U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, testifying before a House of Representatives panel, provided limited responses on the issue, noting he had been recused from the probe into a government leak that led to the records seizure.

Lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee became frustrated that Holder could not answer why the subpoena to obtain the records was so broad and why the Justice Department did not first try to negotiate with AP to obtain information.

“We don’t know where the buck stops,” said U.S. Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican.

The seizure of phone records last year became public on Monday when the AP complained about it. Critics have called it a gross intrusion into freedom of the press and questioned the Obama administration’s national security justification for such a broad sweep.

Representative Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, said it was clear to her that the Justice Department impaired the First Amendment right to free speech.

“Reporters who might previously have believed that a confidential source will speak to them will no longer have that level of confidence,” Lofgren said.

Apparently trying to counter the criticism, the White House sought on Wednesday to show its commitment to a robust media, saying it wants to revive legislation that would give journalists legal protection when guarding their sources.

The AP said it was informed last Friday that the Justice Department had gathered records for more than 20 phone lines assigned to the news agency and its reporters, covering April and May of last year.

The subpoena was part of an investigation into whether an unauthorized leak led to an AP report in May 2012 about an operation conducted by the CIA and allied intelligence agencies that stopped a Yemen-based al Qaeda plot to bomb a U.S.-bound airplane.

The AP issue emerged as President Barack Obama faces a barrage of criticism over his administration’s handling of other issues – notably the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups for extra scrutiny.

ACCOUNTABILITY

Holder said on Tuesday that he recused himself from the AP matter to avoid a potential conflict of interest because he had been interviewed by the FBI as part of the same leak investigation.

Responding to lawmakers’ questions on Wednesday, Holder said he did not have specific knowledge about how the subpoena was formulated, and added that it was Deputy Attorney General Jim Cole who authorized the document.

Lawmakers asked Holder to ensure that Cole would submit to their questions about the subpoena. The attorney general cautioned that Cole might be limited because he is the lead prosecutor on the open investigation into the leak, but he said he would pass along the request.

Holder did seek to address the panel’s complaints in some form, saying that after the investigation wraps up, he would study the Justice Department’s actions in the probe.

“Given the attention that it has generated, some kind of after-action analysis would be appropriate, and I will pledge to this committee, to the American people, that I will engage in such an analysis,” Holder said.

PUSH FOR MEDIA SHIELD LAW

In a move apparently designed to mollify critics, White House spokesman Jay Carney said the administration is seeking to revive a 2009 media shield bill that had been sponsored by Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York.

Carney declined to comment on the timing of the White House’s renewed interest in the bill.

“The White House has been in contact with Senator Schumer and we are glad to see that that legislation will be reintroduced because he believes strongly that we need to provide the protections to the media that this legislation would do,” he said.

The bill, known as the Free Flow of Information Act, would likely not have prevented the AP phone records seizure.

It would give federal protection to reporters who decline to release information about their sources because of a promise of confidentiality but would also allow national security, law enforcement, and fair trial needs to outweigh journalists’ rights to keep their sources confidential, Schumer’s office said.

“This kind of law would balance national security needs against the public’s right to the free flow of information,” Schumer said in a statement on Wednesday. “At minimum, our bill would have ensured a fairer, more deliberate process in this case.”

Reuters was one of nearly 50 news organizations that signed a letter to Holder on Tuesday complaining about the AP phone record seizures.

(Reporting By David Ingram, writing by Karey Van Hall, Editing by Frances Kerry)

But as U.S. president for the last 4-1/2 years, Barack Obama has faced accusation after accusation of impinging on civil liberties, disappointing his liberal Democratic base and providing fodder for rival Republicans as he deals with the realities of office.

News in the past week of the federal seizure of phone records from the Associated Press news agency and the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative Tea Party groups, has intensified criticism already simmering over the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and aerial drone strikes abroad.

Asked at a news conference on Tuesday why the administration had not done more for civil liberties, Attorney General Eric Holder said: “I’m proud of what we have done” and emphasized the administration’s shift from Bush era harsh interrogation practices of terrorism suspects that had drawn international criticism.

When he took office in 2009, Obama promised to close the Guantanamo camp for foreign terrorism suspects, but it remains open with 166 detainees, many on hunger strikes in protest at indefinite detentions. Obama said last month he would revisit that pledge and blamed Congress for blocking his plan to close the camp, partly through restrictions on transfers of detainees.

The administration has defended its aerial drone strikes abroad, which have included targeting a U.S.-born terrorism suspect, as essential to the fight against al Qaeda and other militants in places such as Pakistan and Yemen.

On Tuesday, Holder defended the seizure of journalists’ records, saying it was part of an investigation into a leak that he called “very, very serious.” A law enforcement official said the probe is related to information in a May 2012 AP story on a foiled Yemen-based al Qaeda plot.

The phone records seizure was the latest in a series of crackdowns on leaks by the Obama administration.

‘CONSTITUTIONAL VALUES’

Obama has disappointed some because of his background, and because he followed the Bush presidency that had responded to the attacks of September 11, 2001, with what liberal critics saw as a trampling of civil liberties.

“There were reasons to think he would be different,” said New York University law professor Barry Friedman, who teaches constitutional law and has written about public attitudes on the law. “He seemed to be inculcated with constitutional values, because of his background and because of what he said during the campaign.”

Friedman and other law professors acknowledge the Constitution is a text open to myriad interpretations and that, in situations such as the use of drones, a constant balancing of national security and individual liberties occurs.

Obama is also contending with a polarized political scene and clashes with Republicans.

Harvard University law professor Laurence Tribe, a professor, mentor and longtime supporter of Obama, said his famous former student was facing the realities of being president.

Tribe wrote in an email to Reuters that on campus, “Barack Obama could live in a world unclouded by bureaucratic and political obstacles. As President, however, Barack Obama needs to impose his basic beliefs and priorities on the vast bureaucracy. … His failings, in my view, have much more to do with whatever he has permitted to take place under the supposed oversight of (individual Cabinet secretaries) than they have to do with his own constitutional understanding and commitments.”

When Obama won his place as the first African American in the White House, many Americans applauded another advance in the country’s long civil rights movement.

But while Obama has long presented himself as a progressive Democrat, he has not been known as a fiery civil libertarian.

His wont has been to assert the need for dialogue and consensus-building. In his 2006 book, “The Audacity of Hope,” he wrote: “The scope of presidential power during wartime. The ethics surrounding end-of-life decisions. These weren’t easy issues; as much as I disagreed with Republican policies, I believed they were worthy of serious debate. No, what troubled me was the process – or lack of process – by which the White House and its congressional allies disposed of opposing views.”

Obama’s administration has sometimes come under fire for its efforts to control the message, leading to allegations of manipulation.

In the case of the IRS and Tea Party groups, Iowa Republican Senator Charles Grassley wrote to Steven Miller, acting IRS commissioner, on Tuesday asking for all records relating to the decision to reveal its mistakes at a meeting on Friday of an American Bar Association committee instead of to Congress.

HIGHER EXPECTATIONS?

Some analysts say that because of his background Obama has been held to higher expectations. “He was elected by a constituency that would expect him to be more sensitive to civil liberties,” said author Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics.

Others say he is simply being judged by the standard all presidents should meet.

“I am certainly distressed by the latest revelations,” Steven Shapiro, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said on Tuesday. “I also think, honestly, that the fact that he was a constitutional law professor is much less significant than that he is now president. Every president has a duty to understand, appreciate and protect our civil liberties.”

Asked about Obama’s record on civil liberties compared to other presidents, Shapiro said the ACLU did not do comparative rankings of administrations and that, in any event, it would be too early to assess Obama. Critics and other observers agreed.

“We’re living it right now,” said Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow of constitutional studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. Even as he asserts the administration may have “overreached” its constitutional authority, he said it was hard to predict how Obama’s tenure will rank with past administrations.

“You never really know what’s going on behind the scenes until they leave office,” Sabato said, adding that Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson abused the IRS, for example, by ordering audits of political enemies.

Sabato, who referred to other scandals including Watergate during Richard Nixon’s administration and the Iran-contra controversy during Ronald Reagan’s years, said: “Compared to prior presidents, we’re still in the minor-abuse league.” (Reporting by Joan Biskupic; Editing by Howard Goller and Frances Kerry)

But as U.S. president for the last 4-1/2 years, Barack Obama has faced accusation after accusation of impinging on civil liberties, disappointing his liberal Democratic base and providing fodder for rival Republicans as he deals with the realities of office.

News in the past week of the federal seizure of phone records from the Associated Press news agency and the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative Tea Party groups, has intensified criticism already simmering over the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and aerial drone strikes abroad.

Asked at a news conference on Tuesday why the administration had not done more for civil liberties, Attorney General Eric Holder said: “I’m proud of what we have done” and emphasized the administration’s shift from Bush era harsh interrogation practices of terrorism suspects that had drawn international criticism.

When he took office in 2009, Obama promised to close the Guantanamo camp for foreign terrorism suspects, but it remains open with 166 detainees, many on hunger strikes in protest at indefinite detentions. Obama said last month he would revisit that pledge and blamed Congress for blocking his plan to close the camp, partly through restrictions on transfers of detainees.

The administration has defended its aerial drone strikes abroad, which have included targeting a U.S.-born terrorism suspect, as essential to the fight against al Qaeda and other militants in places such as Pakistan and Yemen.

On Tuesday, Holder defended the seizure of journalists’ records, saying it was part of an investigation into a leak that he called “very, very serious.” A law enforcement official said the probe is related to information in a May 2012 AP story on a foiled Yemen-based al Qaeda plot.

The phone records seizure was the latest in a series of crackdowns on leaks by the Obama administration.

‘CONSTITUTIONAL VALUES’

Obama has disappointed some because of his background, and because he followed the Bush presidency that had responded to the attacks of September 11, 2001, with what liberal critics saw as a trampling of civil liberties.

“There were reasons to think he would be different,” said New York University law professor Barry Friedman, who teaches constitutional law and has written about public attitudes on the law. “He seemed to be inculcated with constitutional values, because of his background and because of what he said during the campaign.”

Friedman and other law professors acknowledge the Constitution is a text open to myriad interpretations and that, in situations such as the use of drones, a constant balancing of national security and individual liberties occurs.

Obama is also contending with a polarized political scene and clashes with Republicans.

Harvard University law professor Laurence Tribe, a professor, mentor and longtime supporter of Obama, said his famous former student was facing the realities of being president.

Tribe wrote in an email to Reuters that on campus, “Barack Obama could live in a world unclouded by bureaucratic and political obstacles. As President, however, Barack Obama needs to impose his basic beliefs and priorities on the vast bureaucracy. … His failings, in my view, have much more to do with whatever he has permitted to take place under the supposed oversight of (individual Cabinet secretaries) than they have to do with his own constitutional understanding and commitments.”

When Obama won his place as the first African American in the White House, many Americans applauded another advance in the country’s long civil rights movement.

But while Obama has long presented himself as a progressive Democrat, he has not been known as a fiery civil libertarian.

His wont has been to assert the need for dialogue and consensus-building. In his 2006 book, “The Audacity of Hope,” he wrote: “The scope of presidential power during wartime. The ethics surrounding end-of-life decisions. These weren’t easy issues; as much as I disagreed with Republican policies, I believed they were worthy of serious debate. No, what troubled me was the process – or lack of process – by which the White House and its congressional allies disposed of opposing views.”

Obama’s administration has sometimes come under fire for its efforts to control the message, leading to allegations of manipulation.

In the case of the IRS and Tea Party groups, Iowa Republican Senator Charles Grassley wrote to Steven Miller, acting IRS commissioner, on Tuesday asking for all records relating to the decision to reveal its mistakes at a meeting on Friday of an American Bar Association committee instead of to Congress.

HIGHER EXPECTATIONS?

Some analysts say that because of his background Obama has been held to higher expectations. “He was elected by a constituency that would expect him to be more sensitive to civil liberties,” said author Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics.

Others say he is simply being judged by the standard all presidents should meet.

“I am certainly distressed by the latest revelations,” Steven Shapiro, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said on Tuesday. “I also think, honestly, that the fact that he was a constitutional law professor is much less significant than that he is now president. Every president has a duty to understand, appreciate and protect our civil liberties.”

Asked about Obama’s record on civil liberties compared to other presidents, Shapiro said the ACLU did not do comparative rankings of administrations and that, in any event, it would be too early to assess Obama. Critics and other observers agreed.

“We’re living it right now,” said Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow of constitutional studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. Even as he asserts the administration may have “overreached” its constitutional authority, he said it was hard to predict how Obama’s tenure will rank with past administrations.

“You never really know what’s going on behind the scenes until they leave office,” Sabato said, adding that Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson abused the IRS, for example, by ordering audits of political enemies.

Sabato, who referred to other scandals including Watergate during Richard Nixon’s administration and the Iran-contra controversy during Ronald Reagan’s years, said: “Compared to prior presidents, we’re still in the minor-abuse league.”

(Reporting by Joan Biskupic; Editing by Howard Goller and Frances Kerry)

Holder’s announcement came about four hours before an inspector general’s report on the IRS portrayed the tax agency as plagued by disarray and “insufficient oversight” during its struggles to review the cases of hundreds of advocacy groups that claimed they should be tax exempt.

The audit, which drew some backlash from IRS officials, also underscored what the agency had acknowledged last Friday: that the IRS had used “inappropriate criteria” for evaluating tax-exempt groups, in part by singling out scores of conservative Tea Party and “Patriot” organizations for increased scrutiny.

The report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration sharply criticized the way the IRS had screened the conservative groups, citing poor management and processing delays. The report suggested that such practices could damage public confidence in the agency.

The criteria used to target the conservative groups “gives the appearance that the IRS is not impartial in conducting its mission,” the report said. However, the report stopped short of saying the IRS actions had been politically motivated.

For President Barack Obama – who late on Tuesday said the report showed that the IRS had failed to apply the law fairly in dealing with conservative groups – the revelations have added to a sense of a White House under siege.

Republicans continue to bash the Obama administration’s handling of the attack last year on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, that killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans. And on Monday, Obama’s Justice Department came under bipartisan fire for seizing phone records of journalists from the Associated Press as part of a wide-ranging criminal probe into intelligence leaks.

In Washington on Tuesday, the IRS case appeared to have the most potency, as lawmakers and administration officials alike described the symbolic and legal importance of having a non-partisan tax agency that Americans can trust.

For the IRS and the U.S. government, the stakes are particularly high in the scandal because the tax agency is playing an increasingly significant role not only in vetting the tax status of non-profit groups that dabble in politics, but also in enforcing parts of Obama’s ongoing overhaul of the nation’s healthcare system.

Some of the IRS’s conservative critics, including Republican Senator Ted Cruz, have said the current scandal is a sign that the agency shouldn’t be trusted to enforce a vast array of tax regulations related to healthcare.

The IRS’s embattled acting commissioner, Steven Miller, met privately with lawmakers on Capitol Hill, apparently seeking to calm the political uproar, even as some Republicans called for his resignation.

The IRS said on Monday that Miller, then the IRS deputy commissioner, was first informed in early May 2012 that some groups seeking tax-exempt status had been “improperly identified by name” and subjected to extra scrutiny.

Lawmakers say that neither Miller nor his predecessor, Douglas Shulman, ever made them aware of the targeting.

Senator Orrin Hatch, the top Republican on the tax-writing Finance Committee, said that Miller – who spent more than two decades working his way up through the IRS bureaucracy and was named acting chief six months ago – should step down.

“He basically misled me,” Hatch told reporters. “I really think it is time for him to leave.”

‘HEADS NEED TO ROLL’

Hatch was part of a growing Republican chorus on Capitol Hill calling for the resignations of Miller and Lois Lerner, head of the IRS tax-exempt organizations office. Lerner apologized on behalf of the agency when she revealed the targeting of conservative groups last week.

Conservative groups, particularly those that have sprung up in recent years to promote limited government and lower taxes, have long complained about mistreatment by the IRS.

On Tuesday, Miller met with Senator Max Baucus, the Democratic chairman of the Finance Committee who has promised that his panel will conduct its own investigation of the IRS case. Miller later declined to answer reporters’ questions.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell urged Obama to make all of those who knew about IRS misconduct available for questioning, and said there should be “no more stonewalling.”

“Heads need to roll today,” said Republican Representative Vern Buchanan, a member of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, which oversees the IRS and is scheduled to hold a hearing on the scandal on Friday.

It’s unclear precisely what charges a criminal probe of the IRS could yield.

Analysts said that a federal criminal prosecution of IRS employees for allegedly violating a taxpayer’s speech rights – by delaying or rejecting a conservative group’s legitimate claim to tax-exempt status, for example – could be unprecedented and that the offense would need to be egregious.

Holder said on Monday that the FBI “is coordinating with the Justice Department to see if any laws were broken.”

He said that the actions disclosed so far “were, I think as everyone can agree, if not criminal, they were certainly outrageous and unacceptable. But we are examining the facts to see if there were criminal violations.”

Despite efforts by some conservative commentators to cast the IRS troubles as something akin to the Watergate scandal of the 1970s – or to former President Richard Nixon’s use of the IRS to target his political enemies – there was no sign of White House involvement.

Obama spokesman Jay Carney said the results of independent investigations must be known “before we can jump to conclusions about what happened, whether there was a deliberate targeting of groups inappropriately and, if that’s the case, what action should be taken.”

THREE YEARS OF TARGETING

The targeting of conservative groups began in 2010, shortly after the emergence of the conservative Tea Party movement. The movement helped Republicans gain control of the U.S. House in the 2010 elections.

Hundreds of Tea Party-inspired groups have formed in recent years, and the IRS has struggled to handle campaign finance issues dealing with such politically active organizations seeking tax-exempt status. Such groups generally can be tax-exempt as long as they do not directly support particular political candidates.

Higher-level IRS officials took part in discussions as far back as August 2011 about targeting by lower-level tax agents of Tea Party and other conservative groups, according to documents reviewed by Reuters on Monday.

The documents show the offices of the IRS’s chief counsel and deputy commissioner for services and enforcement communicated about the targeting with lower-level officials on August 4, 2011, and March 8, 2012, respectively.

The communications occurred weeks and months before Shulman, then the commissioner of the IRS, told congressional panels in late March 2012 that no groups were being targeted for extra scrutiny by the tax agency.

The IRS has been dragged reluctantly into partisan politics at a time when it is also under increasing pressure to make rulings on campaign finance issues and matters related to implementation of Obama’s 2010 healthcare overhaul.

The agency must impose an excise tax on large employers if they fail to meet certain minimum healthcare coverage requirements for employees. In addition, the IRS must provide tax credits to low- and middle-income taxpayers who seek healthcare coverage on one of the new state-based insurance exchanges.

Timothy Jost, a specialist on the healthcare overhaul who teaches law at Washington and Lee University, said the controversy has no real bearing on implementation of Obama’s healthcare laws, aside from politics.

“I just don’t see a connection, other than that I’m sure there will be efforts to make one,” Jost said.

(Additional reporting by Patrick Temple-West, Thomas Ferraro, Richard Cown, Kim Dixon, Kevin Drawbaugh, Susan Heavey and Laura MacInnis; Writing by Matt Spetalnick; Editing by David Lindsey and Eric Beech)

The decision to seek phone records of one of the world’s largest news-gathering organizations was made by Deputy Attorney General Jim Cole, Holder said.

Holder, speaking at a press conference, said he recused himself from the matter to avoid a potential conflict of interest because he was interviewed by the FBI as part of the same leak investigation that targeted the AP records.

That seizure, denounced by critics as a gross intrusion into freedom of the press, has created an uproar in Washington and led to questions over how the Obama administration is balancing the need for national security with privacy rights.

Combined with a separate furore over the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative political groups for extra scrutiny, it also is stoking fears of excessive government intrusion under President Barack Obama.

The White House has said it had no advance knowledge of the IRS or Justice Department actions.

Lawmakers from both parties on Tuesday criticized the Justice Department’s decision to obtain the AP records. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called the action “inexcusable.”

But in a letter to AP president Gary Pruitt, Cole on Tuesday defended the department’s unusual action against a member of the media, saying it was a necessary step in the year-old criminal probe of leaks of classified information.

A law enforcement official said the probe is related to information in a May 7, 2012, AP story about an operation, conducted by the CIA and allied intelligence agencies, that stopped a Yemen-based al Qaeda plot to detonate a bomb on an airplane headed for the United States.

Cole declined Pruitt’s request to return the records.

“We strive in every case to strike the proper balance between the public’s interest in the free flow of information and the public’s interest in the protection of national security and effective enforcement of our laws,” he wrote. “We believe we have done so in this matter.”

Pruitt, in a statement responding to Cole’s letter, said “it does not adequately address our concerns,” which include that the subpoena’s scope was “overbroad under the law” and that the AP was not notified in advance.

The AP story at issue, he said, contradicted White House assertions that there was no credible threat to the American people in May 2012 around the first anniversary of the killing of al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.

Cole disclosed that investigators conducted more than 550 interviews and reviewed tens of thousands of documents in the probe before seizing the toll records of AP phone calls.

Holder said he did not have specific knowledge about the formulation of the subpoena for the AP records, but does not believe the Justice Department did anything wrong.

PUT AMERICANS ‘AT RISK’

“This was … a very, very serious leak,” he said. “I have been a prosecutor since 1976 and I have to say that this is among, if not the most serious, it is within the top two or three most serious leaks that I have ever seen,” Holder said, speaking at an unrelated press conference on Medicare fraud.

“It put the American people at risk, and that is not hyperbole,” he said. “And trying to determine who was responsible for that, I think, required very aggressive action.”

In June 2012, Holder ordered two U.S. attorneys to pursue separate leak investigations, the subject of which he did not identify.

The probes followed calls by Congress to crack down on national security leaks after the Associated Press report on the Yemen plot and a New York Times report on details of the Stuxnet computer virus that sabotaged Iran’s nuclear centrifuges.

The AP said it was informed last Friday that the Justice Department had gathered records for more than 20 phone lines assigned to the news agency and its reporters, covering April and May of last year.

Pruitt, in a letter to Holder on Monday, called the seizure a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into news-gathering operations.

Five reporters and an editor involved in the AP story about the Yemen plot were among those whose phone records were obtained by the government, the AP said.

Reuters reported that on May 7, 2012, Obama’s top White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, who is now CIA director, held a small, private teleconference to brief former counterterrorism advisers who are TV commentators and told them the plot was never a threat to U.S. public safety because Washington had “inside control” over it.

One of the former officials on the call later said on network TV that the U.S. government had indicated implicitly that “they had somebody on the inside who wasn’t going to let it happen.”

U.S. and European authorities later acknowledged the alleged plot had been discovered because an informant had been planted inside the conspiracy by MI5, Britain’s principal counterterrorism agency.

The original AP story made no mention of an undercover informant or “control” over the operation by the United States or its allies.

Brennan acknowledged during his Senate confirmation hearing that he had been interviewed by prosecutors in connection with two leak inquiries, including the Yemen probe. He told Congress that he had not leaked any classified information.

Several prominent Republicans last year called for a crackdown on leaks, with some suggesting the White House was orchestrating them to burnish Obama’s security credentials and chances for re-election in November.

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS

Senator Orrin Hatch, a Republican on the Judiciary Committee, when asked whether Republicans had the type of action taken against the AP in mind, said: “No, I don’t think anybody wants to take away the freedom of the press. … You can’t be free if you’ve got government monitoring your calls, and your interviews. How is that a free press?”

Reid, the Senate’s top Democrat, told reporters at the Capitol, “I don’t know who did it, why it was done, but it’s inexcusable, and there is no way to justify this.”

The Obama administration has been aggressive in combating national security leaks, conducting at least a half-dozen prosecutions – more than under all other previous presidents combined, according to tallies by multiple news organizations.

Mark Corallo, a Justice Department spokesman between 2002 and 2005, said that during his tenure, the rule was that any request from any part of the Justice Department for the issuing of subpoenas against a news organisation had to be submitted to his office for approval.

Corallo said that of “dozens” of requests from prosecutors for subpoenas directed against news organizations, he approved one during his tenure.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said that President Barack Obama “believes that the press as a rule needs to have an unfettered ability to pursue investigative journalism.”

“He is also committed, as president and as a citizen, to the proposition that we cannot allow classified information, that can do harm to our national security interests or do harm to individuals, to be leaked,” Carney said.

“Certainly there have been lots of presidents upset about leaks and there have been a number of chief executives who have gone to rather extraordinary lengths,” said Darrell West, director of Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution think tank.

“But I think people believed that Obama was more committed to civil liberties so it’s actually more shocking that he did it rather that someone like (George W.) Bush and (Richard) Nixon because people had higher expectations of him,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell, Jennifer Saba, Mark Hosenball and Mark Felsenthal; Writing by Karey Van Hall; Editing by Warren Strobel, Cynthia Osterman and Jim Loney)

Holder announced the Justice Department investigation as the tax agency’s embattled acting commissioner, Steven Miller, traveled to Capitol Hill for meetings on the scandal amid Republican lawmakers’ calls for his resignation.

The scandal has added to a sense of a White House under siege as President Barack Obama, who has promised to hold any IRS wrongdoers accountable, grapples with an array of domestic and foreign policy controversies that threaten his second-term agenda.

On Friday an IRS official revealed that the agency had inappropriately singled out conservative groups, some associated with the Tea Party movement, for extra scrutiny of their claims for tax-exempt status.

“I have ordered an investigation,” Holder told reporters at a news conference. “FBI is coordinating with the Justice Department to see if any laws were broken.”

He said that the actions disclosed so far “were, I think as everyone can agree, if not criminal, they were certainly outrageous and unacceptable, but we are examining the facts to see if there were criminal violations.”

There were growing calls on Capitol Hill for the resignations of Miller and Lois Lerner, head of the IRS tax-exempt organizations office. Lerner apologized on behalf of the agency when she revealed the targeting of conservative groups last week.

Conservatives had complained about mistreatment by the IRS for years.

Miller was due to meet Senator Max Baucus, the Democratic chairman of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee who has promised an investigation by his panel.

‘HEADS NEED TO ROLL’

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky urged Obama to make all who knew about IRS misconduct available for questioning, and said there should be “no more stonewalling.”

“Heads need to roll today,” said Republican Representative Vern Buchanan of Florida, a member of the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee.

The panel oversees the IRS and is scheduled to hold a hearing on the scandal on Friday.

Despite efforts by some conservative commentators to cast the IRS troubles as something akin to the Watergate scandal of the 1970s – or to former President Richard Nixon’s use of the IRS to target his political enemies – there was no sign of White House involvement in the matter.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said the results of independent investigations must be known “before we can jump to conclusions about what happened, whether there was a deliberate targeting of groups inappropriately and, if that’s the case, what action should be taken.”

The IRS – which is supposed to be a nonpartisan agency – has suddenly found itself dragged into partisan politics at a time when it is also under increasing pressure to make rulings on campaign finance issues and matters related to Obama’s healthcare overhaul.

(Additional reporting by Patrick Temple-West, Thomas Ferraro, Susan Heavey and Laura MacInnis; Editing by Xavier Briand)

Instead, the decision to seek phone records of one of the
world’s largest news-gathering organizations was made by the
deputy attorney general, Holder said. Jim Cole currently holds
that position.

The seizure, denounced by critics as a gross intrusion into
freedom of the press, has created an uproar in Washington and
led to questions over how the Obama administration is balancing
the need for national security with privacy rights.

Holder said he recused himself from the matter to avoid a
potential conflict of interest because he was interviewed by the
FBI in connection with the investigation into the unauthorized
disclosure of classified information.

The seizure of AP telephone records appears connected to a
criminal probe into information contained in a May 7, 2012, AP
story about a CIA operation in Yemen that stopped an al Qaeda
plot to detonate a bomb on an airplane headed for the United
States.

Holder, speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, said the
unauthorized information put the American people at risk and
required “very aggressive action.”

He said he did not have specific knowledge about the
formulation of the subpoena for AP telephone records, but he
said he does not believe there was any wrongdoing.

“I’m confident that the people who are involved in this
investigation … followed all of the appropriate Justice
Department regulations and did things according to DOJ rules,”
Holder said, speaking at an unrelated press conference on
Medicare fraud.

The AP has said it was informed last Friday that the Justice
Department had gathered records for more than 20 phone lines
assigned to the news agency and its reporters.

The records covered April and May of last year, and were
obtained earlier this year, the AP said.

It described the seizures as a “massive and unprecedented
intrusion” into news-gathering operations.

“There can be no possible justification for such an
overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The
Associated Press and its reporters,” AP Chief Executive Gary
Pruitt said in a letter sent to Holder on Monday.

An AP story on the records seizure said the government would
not say why it sought them. But it noted that U.S. officials
have previously said the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District
of Columbia was conducting the criminal investigation into the
May 2012 AP story.

Five reporters and an editor involved in that story were
among those whose phone records were obtained by the government,
the AP said.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said during a press
briefing on Tuesday that President Barack Obama sought to
balance support for a free press with the need to investigate
leaks of classified information.

“The president believes that the press as a rule needs to
have an unfettered ability to pursue investigative journalism,”
Carney told a news briefing.

“He is also committed, as president and as a citizen, to the
proposition that we cannot allow classified information, that
can do harm to our national security interests or do harm to
individuals, to be leaked,” Carney said.

Carney reiterated that the White House was not involved in
the decision to seize the AP records.

Holder also expressed his commitment to media freedom,
saying that he had testified in favor of a reporter shield law.

(Additional reporting By David Ingram, Jennifer Saba, Joseph
Ax, Ben Berkowitz and Mark Felsenthal; Writing by Karey Van
Hall; Editing by Jim Loney)

AP Chief Executive Gary Pruitt, in a letter posted on the agency’s website, said the AP was informed last Friday that the Justice Department gathered records for more than 20 phone lines assigned to the agency and its reporters.

“There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters,” Pruitt said in the letter, which was addressed to Attorney General Eric Holder.

An AP story on the records seizure said the government would not say why it sought the records.

But it noted that U.S. officials have previously said the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Columbia was conducting a criminal investigation into information contained in a May 7, 2012, AP story about a CIA operation in Yemen that stopped an al Qaeda plot to detonate a bomb on an airplane headed for the United States.

Five reporters and an editor involved in that story were among those whose phone numbers were obtained by the government, the AP said.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Columbia, which notified the AP of the seizure, issued a statement on Monday saying it was “careful and deliberative” when dealing with issues around freedom of the press.

“We take seriously our obligations to follow all applicable laws, federal regulations, and Department of Justice policies when issuing subpoenas for phone records of media organizations,” the office said.

A Justice Department spokesman referred inquiries to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

The seized phone records were for April and May of 2012 and AP bureaus in New York, Hartford and Washington were among those affected, as well as an AP phone at the U.S. House of Representatives press gallery, the AP said.

The records seized included general AP switchboard numbers and an office shared fax line, according to the AP story on the probe.

(Additional reporting By Ben Berkowitz in Boston; Editing by Warren Strobel and Paul Simao)

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder visits New Zealand next week for an annual meeting of a “quintet” of attorneys general from mostly English-speaking countries – and not to meet up with the entrepreneur Kim Dotcom.

The founder of defunct file-sharing service Megaupload, Dotcom has oscillated between assailing Holder’s trip and wanting to hear what he has to say in person.

It was unclear on Thursday whether Holder would appear in public. His speech at the University of Auckland is planned primarily for students and will be closed to the public and the media, although his U.S. speeches are usually open to the media.

In Twitter posts, Dotcom requested a ticket to the speech, offered to send T-shirts and an ethics manual to wherever Holder is staying and challenged his followers to film Holder while a Megaupload theme song plays for a $500 prize.

Dotcom tweeted that he would like to understand Holder’s definition of cybercrime, one issue the quintet works on.

An extradition hearing for Dotcom is scheduled for August, although appeals could further delay it, said Ira Rothken, a lawyer for Megaupload. He told Reuters by phone he had no reason to expect a meeting between Holder and Dotcom.

Holder declined an interview through a spokeswoman on Thursday. Federal prosecutors in Virginia who are handling the case declined to comment on how it is proceeding.

Dotcom got rich from founding Megaupload, which allowed users to upload and download movies, music, television shows, e-books and software. The site once commanded 4 percent of global online traffic before U.S. prosecutors shut it down.

The United States began a criminal copyright case against Dotcom in January 2012. At Washington’s request, New Zealand law enforcement officers conducted a dramatic raid on his mansion outside Auckland.

Attempts to have him sent to the United States for trial were delayed after a New Zealand court last year found that New Zealand used unlawful warrants in his arrest and illegally spied on him in the lead-up to the raid.

PRECEDENT SETTER?

Dotcom and six associates face U.S. charges that they conspired to infringe copyrights, launder money and commit racketeering and fraud.

The copyright case could set a precedent for internet liability laws and, depending on its outcome, may force entertainment companies to rethink their distribution methods.

Dotcom maintains that Megaupload, which housed everything from family photos to Hollywood blockbusters, was merely a storage facility for online files, and should not be held accountable if content stored on the site was obtained illegally.

The Justice Department counters that Megaupload encouraged piracy by paying money to users who uploaded popular content and by deleting content that was not regularly downloaded.

It said Megaupload cost copyright holders such as movie studios and record companies more than $500 million and generated more than $175 million in criminal proceeds. It called the case among the largest ever involving criminal copyright.

Dotcom launched a new file-sharing service, Mega, in January.

Many New Zealanders view Dotcom, born in Germany as Kim Schmitz, as a folk hero fighting for online freedom and willing to stand up to the U.S. and New Zealand governments.

Dotcom, who has been released on bail and is suing the New Zealand government for illegal surveillance, predicted Holder would keep a low profile during his visit.

“It’s probably risk management and avoidance of bad PR because the story has not yet arrived in any big way in the U.S. media,” he wrote in an email to Reuters. “Any bad coverage here might spill over to the U.S.”

Holder’s visit to Dotcom’s country of residence is not his choice. The attorneys general of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States began meeting as a quintet in 2009 to discuss legal matters including cybercrime.

After a gathering in Ottawa last year, it was New Zealand’s turn to host.

(Reporting by David Ingram in Washington and Naomi Tajitsu in Wellington; Editing by Howard Goller and Xavier Briand)

But U.S. law is on his side, an analysis of court rulings shows.

Most U.S. judges who have examined forced feeding in prisons have concluded that the measure may violate the rights of inmates to control their own bodies and to privacy – rights rooted in the U.S. Constitution and in common law. But they have found that the needs of operating a prison are more important.

Courts generally view a prison hunger strike as a suicide attempt, and they have ruled wardens have authority to stop suicide attempts as part of their mandate to preserve order.

“If prisoners were allowed to kill themselves, prisons would find it even more difficult than they do to maintain discipline, because of the effect of a suicide in agitating the other prisoners,” Judge Richard Posner wrote for a Chicago-based appeals court in 2006 in a case involving a Wisconsin prison that punished a disobedient inmate by refusing him food.

As of Thursday, 94 of the 166 prisoners were on a hunger strike in Guantanamo, meaning they had refused at least nine consecutive meals. According to a military count, 17 had lost enough weight to be force-fed liquid meals through a nasogastric tube, and three were in the hospital for observation.

Army Lieutenant Colonel Samuel House, a spokesman for the detention camp, said none of the detainees in the hospital had a life-threatening condition.

Striking inmates began refusing to eat around early February, alleging rough handling of the Koran during searches for contraband and protesting their prolonged imprisonment. General John Kelly, head of U.S. military forces in Latin America, said assertions about the Koran were untrue.

OPPOSITION VOICED

A New York Times opinion piece last week by Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel, a Yemeni man detained at Guantanamo since 2002, launched debate over the forced feedings. Like others there, he was captured abroad on suspicion of supporting terrorism.

“I will never forget the first time they passed the feeding tube up my nose. I can’t describe how painful it is to be force-fed this way,” Moqbel said in the op-ed dictated through an interpreter to his lawyers.

As described by Guantanamo officials, a feeding tube is lubricated and inserted through the nose down to the stomach for the two hours it takes liquid food to pass through. In general, hunger strikers continue to drink water.

Human rights advocates and many doctors decry forced feeding of hunger strikers as a violation of personal liberty and medical ethics with risks of medical complications such as discomfort, bleeding, nausea and throat sores. The 65-year-old World Medical Association, made up of 100 national medical associations, has said it is unethical and never justified to force-feed a mentally competent adult.

Carlos Warner, a federal public defender who represents 11 Guantanamo detainees, including Kuwaiti hunger striker Faiz al Kandari, said detainee lawyers are split on the issue.

Some “have a clear position that the government should not be force-feeding,” and have unsuccessfully made their argument in federal court in Washington, D.C., Warner said. “Other lawyers are of the opinion that their clients should not die of hunger before we have a chance to free them.”

The Constitution Project, a U.S. legal group that includes Democrats and Republicans, said last week that forced feeding at Guantanamo “is a form of abuse and must end.”

George Annas, a Boston University professor of health law who opposes the forced feeding of hunger strikers on medical ethics grounds, said U.S. law is “very permissive” of the practice. He described the attitude of American prisons as: “Do we care about indignity? No, you’re a prisoner, we’ll treat you the way we want.”

BARRIERS TO LEGAL CHALLENGE

The U.S. military argues forced feeding is not only legal but also humane. A federal judge agreed in 2009, ruling against Mohammed Bawazir, a Yemeni national held at Guantanamo since 2002. Bawazir called forced feeding torture.

Bawazir cited pain he experienced and use of a chair with “six-point restraints” that kept in place his forehead, limbs and torso. U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler in Washington, D.C., said officials acted out of a need to preserve life.

A further barrier to any suit is the Military Commissions Act of 2006 which bars U.S. courts from hearing cases about Guantanamo detainee treatment. Even if they were to hear a challenge to forced feeding, the overriding evidence is the courts would rule against the detainees.

International law, which prohibits the inhuman or degrading treatment of prisoners, is not necessarily any help to Guantanamo detainees either.

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled at least twice that forced feeding amounted to torture, in a 2005 case out of Ukraine and in a 2007 case out of Moldova, but it stopped short of barring the procedure. The court said it may be used to preserve the life of hunger strikers if shown to be medically necessary and not done for punitive reasons.

Other reports of non-U.S. countries using forced feeding are rare, although experts said there is a lack of data. The practice has been described in news reports in Bahrain, China and Greece during the past decade.

Ten British-held Irish Republican Army prisoners, including former IRA commander Bobby Sands, starved to death in the Maze prison in Northern Ireland during a 1981 hunger strike during which they sought recognition as political prisoners. It ended when the families of the remaining hunger strikers authorized doctors to begin life-saving intravenous feeding as soon as the prisoners lost consciousness.

One early U.S. case involved Mark David Chapman, convicted in the 1980 killing of former Beatle John Lennon. Chapman broke a 26-day fast in 1982 only under a New York court-ordered threat he would be force-fed. Now 57, he is serving a prison sentence of 20 years to life.

Chapman had said he wanted to draw attention to starving children, but the court ruled the state’s obligations to protect life and maintain order in its institutions outweighed Chapman’s rights to free expression and to privacy.

BALANCING TEST

Most federal and state courts have agreed.

In Rhode Island, for example, finding that prisons have a duty to protect inmates’ health, the State Supreme Court ruled in 1995 that “it would be in total disregard of this duty to stand idly by while a healthy adult decided to end his or her life by starvation just as it would if he or she decided to end his or her life by some more dramatic means such as hanging, slashing of wrists, or swallowing some type of poison.”

Courts in three states – California, Florida and Georgia – have been exceptions, restricting forced feeding on various grounds, Mara Silver wrote in a 2005 Stanford Law Review article on the constitutional question of self-starvation.

California was the most sweeping. Prison officials must demonstrate “a threat to institutional security or public safety,” not merely the conjecture of one, before denying an inmate the choice not to eat, the state’s high court ruled.

Those are the exceptions however.

“The federal courts analyze the issue by balancing the prisoner’s right to autonomy against the prison’s right to maintain order, and they nearly always find that force-feeding is constitutional,” said Margo Schlanger, a University of Michigan law professor with expertise in prisons.

(Editing by Howard Goller and Claudia Parsons)