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Press can be prosecuted for having secret files, U.S. says

Thursday February 23rd 2006, 11:13 am
Filed under: Journalism

Press can be prosecuted for having secret files, U.S. says

The Bush administration said that journalists can be prosecuted under current espionage laws for receiving and publishing classified information but that such a step “would raise legitimate and serious issues and would not be undertaken lightly,” according to a court filing made public this week.

“There plainly is no exemption in the statutes for the press, let alone lobbyists like the defendants,” Justice Department lawyers wrote in response to a motion filed last month seeking to dismiss charges against Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, former lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Last August, the two men were accused of receiving classified information during conversations they had with government officials, one of whom warned Weissman that “the information he was about to receive was highly classified ‘Agency stuff,’ ” according to the government’s indictment. That official was Lawrence A. Franklin, who worked at the Pentagon. He recently pleaded guilty to violating the Espionage Act.

Source: Walter Pincus, The Washington Post

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