Doug Thompson sends a strong message to the FBI

Spokesmen for the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security admit there are "ongoing investigations" regarding publication of stories "involving threats to national security" but will not reveal what those investigations include.

In addition to using the USA Patriot Act to pry into the lives of journalists, the Justice Department has also dusted off a pre-World War I law to prosecute people who receive classified information, although the law was aimed at military personnel not civilians.

"This is the first administration that I can remember, including Nixon's, that said we need to think about a law that would put journalists who print national security things up in front of grand juries and put them in jail if they don't reveal their sources," says David Gergen, who served as President Regan's director of communication and also worked in the Nixon and Ford White Houses.

Political scientist George Harleigh, who worked in the Nixon administration, says such use of federal law enforcement authority was illegal when Nixon tried it and still so today.

"We're talking about a basic violation of the Constitutional guarantee of a free press as well as a violation of the rights of privacy of American citizens," Harleigh says. "I had hoped we would have learned our lessons from the Nixon era. Sadly, it appears we have not."

In recent weeks, the FBI has issued hundreds of "National Security Letters," directing employers, banks, credit card companies, libraries and other entities to turn over records on reporters. Under the USA Patriot Act, those who must turn over the records are also prohibited from revealing they have done so to the subject of the federal probes.

"The significance of this cannot be overstated," says prominent New York litigator Glenn Greenwald. "In essence, while the President sits in the White House undisturbed after proudly announcing that he has been breaking the law and will continue to do so, his slavish political appointees at the Justice Department are using the mammoth law enforcement powers of the federal government to find and criminally prosecute those who brought this illegal conduct to light.

"This flamboyant use of the forces of criminal prosecution to threaten whistle-blowers and intimidate journalists are nothing more than the naked tactics of street thugs and authoritarian juntas."

On an unspecified day last week an employee of a federal agency that cannot be revealed delivered a document that cannot be identified to a company that cannot be named seeking information that cannot be discussed.

The aforementioned federal agent left the unidentified document with an employee of the unnamed company. That employee then called the owner, who must remain anonymous, to inform him that the document that could not be identified sought information that could not be discussed. The owner who must remain anonymous instructed the employee to deliver the unidentified document to a lawyer whose name is protected by attorney-client privilege.

The lawyer whose name is protected by attorney-client privilege examined the unidentified document and then reviewed the information that could not be discussed with the owner who must remain anonymous.

With the approval of the owner who must remain anonymous, the lawyer whose name is protected by attorney-client privilege contacted a U.S. attorney who demanded that his identity be concealed.

The U.S. attorney who demanded that his identity be concealed then claimed the owner who must remain anonymous violated a law that could not be disclosed and faced arrest for charges that could not be specified because he had referred to the document that cannot be identified in an article for a certain, but unnamed, web site.

The lawyer whose name is protected by attorney-client privilege argued that his client could not be charged under the undisclosed law because he had been acting as a journalist at the time of the alleged publication and not as the owner of the company that cannot be named. He had, in fact, learned of the existence of the document that cannot be identified from a third-party, who was not named, and was not aware of its exact contents because he had not seen or read the document and, therefore, was not aware of the exact contents that cannot be discussed.

The U.S. attorney who demanded his identity be concealed consulted with others who names are classified and concluded that the owner who must remain anonymous walked a fine line between legal and illegal and would not face arrest for violating a law that could not be disclosed on charges that could not be specified.

So walking this fine line of justice allowed the owner who must remain anonymous to avoid confinement at an institution at an unknown location for an unspecified length of time.

In exchange for his freedom, the owner who must remain anonymous agreed to write a "clarification" of what happened, following the guidelines for publication laid down by the Bush administration.

Which is what you just read.