Here’s a David v. Goliath story for you.
A reporter representing himself has convinced a federal court to push the Bush adminsitration to release sensitive documents, according to the non-profit advocacy group, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP).
New York Sun reporter Josh Gerstein filed Freedom of Information Act requests back in March with a number of federal agencies, asking for information on how the administration was going after the leakers who shared with reporters information on the NSA wiretapping program and other sensitive operations. Needless to say, the bureaucracy has dragged its feet. So Gerstein gathered his papers and headed to court. And in this first round, anyway, he’s won.
Gerstein is a guy we’ve had our eye on for some time. Readers may recall that Gerstein scooped the majors with the story that according to Scooter Libby, President Bush himself approved Libby’s pre-war intelligence leaks to the New York Times. He got that “exclusive” by reading publicly-available documents that other reporters overlooked.
Gerstein also brought us the news that vice president Cheney’s lawyers were employing a questionable “mosaic theory” defense as to why not a single shred of information should leave their office and enter public view.
He also was first-to-print with the claims that Jose Padilla had been forcibly administered an LSD-like hallucinogen by his military captors, which — though outlandish — have yet to be meaningfully refuted. About a week ago, the blog Secrecy News reported that the Navy (who is acting as Padilla’s jailer) has recently tightened its regulations on how prisoners in its custody can be given drugs against their will.
On a rare occasion, we’ve taken issue with his work — Gerstein in April wrote a story about a classified 2003 State Department memo which mentioned Valerie Plame but did not refer to her as “undercover” or in a secret role, and concluded her identity and profession was therefore not secret.
But reasonable people disagree. And so we salute your efforts, Josh Gerstein, and look forward to hearing what you learn in your FOIA fight.
