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FBI Drops Effort to Search Jack Anderson ArchivesThe FBI has dropped its effort to recover government papers that had been leaked to Jack Anderson, allowing the late investigative journalist’s family to resume its donation of his archives to the George Washington University library. The bureau had charged that the collection contained classified documents and sought to search the materials; the family said that to comply with the demand would betray Anderson’s principles and intimidate other journalists.In a November 30 letter to outgoing Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), Acting Associate Attorney General James H. Clinger said the FBI was no longer seeking the materials. The 147-page response to questions posed to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III by the committee last year, which was posted January 3 on the website of the Federation of American Scientists, did not explain why the bureau had dropped the effort. The committee had grilled Matthew Friedrich, chief of the Justice Department’s criminal division, on the Anderson case last June. Anderson’s biographer, George Washington University journalism professor Mark Feldstein, said he and family members had told the FBI that the 200 boxes of material contained no classified items, the Associated Press reported January 4. “It was dusty old stuff that I couldn’t imagine would be relevant to a criminal probe,” he said. “This takes the pressure off, and now we can proceed with the plan of archiving them and making them available for scholarly research,” Anderson’s son Kevin told the January 4 Salt Lake City Deseret News. Posted January 8, 2007. |
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