Is James Rosen Guilty Of Espionage Or Just Doing His Job?

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – As the news was breaking yesterday that it was James Rosen, investigative reporter extraordinaire for Fox News, in 2009 he had been targeted by the Department of Injustice.  Did you read the story?  Did you read what they did to him?  Were you following the surveillance — Rosen was speaking with a South Korean.  The South Korean, whose last name was Kim, was allegedly in possession of State secrets.  Rosen was spotted commiserating — just imagine this.  This is a reporter, an investigative journalist investigating things.  Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  Yesterday, to bring Andrew back in, were you following Ryan Lizza’s Twitter feed as he was posting the excerpts of the subpoena that was used to eavesdrop, surveil, spy on and read the private emails of Fox News’s James Rosen?

AG:  I am unfamiliar with that Ryan guy.

Mike:  He writes for The New Yorker.  As the news was breaking yesterday that it was James Rosen, investigative reporter extraordinaire for Fox News, in 2009 he had been targeted by the Department of Injustice.  Did you read the story?  Did you read what they did to him?  Were you following the surveillance — Rosen was speaking with a South Korean.  The South Korean, whose last name was Kim, was allegedly in possession of State secrets.  Rosen was spotted commiserating — just imagine this.  This is a reporter, an investigative journalist investigating things.

If you read the Ryan Lizza rundown, here’s the heading: “Frightening: Content from DOJ’s warrant application to spy on James Rosen.”  What he was doing, since there’s no text version available, or there wasn’t at the time, he was taking screenshots of the PDF files.  You can only post so many characters on Twitter, but you can attach pictures.  He was taking screenshots of the PDF file as he was going through it then Tweeting them out.  It’s quite a long string of Tweets yesterday.  I stumbled upon it yesterday afternoon because I went to go check the Twitter feed.  I always liked James Rosen at Fox News.  He seemed like a pretty even-keeled investigative journalist-type whose work I usually enjoy.  When I was reading my Twitter feed, I kept seeing James Rosen trending.  I thought to myself: James Rosen?  Why would James Rosen be trending?  I thought: Uh oh, he must have done something really bad to be trending on the old Twitter feed.  I see the stories of the tweets or of how the Injustice Department is going through this process of implying that Fox News’s James Rosen is a criminal and is committing criminal activity.  They cite parts of the U.S. Code.  It almost reads like a spy novel.  Lizza starts out:

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[reading]

I’ve obtained a copy of the Rosen search warrant. Will tweet some excerpts…

This is the most chilling section. Absolutely amazing…

[attached pic of warrant] “5. For the reasons set forth below, I believe there is probable cause to conclude that the contents of the wire and electronic communications pertaining to the SUBJECT ACCOUNT, are evidence, fruits and instrumentalities of criminal violations of 18 U.S.C. § 793 (Unauthorized Disclosure of National Defense Information), and that there is probable cause to believe that the Reporter has committed or is committing a violation of Section 793(d), as an aider and abettor and/or co-conspirator, to which the materials relate.”

[end reading]

Mike:  Really?  So James Rosen, following a lead up and pursuing the lead and contacting people inside the Department of State, because the DOS is what you’ll see listed in the Twitter feed, or if you’ve actually seen the PDF of the case that was made for why James Rosen needed to be surveilled and followed.  They were following him.  There are notes here in the dialogue or in the transcript of this where FBI agents were actually following him.  I started thinking yesterday: I wonder if anyone is following me.  I’m not talking to anyone that’s important in the State Department, but it just makes you think: How do I know that I’m not being surveilled right now?  Eugene Robinson, this morning in the Washington Compost, has this: “Obama administration mistakes journalism for espionage.”  If you were following this on Twitter yesterday afternoon — and no, if you’re not following it on the Twitter, that does not make you deficient; it probably just means you have an actual job and don’t have time to do these sorts of things.  That’s why you have us around.  We’ll do it for you.

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When I was following this on the Twitter feed yesterday, the righteous indignation that was coming out about this, about how [mocking] “Finally the proof that we need.  Obama and his buddies have been out there.  I knew it.  We knew they were spying on us.  We knew they were doing this.”  I remember back — and I haven’t seen anybody write about this, but it will come out in the next day or so.  I remember back in 2004, 2005, and 2006 when there was much to do and a lot of fear and loathing going on about whether or not telecommunications companies like Verizon, ATT, Spring and others, whether or not they would turn over, if they would fork over phone records of individual phone users or phone account holders if the Department of Injustice asked for them.  Apparently, Andrew, what happened is, at least at some level, the Department of Injustice asked Google for Rosen’s emails.  If you’re doing a lot of stuff through Google Gmail, know that if the DOJ comes a’knockin’, Gmail will offer up what it has on your servers.  I don’t think it’ll do you any good either if you delete it, because they seem to preserve copies of everything that’s ever been written.

You have Eugene Robinson, who writes for The Washington Compost — I should set this up and say that Eugene Robinson is a, shall we say a fan, a promoter of President Obama, a fair-weather friend. I don’t know that he’s all in on it, but he certainly is favorable to the president.  We’re not talking about someone, talking about Eugene Robinson, who seems to be, of late anyways, who seems to have been making a full circle when it comes to his loyalty or his acceptance of the practices of the Obama administration.  Once it was: Why are you guys in the Tea Party and you anti-government groups, why do you complain so much about this?  They’re just trying to help.  Now they’re just trying to help has turned into: Now they’re not just trying to help, they’re trying to help themselves.  They may be abusing the First Amendment in the process.

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By the way, there’s no doubt, in my mind anyways, whatsoever that what the Department of Injustice did yesterday, or back in 2010 as the case were, to James Rosen and others, and who knows how far back this has been going.  This is why investigative journalists are supposed to investigate this stuff.  They’re the ones that have the contacts.  The First Amendment says that the freedom of the press shall not be abridged.  If Rosen was just reporting on events that were happening inside the magisterial government and was trying to obtain information in any manner in which he could in order to make his case, then the First Amendment would apply.  If Rosen was trying to obtain information so that he could actually perform an act of espionage, then I suppose you have the right to speak — it’s like the old fire in a theater bit — you have the right to speak, but you don’t have the right to abuse.  Or if you do abuse the right to speech, then you can suffer the consequences.

End Mike Church Show Transcript

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