Did he or didn't he? Only his PR flacks know for sure...CBS News is reporting that the Justice Department sent a formal request to an independent news aggregation website, asking for a list of the site's visitors:
The subpoena (PDF) from U.S. Attorney Tim Morrison in Indianapolis demanded "all IP traffic to and from www.indymedia.us" on June 25, 2008. It instructed Clair to "include IP addresses, times, and any other identifying information," including e-mail addresses, physical addresses, registered accounts, and Indymedia readers' Social Security Numbers, bank account numbers, credit card numbers, and so on.Indymedia is being represented by Kevin Bankston of the Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Under long-standing Justice Department guidelines, subpoenas to members of the news media are supposed to receive special treatment. One portion of the guidelines, for instance, says that "no subpoena may be issued to any member of the news media" without "the express authorization of the attorney general" – that would be current attorney general Eric Holder – and subpoenas should be "directed at material information regarding a limited subject matter."
Source: CBS News
"This is the first time we've seen them try to get the IP address of everyone who visited a particular site," Bankston said. "That it was a news organization was an additional troubling fact that implicates First Amendment rights."
Source: Source: CBS News
Could Attorney General Eric Holder be behind this? Well, not according to his own PR spin machine:
Update 1:59pm E.T.: A Justice Department official familiar with this subpoena just told me that the attorney general's office never saw it and that it had not been submitted to the department's headquarters in Washington, D.C. for review. If that's correct, it suggests that U.S. Attorney Tim Morrison and Assistant U.S. Attorney Doris Pryor did not follow department regulations requiring the "express authorization of the attorney general" for media subpoenas -- and it means that neither Attorney General Eric Holder nor Acting Attorney General Mark Filip were involved. I wouldn't be surprised to see an internal investigation by the Office of Professional Responsibility; my source would not confirm or deny that.
Source: CBS News
So... If Holder ISN'T involved, it means US Attorney Tim Morrisson and Asst. US Attorney Pryor are in violation of department regulations. The only other possible explanation is that Holder knew about this and he is hanging someone else out to dry for his actions.
Let's see how long it takes for Morrisson and Pryor to be punished for their actions...
Don't hold your breath.
