AP CEO, Senator Protest Package Seizure

By: (AP) Associated Press President and CEO Louis D. Boccardi sent a letter Wednesday to the directors of the FBI and Customs bureau protesting the agencies' seizure of an unclassified FBI lab report mailed between two AP reporters.

The seizure "compromised AP's fundamental right to conduct its lawful newsgathering activities without government interference or intrusion," Boccardi wrote to FBI Director Robert Mueller and Robert Bonner, commissioner of the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection. Boccardi called the seizure improper and clandestine.

Sen. Charles Grassley, chairman of the Finance Committee, also sent a harsh letter to the agency heads. "It appears the government may have overstepped its bounds by improperly seizing private property to censor and stymie the media," Grassley, R-Iowa, said in a statement. "The seizure of the AP's package without a warrant or notification is a very serious matter."

Grassley, also a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee that oversees the FBI, demanded an accounting of the matter by April 11.

Boccardi requested an investigation and "full explanation of how it happened and what steps are being taken to ensure that such interference with the press does not happen again."

Customs spokesman Dennis Murphy declined to comment. The FBI did not immediately return a call.

The package was sent last September from the AP bureau in Manila, Philippines, to the AP bureau in Washington. It contained an 8-year-old unclassified lab report that had been publicly disclosed in court documents in two separate cases, and a cover note from one AP reporter to another. "That the package belonged to the press was apparent on its face," Boccardi said.

FBI spokesman Doug Garrison has said the document contained sensitive information that should not have been made public. But Grassley said a review by his staff found "nothing that could compromise public safety or national security."

AP never was notified of the seizure as required by law, Boccardi said, and was given conflicting accounts of why the package was identified as one that needed extra scrutiny.

The lab report involved materials seized from an apartment in the Philippines rented by Ramzi Yousef, convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. A second package containing the same report sent from Manila to the AP bureau at the United Nations was not seized by Customs.

The packages were part of research being done by the AP's John Solomon and Jim Gomez for stories published in February about the government's concern prior to the April 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that federal buildings might be targeted by white supremacists.