White House Seems to Affirm Biden’s Vow to Bar Seizures of Reporters’ Phone Data
But the Justice Department is not commenting on whether a seemingly off-the-cuff remark by President Biden is now a policy directive.
Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, affirmed a remark by President Biden that he would not allow prosecutors to seize reporters’ communications records in leak investigations.Credit.Doug Mills/The New York Times
May 24, 2021, 5:11 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON A White House spokeswoman appeared to confirm on Monday that the Biden administration would not permit federal prosecutors to seize reporters’ phone and email records in leak investigations, a potentially major change in law enforcement policy that President Biden promised in a seemingly off-the-cuff remark last week.
Secret Sharers: The Hidden Ties Between Private Spies and Journalists
A booming, renegade private intelligence industry is increasingly shaping (and misshaping) the news.
Credit.Lincoln Agnew
May 15, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET
Some journalists are happy to knock on the doors of strangers. I was never one of them, but Christopher Steele, the ex-British spy behind the infamous Trump dossier, left me no choice.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Mr. Steele had been hired by an investigative firm called Fusion GPS to gather dirt about Donald J. Trump and Russia. The firm’s founders, two former Wall Street Journal reporters, made it clear they would not talk to me for a book I was writing about the business of private intelligence. So on an early summer morning in 2019, I arrived at Mr. Steele’s home in Farnham, a picturesque English village.
A Scoop About the Pentagon Papers, 50 Years Later
A former Times reporter obtained the answer to a major question involving Neil Sheehan’s source, then had to keep it secret until last week.
Neil Sheehan in 1972. Last week, the reporter Janny Scott wrote about Mr. Sheehan’s sourcing.Credit.Barton Silverman/The New York Times
Jan. 15, 2021
Janny Scott was researching the life of Neil Sheehan, the New York Times reporter who broke the news of the Pentagon Papers in 1971, when she noticed a gaping, unanswered question.
How did Mr. Sheehan actually get the documents? In all of the articles, movies and special reports about the story over the years, he never revealed what had really happened.