Holder agrees to review of DOJ policy on seizure of phone records

WASHINGTON, May 31 (UPI) -- U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder agreed to review the Justice Department's guidelines on seizing reporters' phone and email records, officials said.

Holder and other Justice Department officials met with representatives from The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, the New York Daily News, Politico and the New Yorker Thursday in Washington to discuss the seizure of phone and email records of reporters at the Associated Press and Fox News earlier this year, the Journal reported.

Several other media outlets, including Fox News and the Associated Press, were invited to attend the meeting but declined because it was an off-the-record discussion.

"We expressed our concerns that reporters felt some fear for doing their jobs, that they were concerned about using their email, using their office telephone and that we need to have the freedom to do their job," Washington Post Executive Editor Martin Baron said after the meeting.

Baron said the meeting was constructive.

Holder and the Obama administration came under fire earlier this month when it was learned the Justice Department secretly obtained records of outgoing calls from more than 20 phone lines of AP journalists -- including home and cellphone numbers -- sometime this year as part of a yearlong investigation into the disclosure of classified information about a failed 2012 al-Qaida plot.

The wire service said it was not told the reason for the seizure. But it said the timing and the journalists targeted, along with earlier congressional testimony, suggested the actions were tied to an AP story about the CIA breaking up a plot by al-Qaida's Yemeni affiliate to blow up a U.S.-bound passenger jet on the one-year anniversary of the May 2, 2011, killing of Osama bin Laden.