Alberto Gonzales, former attorney general under President George W. Bush, said on May 15 that he once considered issuing a subpoena of the type the Department of Justice recently used in obtaining phone records from The Associated Press.
However, after deliberation, Gonzales decided against it.
“There was at least one occasion in which we were engaged in a very serious leak investigation and we had to make some very difficult choices about whether or not to move forward, going after the reporters in order to try to figure out where the source of the leak is,” he said on MSNBC. “And sometimes, the department finds itself in a situation where they have exhausted all means and they have to make a very hard determination as to whether or not they want to subpoena the reporter, if they want to subpoena the reporter’s notes. So yes, I’ve had that situation. In the instance that I have in mind, we ultimately decided not to move forward.”
Gonzales didn’t add any more details about when it happened or what case it was.
The Department of Justice is under heavy criticism after it seized two months of phone records from The Associated Press. The department didn’t notify the news cooperative until after it had gathered the records.
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