The James Rosen Affidavit Was the 20th Document in the Docket

Screen shot 2013-05-20 at 3.45.46 PMThe is sort of a weedy point.

But if you look at the docket associated with DOJ’s attempt to get James Rosen’s communications, you’ll see it is listed as document 20 in the docket.

Yet no other documents — aside from the order approving the warrant — appear, unsealed, in the docket.

We can’t be sure, but I wonder whether the 19 earlier, still-sealed documents in the docket constitute unsuccessful efforts to get this material. For example, I wonder whether Google initially balked at supplying the material based on the Privacy Protection Act, so DOJ invented the language claiming Rosen was a co-conspirator in Espionage which (at pages 4-5) exempted the materials in question from privacy protection.

In addition, the return associated with the affidavit shows how Google would narrow the search to just those communications between Rosen and Stephen Jin-Yoo Kim. Which suggests some of those 19 earlier documents may have been Google’s successful attempt to limit an earlier much broader request including all of Rosen’s communications.

Particularly given Kim’s quoted blame for being snookered on Rosen, I wonder whether DOJ initially really was going to claim he was responsible for the leak?

In any case, if I were Fox News, I would move to unseal the docket.

image_print
13 replies
  1. Garrett says:

    I guess we have to assume that this part, about the email conversations

    The PROVIDER shall send the information to the agent via facsimile

    was actually, physically, really, truly, to a fax machine, done.

    including videos

    Google tech: well OK, if you say so. But it’s gonna make your machine whistle kind of weird, and for quite a while.

  2. P J Evans says:

    @Garrett:
    *snerk*
    A friend of mine used to get calls on her cell phone that were people trying to fax stuff. Whistling weirdly, oh yeah.

  3. Snoopdido says:

    One of the consequences of a Forever War is that those who continue to fight it by reenlisting such as the soldiers in the military or remaining in their jobs such as attorneys in the Department of Justice, these are the true believers.

    One of the consequences of Obama’s “looking forward” instead of coming to grips with the crimes, including war crimes of the Bush/Cheney administration, is that it allows the criminals to remain in power, emboldened into believing that not only will they never be punished, but that the crimes they committed were not crimes in the first place.

    There is a cancer in your presidency Mr. Obama, and you alone, for reasons of political expediency and moral cowardice, chose not to treat the disease. Can you really be surprised then that the cancer has progressed?

  4. TG says:

    OT, kinda – Washington Post this afternoon:

    “The Justice Department inspector general said Monday that the former U.S. attorney in Phoenix retaliated against the main whistleblower in a botched federal gun operation by leaking information to a television producer that was meant to harm the whistleblower’s credibility.”

  5. Snoopdido says:

    This is off topic, but the Department of Justice’s Inspector General released a report today entitled “Report of Investigation Concerning the Improper Disclosure of U.S. Department of Justice Information to a Member of the Media” (http://www.justice.gov/oig/reports/2013/s1305.pdf).

    In the report, the DOJ IG states that while he was United States Attorney for the District of Arizona, Dennis Burke stated that “he had released the Dodson memorandum to a reporter”.

    The DOJ IG report states that the Dodson memorandum was “an internal ATF investigative memorandum that Dodson had drafted and which described a proposed undercover operation for an ATF firearms investigation”. Dodson was assigned to the group responsible for conducting the Operation Fast and Furious investigation.

  6. Frank33 says:

    Slightly, OT. But Walter Pincus of WaPo says AP-Gate is terrible and those reporters should be tossed into the dungeons, with the other defeatists. Pincus also reveals some shocking news.

    Benghazi may have been an Act of Terror. But Undie Bomber #2 was not an Al Qaeda plot, and it was not even a terrorist plot. Undie #2 was part of a CIA ruse.

    In Conspiracy Town, they call that a False Flag Operation.

    The AP story tied the foiling of an AQAP plot to White House press secretary Jay Carney’s statement the week before that assured “the American public that [the administration] knew of no al-Qaeda plots against the U.S. around the anniversary of bin Laden’s death.” The AP story implied that Carney’s statement was untrue. But Carney was right. This was a CIA ruse, not a terrorist-initiated plot.

    But Pincus has lost his mind to the New World Order. He lies about blabbermouth John Brennan, to protect him. And “authorized leaks” are just warm and fuzzy and were intended to control “political damage”.

    Those AP-Gate traitor reporters knew what they were doing. You do not spit into the wind or tug on Superman’s cape or reveal leaks, unless authorized. AP is part of the crime. Welcome to the Revolution, AP. Walter Pincus will regret these comments, in a Bob Woodward sort of way.

    Responding after the AP story, White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan held a media backgrounder to reassure the public that the United States was somehow “in control” of the situation. That triggered other media inquiries, which led to the administration explaining the Saudi double agent and other details. The authorized leak was to control political damage.

    It was inevitable that the leak to the AP would generate an FBI probe. Given past leak investigations in the Bush and Obama administrations, journalists at the AP and elsewhere know they could face scrutiny. Like it or not, they are part of a crime. The leaker or leakers had taken an oath under the threat of prosecution to protect the information.

  7. Frank33 says:

    @Frank33:

    Hey, Sibel Edmonds agrees with me that Pincus is a neo-con troll war profiteer lying son of an intestinal parasite. But Sibel is more polite.

    @kgosztola Have you checked Walter Pincus’ background/history? His son represented Blackwater. He is a #$%&# … well, I’ll be polite;-)— Sibel Edmonds (@sibeledmonds) May 21, 2013

  8. Snoopdido says:

    Another off topic story from Reuters – Pentagon to take over some CIA drone operations (http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/21/us-usa-drones-idUSBRE94K03720130521):

    “Four U.S. government sources told Reuters that the decision had been made to shift the CIA’s drone operations to the Pentagon, and some of them said it would occur in stages.

    Drone strikes in Yemen, where the U.S. military already conducts operations with Yemeni forces, would be run by the armed forces, officials said.”

    I wonder what will happen to that shiny new US drone base in Saudi Arabia that the CIA built? I don’t see it as likely that the Saudis would invite the US military to occupy it, but perhaps they will.

  9. fotty says:

    Unseal the docket. Goodness, that’s adorable. Murdoch, when he fights back, is not going to contend in some ridiculous rigged court. He’s not going to waste time attacking helpless puppet ruler Barack Obama or his button-man AG. Murdoch is going to go after the real government, the permanent one that installed Bush and Obama both.

    Wall Street Journal published a press release for Consensus 911. No more playing along with the patriotic bedtime stories. He’s presenting Nuremberg Count 1.

  10. bmaz says:

    Why was the warrant signed by Alan Kay, then the matter subsequently handled by John Facciola? Don’t understand the lateral transfer at the magistrate level.

    The unseal was signed on 11/7/2011, was that entry, and the document it related to, not “entered” on the docket until 5/16/2013? It appears that may be the case, but it is not clear.

    This is a screwy docket. I can’t currently fathom any way there are 19 docket items solely from a single party, i.e the DOJ, however, there are no additional attorney entries that would support there being more parties.

    Maybe the various motions, notices and minute entries related to this appeal to Chief Judge Lamberth of Facciola’s notice order comprise all of those missing docket spots. At this point I’m going to guess that is it, not challenge by Google or the like, but that is still possible.

  11. P J Evans says:

    @fotty:
    It would be more impressive it they weren’t using news stories and publicity releases as the bases for their work. (It looks, frankly, like another conspiracy/whitewash site, and anything published by Murdoch needs to be closely examined for political bias.)

  12. Meg says:

    Do we know how/where the WaPo got the info to publish the story? I think they broke it and it seems like Fox would have broken it if they had had the information.

Comments are closed.