The department’s watchdog agreed, concluding in its report published on Thursday that the 2007 policies “did not prohibit agents from impersonating journalists or from posing as a member of a news organization, nor was there any requirement that agents seek special approval to engage in such undercover activities”.
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The inspector general’s report said that in the 2007 case, in which an FBI agent investigating an e-mail bomb threat claimed to be an Associated Press reporter, was within guidelines of the law enforcement agency at the time.
“We can not overstate how damaging it is for federal agents to pose as journalists”, Katie Townsend, the litigation director for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said past year, while filing a lawsuit to obtain documents about the operation. According to a newly published report from the Department of Justice, the operation was in line with the FBI’s undercover policies at the time. At the time of the Timberline case, noted the IG report, “FBI policies did not prohibit the practice of agents impersonating journalists, nor was there any requirement that agents seek special approval to engage in such practice”.
“As a result, we believe the judgements agents made about aspects of the planned undercover activity in 2007 to pose as an editor for the AP did not violate the undercover policies in place at that time”. A link to the article was sent by an agent posing as a reporter to the suspect in the bomb threats: a student at the school named Charles Jenkins.
In followup emails to the student, Charles Jenkins, an FBI investigator portrayed himself as an “AP staff publisher” in order to get Jenkins to click on the link and links to other photographs. She added, “It is improper and inconsistent with a free press for government personnel to masquerade as The Associated Press or any other news organization”, and the FBI’s actions “undermined the most fundamental component of a free press-its independence”.
The impersonation stirred immediate outrage among the news media and First Amendment advocates, and the Justice Department’s inspector general opened an investigation into the practice.
As a potential “sensitive circumstance” under Federal Bureau of Investigation policy, that action could have boosted the approval level needed to carry out the undercover work, a possibility the investigative team “did not appear to fully consider”, the report said.
Later that year, news outlets reported the means in which authorities located the suspect but it wasn’t until 2014 that details concerning the impersonation were revealed. The FBI, according to the report, concurs. “We don’t think there is a place for law enforcement impersonation of members of the news media”. Please see our terms of service for more information. Over the course of several days in 2007, the school received bomb threats via email and was forced to evacuate the premises. The policy does not require consent from the news organization being impersonated.
“The FBI may have intended this false story as a trap for only one person”.
Investigators should have considered obtaining higher-level approval for their operation midway through, the inspector general claimed, as the teenage suspect was promised that “writers are not allowed to reveal their sources”.
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It even acknowledged the Justice Department’s change in policy, when it comes to subpoenaing or collecting records on journalists, and suggested this new policy put forward in June was an “important improvement”.
