By: Joe Strupp FBI Director Robert Mueller apologized to editors of The New York Times and The Washington Post for what he said was "a recently uncovered breach of their reporters' phone records in the course of a national security investigation nearly four years ago," the Post reported.
In a Saturday story, the Post stated: "Mueller called the top editors [at each paper] to express regret that agents had not followed proper procedures when they sought telephone records under a process that allowed them to bypass grand jury review in emergency cases."
The Justice Department's inspector general, who is reviewing bureau procedures in such cases, reportedly revealed that FBI agents in 2004 obtained telephone records of Post staffer Ellen Nakashima, who was in Indonesia at the time. The FBI also obtained records for an Indonesian researcher in the paper's Jakarta bureau, Natasha Tampubolon, the Post reported.
"Records of New York Times reporters Raymond Bonner and Jane Perlez, who worked in Jakarta in 2004, also were compromised," the Post stated.
"The FBI refused to disclose the nature or subject of the investigation that prompted the request for the phone records," the paper added. "At the time, the reporters were writing articles about Islamic terrorism in Southeast Asia."
"I thanked Director Mueller for calling and informing us of this and apologizing," Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. said in the paper.
"I told him that we would be asking our general counsel to look into this."
Bill Keller, Times executive editor, said in an e-mail to the Post that "we'd still like to know more about how this happened and how the bureau is securing against similar violations in the future."
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