Might be a little hard to do that consider the size and scale of so many:
"Leak inquiries reveal how wide a net US has cast" by Ethan Bronner and Charlie Savage | New York Times, May 26, 2013
WASHINGTON — Even before the FBI conducted 550 interviews of officials and seized the phone records of Associated Press reporters in a leak investigation connected to a 2012 article about a Yemen bomb plot, agents had sought the reporters’ sources for two other articles about terrorism.
In a separate case last year, FBI agents asked the White House, the Defense Department, and intelligence agencies for phone and e-mail logs showing exchanges with a New York Times reporter writing about computer attacks on Iran. Agents grilled officials about their contacts with him, two people familiar with the investigation said.
And agents tracing the leak of a highly classified CIA report on North Korea to a Fox News reporter pulled electronic archives showing which officials had gained access to the report and had contact with the reporter on the day of the leak.
They studied one official’s entrances and exits from the State Department, obtained his Yahoo e-mail information, and even searched his hard drive for deleted files, documents unsealed this month showed.
Translation: The AP scandal involved a massive fishing expedition across all levels of subservient corporate media.
The emerging details of these and other cases show how broadly the Obama administration has pursued its investigations into disclosures of government secrets, querying hundreds of officials across the federal government and even some of their foreign counterparts.
The result has been an unprecedented six prosecutions and many more inquiries using aggressive legal and technical tactics. A vast majority of those questioned were cleared of any leaking.
On Thursday, President Obama ordered a review of the Justice Department’s procedures for leak investigations involving reporters, saying he was concerned that such inquiries chilled journalists’ ability to hold the government accountable. Yet he made no apology for the scrutiny of the many officials whose records were searched or who had been questioned by the FBI.
“He makes the case that we have 18-year-olds out fighting wars and acting like adults, and we have senior administration officials quoted in stories acting like children,” said Tommy Vietor, a former National Security Council spokesman.
Who sent them there, and why are they being kept there over lies?
Obama and top administration officials say that some of the leaks have endangered Americans, disrupted intelligence operations, and strained alliances with other countries.
Other leaks, like Obama's kill list successes, are purposefully leaked to make this president look good, but that's okay. It's what we call a public relations leak.
Some officials are now declining to take calls from certain reporters, concerned that any contact may lead to investigation. Some complain of being taken from their offices to endure uncomfortable questioning. And the government officials typically must pay for lawyers themselves, unlike reporters for large news organizations whose companies provide legal representation.
“For every reporter that is dealing with this, there are hundreds of national security officials who feel under siege — without benefit of a corporate legal department or a media megaphone for support,” a former Obama administration official said. “There are lots of people in the government spending lots of money on legal fees.”
This from the most transparent administration in US histor.... ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! I'm sorry, folks, I thought I could get through it.
When an agency spots classified information in the news media, officials file what is called a “Crimes Report” with the Department of Justice, answering 11 standard questions about the leak, including the effect of the disclosure “on the national defense.”
FBI agents then set out to find the leaker, a process that has become far easier in recent years as e-mail and other electronic records have proliferated.
Related: Sunday Globe Special: Put the Blame on Plame, Boys!
Officials who have been questioned in the current investigations are reluctant to describe their experience. But the account of William E. Binney, who spent more than 30 years at the National Security Agency, shows what can happen.
Binney, 69, who retired from the NSA in 2001, was one of several people investigated as part of an inquiry into a 2005 Times article on the spy agency’s warrantless wiretapping program.
He was cleared of any wrongdoing, but the investigation derailed his career and changed his life. Starting in March 2007, Binney said, he was interviewed by the FBI three times and felt he had cooperated fully.
One morning in July 2007, however, a dozen agents appeared at his house in Severn, Md. One of them ran upstairs and entered the bathroom where Binney was toweling off after a shower, pointing a gun at him.
Related: Slow Saturday Special: Discreetly Arresting SAC's Steinberg
Agents carried away a desktop computer, disks, and personal and business records. Last year, he and three former NSA colleagues went to federal court to get the confiscated items back; he is still waiting for some of them.
Binney spent more than $7,000 on legal fees. But far more devastating, he said, was the NSA’s decision to strip him of his security clearance, forcing him to close the business he ran with former colleagues, costing him an annual income of about $300,000.
“After a raid like that, you’re always sitting here wondering if they’re coming back,” Binney said. “This did not feel like the America we grew up in.”
And it isn't.
One of the most striking recent revelations about the administration’s scrutiny of journalists concerns James Rosen of Fox News, whose e-mail records were seized as part of a leak investigation of classified information about North Korea in 2009.
The warrant seeking a judge’s permission to obtain Rosen’s records describes him “at the very least, either as an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator.”
That description could make him vulnerable to indictment under the Espionage Act. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. signed off on the warrant request, the Justice Department acknowledged Friday.
WOW! Now that is SERIOUS!
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The corporate media fighting back?
"Eric Holder weathers uproar amid speculation on future" by Peter Baker and Charlie Savage | New York Times, June 02, 2013
WASHINGTON — At the end of last year, with the election decided and the Obama administration in office for four more years, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. considered stepping down.
He decided against it, in part because before he left he wanted to move beyond the disputes that had marked his tenure, accomplish some of the goals he had set for the job, and leave on his own terms.
Can you impeach an Attorney General (yes, we can!)?
If Holder really thought he could escape controversy, the last few weeks have reinforced how inescapable controversy has become for the nation’s chief law enforcement officer.
It's of his own making.
A furor over leak investigations and the seizure of phone records from reporters at the Associated Press and Fox News have again engulfed the attorney general in allegations, investigations and calls for resignation.
I second that.
Over the course of 4½ years, no other member of President Obama’s Cabinet has been at the center of so many polarizing episodes or the target of so much incoming fire.
While the White House publicly backed Holder as he tried to smooth over the latest uproar amid new speculation about his future, some in the West Wing privately wish he would step down, viewing him as politically maladroit. But the latest attacks may stiffen the administration’s resistance in the near term for fear of emboldening critics.
I'm tired, tired, tired, of this inside baseball politics when laws have been broken!
The White House views the attacks on Holder as a “political agenda” and “would not hasten the departure of someone who’s competent and runs the department and is a friend because there’s a drumbeat,” said William Daley, a former White House chief of staff under Obama. “Whoever Barack Obama puts in there, these people will try to drumbeat him out of there, no matter what.”
Not necessarily; however, most of his nominations have been corporate pukes.
But that does not mitigate the frustration of some presidential aides. “The White House is apoplectic about him, and has been for a long time,” said a Democratic former government official who declined to be identified talking about friends.
Then fire him!
White House officials believe that Holder does not manage or foresee problems. “How hard would it be to anticipate that the AP would be unhappy?” the former official said. “And then they haven’t defended their position.”
The president is also said to appreciate Holder’s integrity and his positions during some of the big fights over what to do about terrorism and other volatile issues.
Integrity? From a man who validated waterboarding, absolved the destruction of videotaped torture, ran guns to Mexican drug cartels, and says banks are too big to jail?
Moreover, advisers said, Obama after a full term in office is less likely to worry about political flare-ups that will eventually die down.
With help from a complaint media.
“It’s very easy sitting in that town to overestimate the longevity and impact of these issues,” David Axelrod, Obama’s political strategist, said from Chicago. “I don’t think Americans are sitting around their kitchen tables clamoring for Holder’s head because of the AP or Fox subpoenas. It’s not water-cooler discussion.”
Didn't he go to Mitt Romney's gala get-together and is now working for MSNBC?
How little he understands the pulse of the people.
But it is more fuel for Republican critics on Capitol Hill, who have had repeated clashes with Holder and the Justice Department he heads.
Um, SOME DEMOCRATS are NOT HAPPY, either.
Under his leadership, the department scaled back a voter-intimidation lawsuit from the Bush era involving the New Black Panther Party.
He reopened criminal investigations into the CIA’s interrogations of terror suspects and tried to prosecute alleged Sept. 11 conspirators in civilian courts rather than military tribunals, which provoked accusations that he was soft on terrorism.
Yeah, he's a real hero. How about exposing the lies and fraud surrounding the whole thing?
And he abandoned the legal defense of a law barring federal recognition of same-sex marriage that social conservatives viewed as a bulwark against attacks on the traditional family.
Woo-hoo!
The party-line furor peaked with hearings into Fast and Furious, a botched gun-trafficking investigation by federal agents based in Arizona.
Now THAT is an IMPORTANT and IMPEACHABLE OFFENSE!
Related: Alphabet Agency: Putting Holder on ICE
Thawed through.
When Holder, citing executive privilege, refused to provide department e-mails relating to the investigation, the House voted to hold him in contempt of Congress.
Oh, man, ARE YOU FRIKKIN' KIDDING!
DEJA VU from my youth!
A report by the Justice Department’s independent inspector general exonerated Holder from accusations that he had sanctioned risky investigative tactics used in the case, but that did not satisfy Republican lawmakers who are still pressing a court to order for the e-mails to be turned over.
More so than in the past, Democrats have joined in the criticism. “I am very leery about any investigative tool that involves even the appearance of an investigation directed at journalists,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, a member of the Judiciary Committee.
I'm leery of it all!
Yet Democrats remain reluctant about joining what they see as a partisan campaign against the attorney general.
That was the way Republicans felt about Nixon at first.
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Related: Slow Saturday Special: Squelching the Obama Scandals
Done a pretty good job:
"IRS spent $50m on conferences for employees; Anaheim session in 2010 draws special criticism" by Alan Fram | Associated Press, June 03, 2013
WASHINGTON — A government watchdog has found that the Internal Revenue Service spent about $50 million to hold at least 220 conferences for employees between 2010 and 2012, a House committee said Sunday.
The chairman of that committee, Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican, also released excerpts of congressional investigators’ interviews with employees of the IRS office in Cincinnati. Issa said the interviews indicated the employees were directed by Washington to subject Tea Party and other conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status to tough scrutiny.
That was know weeks ago.
The excerpts provided no direct evidence that Washington had ordered that screening. The top Democrat on that panel, Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, said none of the employees interviewed have so far identified any IRS officials in Washington as ordering that targeting.
That's where the request letters were sent from.
The conference spending included $4 million for an August 2010 gathering in Anaheim, Calif., for which the agency did not negotiate lower room rates, even though that is standard government practice, according to a statement by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Related: Alphabet Agency: It's Fun Working For the FAA
All government work is full of guffaws.
Instead, some of the 2,600 attendees received benefits, including baseball tickets and stays in presidential suites that normally cost $1,500 to $3,500 per night. In addition, 15 outside speakers were paid a total of $135,000 in fees, with one paid $17,000 to talk about ‘‘leadership through art,’’ the House committee said.
The report by the Treasury Department’s inspector general, set to be released Tuesday, comes as the IRS already is facing bipartisan criticism after agency officials disclosed they had targeted Tea Party and other conservative groups.
Agency officials and the Obama administration have said that treatment was inappropriate, but the political tempest has put the White House on the defensive.
Three congressional committees are investigating, a Justice Department criminal investigation is underway, President Obama has replaced the IRS’s acting commissioner, and two other top officials have stepped aside.
The Treasury Department released a statement Sunday saying the administration ‘‘has already taken aggressive and dramatic action to reduce conference spending.’’
IRS spokeswoman Michelle Eldridge said Sunday that spending on large agency conferences with 50 or more participants fell from $37.6 million in the 2010 budget year to $4.9 million in 2012. The government’s fiscal year begins Oct. 1 the previous calendar year.
Is that supposed to make us austerity-stricken Americans happy? How about no parties on the taxpayer dime?
On Friday, the new acting commissioner, Danny Werfel, released a statement on the forthcoming report criticizing the Anaheim meeting.
‘‘This conference is an unfortunate vestige from a prior era,’’ Werfel said. ‘‘While there were legitimate reasons for holding the meeting, many of the expenses associated with it were inappropriate and should not have occurred.’’
Issa’s committee also released excerpts from interviews congressional investigators conducted last week with two IRS employees from the agency’s Cincinnati office. The excerpts omitted the names of those interviewed and provided no specifics about individuals in Washington who may have been involved.
One of the IRS employees said in an excerpt that they were told by a supervisor that the need to collect the reports came from Washington, and said that in early 2010 the Cincinnati office had sent copies of seven of the cases to Washington.
The other said ‘‘all my direction’’ came from an official that the transcript said was in Washington.
One of the workers also expressed skepticism that the Cincinnati office originated the screening without direction from Washington, according to the excerpts.
Appearing Sunday on CNN’s ‘‘State of the Union,’’ Issa said this conflicted with White House comments that have referred to misconduct by IRS workers in Cincinnati. Without naming White House spokesman Jay Carney, Issa said the administration’s ‘‘paid liar, their spokesperson’’ is ‘‘still making up things about what happens in calling this local rogue.’’
He added, ‘‘This is a problem that was coordinated in all likelihood right out of Washington headquarters and we’re getting to proving it.’’
In briefings with reporters, Carney has not referred to the Cincinnati IRS office as ‘‘rogue.’’
‘‘He’s good at throwing out outlandish charges but it’s unclear what he’s saying he lied about,’’ White House spokesman Eric Schultz said of Issa’s remark.
Cummings said Issa’s comments conflicted with a Treasury inspector general’s report that provided no evidence that the Cincinnati office received orders on targeting from anyone else.
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When looking at these scandals it is obvious the intentionally-leaked IRS scandal was meant to cover up the staged and scripted Benghazi (the news really is a cartoon these days, folks. No joke) operation that went horribly wrong, with the leak about the AP spying done to intimidate journalists.
Well, it worked. I base that on my Boston Globe coverage. The IRS scandal has boiled down to embarrassing videos and an excuse to party.
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"IRS’s new chief says it must rebuild trust; Latest report says millions wasted on lavish meetings" by Stephen Ohlemacher | Associated Press, June 04, 2013
WASHINGTON — His agency under relentless fire, the new head of the Internal Revenue Service acknowledged to Congress on Monday that taxpayers no longer trust the IRS amid a growing number of scandals — from the targeting of conservative political groups to lavish spending on employee conferences....
As if we ever did.
‘‘We must have the trust of the American taxpayer. Unfortunately, that trust has been broken, a trust has been violated,’’ Danny Werfel, the acting commissioner, told a House Appropriations subcommittee in his first public appearance since taking over the agency nearly two weeks ago....
And once it;'s gone.... sorry.
Werfel went to Capitol Hill to ask for a big budget increase.
Are you frikkin' kidding me?
President Obama has requested a 9 percent increase in IRS spending for the budget year that starts in October, in part to help pay for the implementation of the new health care law....
All of a sudden that law is making most Americans sick.
Related: Filling Out the Obamacare Forms
Have fun filling 'em out.
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I'm letting go now because the rest was nothing but superficial s*** meant to cover the other, more egregious violations.
