FBI agents have been snooping around the archives of the late columnist Jack Anderson. Anderson, who had Parkinsons, rarely wrote in the last 15 years of his life. The significance of this is the FBI claims to be searching his archives for material pertaining to a case five years ago!
The real reason for this fishing expedition is to go through Anderson's entire archive and find any classified information or leaked information that he might have received from goverment sources.
Anderson is best known for the dubious distinction of making Richard Nixon's "Enemies List." The FBI would like to find out information that would have embarassed the Bureau and through it down the memory hole. As if the modern FBI hasn't done enough to embarass itself: Ruby Ridge; Waco; Whitey Bulger and John Connolly; and let's not forget their masterful performance thwarting any investigation by agents in both Phoenix and Minneapolis in the months prior to Sept. 11 about Arab men going to flight schools.
The real reason is totally nefarious and fits perfectly with the Bush Administration's total contempt for an honest press corps and the first ammendment. If the FBI can rifle through Anderson's archives, what will stop them, another agents, or "unaffiliated persons" searching anyone's personal information.
This isn't just a chilling of the press. This is like an Ice Age effect on free speech. No source is ever going to talk either on the record, on deep background, or as an unnamed source because at any time the FBI could under the Patriot Act seize the information from a reporter and claim they had received classified information. Naturally, the Bushies would paint a broad stroke as to what was actually classified. They're doing it right now including documents that have been in the public domain for years.
The reclassification system is basically a face-saving attempt by the government to cover up huge intelligence failures like the State Department claiming a week before China entered the Korean Conflict that Chinese intervention was unlikely.
Of course, the ChenRummy crowd is the definition of an embarassment and they really are setting a precident so they can withhold information in the future from the public.
Why should you care? Basically, this is a frontal assault on free speech. The reasoning is so specious it is laughable -- like our rationale for invading Iraq changed as often as the shifting sands of the desert -- that Anderson had information about two Jewish lobbyists for AIPAC that may have received sensitive information from the government and passed it along to Israeli intelligence. Anyone who has a relative or knows anyone with Parkinson's realizes how unlikely Anderson would have been able to work on any column let alone one pertaining to the AIPAC investigation. I know an individual who cares for a parent with Parkinson's and their parent rarely ever speaks and writing or typing is difficult if not impossible.
The pretext for viewing Anderson's archive is flimsier than an Army flack jacket. It gives the FBI the excuse to go through his entire archives. Lawyers for the Anderson estate are refusing to cooperate with the FBI. Do what you can to drum up support for their cause because some day we might have a Pravda-like press that is a government mouthpiece (oh wait, isn't that Fox News?) and all critics of the goverment are in prison like Vaclav Havel was in Czechoslovakia before the Velvet Revolution. Defend the first amendment and your right to free speech. Without it, we are living in a police state.