by Dave Workman | Senior Editor
It’s one of those stories that sounds straight out of a movie plot, but in this case, it has to do with television, alleged government snooping and an award-winning investigative reporter who has authored a best-seller about media bias.
Sharyl Attkisson, who left CBS last year after two decades with the network, filed a $35 million lawsuit against the Department of Justice for alleged hacking of her work and home computers while she was working for CBS. Best known for her coverage of Operation Fast and Furious and the Benghazi embassy attack, Attkisson alleges that this covert surveillance occurred over the course of at least two years.
Sharyl Attkisson
“You can say,” she stated in an e-mail to TGM, “that the intrusions and surveillance took place over a long period that included my coverage of Fast and Furious, Green Energy Debacles, Congressional Investigations and Benghazi.” She noted that those four stories were nominated for, or won, Emmy awards. She specifically won an Emmy for her coverage of the Fast and Furious scandal that sent some 2,000 guns into the hands of Mexican drug cartel gunmen.
The lawsuit names out-going Attorney General Eric Holder, Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe and “unknown named agents” of both the Justice Departments and the US Postal Service as defendants.
Fast and Furious was the operation launched in late 2009 by the Phoenix field office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. It came to an abrupt end in December 2010 when two guns involved in the investigation turned up at the scene of a gun battle in southern Arizona where Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered.
But the scandal erupted shortly thereafter, when word leaked about the two guns, which had been purchased 11 months before by one of the key suspects in the Fast and Furious investigation.
How the ATF handled that operation became the subject of congressional hearings and a lengthy investigation by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Nobody was fired, though the US Attorney for Arizona at the time, Dennis Burke hastily resigned, acting ATF Director Ken Melson was demoted and transferred, ultimately to retire, and others involved in the operation also retired or quit.
Attkisson was instrumental in breaking the story to a national audience when she interviewed ATF whistleblower John Dodson in March 2011. Her reporting continued, though it was increasingly relegated to on-line updates.
Attkisson left CBS in March 2014 over apparent “frustrations” with the network’s “liberal bias,” according to Politico. That publication said sources at CBS felt her coverage of the Obama administration “had become agenda-driven and led network executives to doubt the impartiality of her reporting.”
However, since publication of former CBS News correspondent Bernard Goldberg’s best-selling 2001 book Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News, it has been hotly debated about where the alleged bias really is in the national news.
Attkisson has published her own book, Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington. It quickly became a best-seller.
The alleged hacking was investigated by CBS News, which brought in a forensic expert to analyze her office computer. The network issued a statement in August 2013 that stated the computer had been hacked by “an unauthorized, external, unknown party on multiple occasions.”
The report added to an already uneasy situation between the press and the Obama administration. In May 2013, it was revealed that the Justice Department had quietly seized telephone records of about 20 reporters with the Associated Press. It created a major stink because it was widely believed to have been related to an investigation of a terrorist plot by the Central Intelligence Agency, and the government was allegedly trying to find a leak.
At the time, news agencies declared the seizure to be a serious attack on the First Amendment.
The DOJ has denied the hacking. Published reports say Attkisson’s computers were examined by forensic experts, revealing that someone had apparently been checking her work between 2011 and 2013. That period covered the time when Attkisson was reporting on both Fast and Furious and Benghazi.
The Obama administration has tried to downplay Fast and Furious, yet fought to protect thousands of documents requested, and then subpoenaed by the House Oversight committee. President Obama tried to protect those documents through executive privilege. Last year, a federal judge ordered that a list of documents be released to Judicial Watch.
In November, more than 64,000 documents were finally turned over to the House committee. This was several weeks after Holder announced he would step down as Attorney General.
