included work, home and personal mobile phone records. The Obama Administration wanted to know which government employees were speaking with the press.  More than 50 news and media organizations signed a letter of protest addressed to Attorney-General Holder about the raid.

Not everyone who leaked classified intelligence was vigorously prosecuted. High ranking Obama officials, General David Petraeus, General James Cartwright, and CIA Director Leon Panetta and White House staffer John Brennan reportedly revealed classified information to those without clearances. However, the Justice Department declined to pursue serious charges against them as they were high-profile individuals with reputations, links to the Obama administration, and resources to fight back, according to one defense attorney.

Petraeus gave classified and highly sensitive information to his mistress. Cartwright leaked classified material to David Sanger of the New York Times, and Panetta gave unprecedented access to covert operatives and classified intelligence to Hollywood filmmakers of the film “Zero Dark Thirty.” In 2012, Brennan was bragging on a telephone call to television personalities that the CIA had penetrated Al-Qaida on the Arabian Peninsula.

Petraeus was permitted to plead guilty to a misdemeanor, and he didn’t lose his job as an advisor to the Obama White House. Cartwright pled guilty to lying to an FBI agent about the leaked information and was given a full pardon by Obama. No charges were sought for Panetta or Brennan.

Obama’s vendetta against the media did not start when he assumed the presidency. He and his surrogates were plenty busy beforehand. After the 2008 Democratic convention, Obama campaign lawyer Robert Bauer warned TV stations against airing a TV ad that was deemed embarrassing to Obama. The commercial focused on the longtime relationship between Obama and Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers. Bauer sent letters to the Justice Department imploring the agency to pursue criminal action against those behind the ads. It was not lost on anyone at that time that Bauer was considered a candidate to be the next U.S. Attorney-General. 

In late August 2008, the Obama campaign emailed an “Obama Action Wire” to thousands of supporters and liberal activists exhorting them to harass the offices of Chicago’s WGN radio by flooding the station with angry phone calls and emails. Activists screamed insults to call-in screeners. The radio station’s offense was that a long-time, respected radio host had the temerity to interview Ethics and Public Policy Center watchdog Stanley Kurtz. Kurtz had uncovered university records that documented a much closer relationship between Obama and Ayers than the presidential candidate had previously disclosed. 

A few weeks later, state prosecutors and top sheriffs in Missouri who were prominent Obama supporters responded to a chilling Obama campaign request. They styled themselves as a “truth squad” and threatened to prosecute anyone including media outlets that printed or broadcasted material they deemed to be inaccurate about the Illinois Senator. 

Obama contributors in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights section (headed by $2,000 Obama donor and former ACLU attorney Mark Kappelhof) urged preemptive prosecution of individuals the Obama campaign believed might disrupt the November election. A cited example of anticipated disruption was to send mailings of a non-violent nature addressing voting issues unfavorable to Obama. 

In October, a question from a middle-class voter resulted in an answer from Obama indicating the Democratic nominee was in favor of “spread[ing] the wealth around.” This voter became the symbol of middle-class America and Obama’s response the touchstone of his neo-Marxist policies. Immediately thereafter, Democratic Ohio state officials scoured government data bases and confidential records in an effort to find embarrassing information on “Joe the Plumber” (e.g., he is divorced) that quickly found their way into the press. 

In the final days of the 2008 campaign, three newspapers that had endorsed John McCain were booted from the Obama campaign bus. The  New York Post, Dallas Morning News, and Washington Times were unceremoniously shown the door only days after their papers’ endorsements appeared. Obama campaign officials claimed the move was to make room for more important media outlets: Jet and Ebony entertainment magazines. Both publications responded by publishing fawning coverage of Obama in the closing days of the race.

Mark Hyman is an Emmy award-winning investigative journalist. Follow him on Twitter, Gettr, Parler, and Mastodon.world at @markhyman, and on Truth Social at @markhyman81.

His books Washington Babylon: From George Washington to Donald Trump, Scandals That Rocked the Nation and Pardongate: How Bill and Hillary Clinton and their Brothers Profited from Pardons are on sale now (here and here).