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Latest: FBI says ABC News reporting on media spying 'misleading' A former counterterrorism chief at the CIA, Vincent Cannistraro, told The New York Sun that FBI sources have confirmed to him that reporters' calls are being tracked as part of the probe," writes the Sun's Josh Gerstein in Tuesday papers. Excerpts follow: "The FBI is monitoring calls of a number of news organizations as part of this leak investigation," Mr. Cannistraro, who has worked as a consultant for ABC, said "It is going on. It is widespread and it may entail more than those three media outlets." Under longstanding Justice Department regulations, prosecutors who subpoena a journalist's phone records are required to notify the reporter involved within 90 days of obtaining the records. The regulations state that, in most cases, subpoenas should not be issued until after an attempt is made to negotiate access with the reporter. Spokeswomen for ABC and the Times said their organizations had received no official notification of the effort to seek their phone records. The Washington Post did not respond to a call seeking comment for this article. An FBI spokesman, Bill Carter, called the ABC report "misleading," but did not dispute that journalists' phone records have been obtained by his agency. "In any case where the records of a private person are sought, they may only be obtained through established legal process," he said. One ambiguity the Justice Department may be exploiting is that the regulations, adopted in 1980, refer to trial and grand jury subpoenas. ABC suggested yesterday that its records may have been obtained without going through the courts, but instead by using authority for so-called national security letters contained in an anti-terrorism law passed in 2001, the Patriot Act. READ THE FULL NY SUN REPORT HERE ---------------------------------------------------
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