Senators Butt Heads with FBI Over Jack Anderson's Papers, and a New Detail Slips Out

By SCOTT CARLSON

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The Senate Judiciary Committee quizzed Federal Bureau of Investigation officials about their interest in the papers of the late muckraking journalist Jack Anderson, which are now held at George Washington University, at a hearing on Tuesday. The session had its share of fireworks, with senators butting heads with a Department of Justice official.

But, to borrow from the parlance of journalism, the lede was buried. An intriguing nugget of information could be found in the written testimony of Mark Feldstein, a journalism professor at the university.

Although the topic was never mentioned aloud at the hearing, the printed testimony says that the FBI's interest in the Anderson archive may have been spurred by a tip from a former Anderson assistant who Mr. Feldstein says was once imprisoned for child sodomy. Mr Feldstein says he told FBI agents this and that the man had admitted having a history of mental illness and fabricating stories.

In his testimony, Mr. Feldstein writes that when FBI agents visited him, they named the former Anderson assistant. They "implied," Mr. Feldstein says, that the assistant had told them that Jack Anderson collected secret documents related to a current espionage case against two pro-Israel lobbyists.

Recently, the FBI sought access to the Anderson archive to find those documents. The agency has also said it wanted to review the entire archive and remove any documents deemed confidential. The FBI's request has outraged journalists, librarians, and historians who believe that granting it would compromise the identity of sources and the integrity of the archive. Anderson, who died in December at age 83, wrote a syndicated column called "Washington Merry-Go-Round" from 1969 until 2004.

The FBI informant is unnamed in the testimony, and Mr. Feldstein would not elaborate when contacted by The Chronicle. "Was the FBI's rationale for conducting such a fishing expedition into the Anderson archives based on the word of this former prison inmate?" Mr. Feldstein muses in his written testimony.

The FBI and the Department of Justice would not comment on their sources or on developments in the case.

The fate of the Anderson archive has become wrapped up in a larger debate about whether Congress should provide more protection for journalists who use unnamed sources. Tuesday's hearing focused as much, or more, on current cases of journalists publishing secret or classified information -- such as the recent New York Times stories about the government's secret wiretapping program.

Senior senators on the committee -- including Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican; Patrick J. Leahy, a Vermont Democrat; and Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican -- grilled Matthew W. Friedrich, chief of staff for the criminal division at the Justice Department, about the FBI's inquiry into the Anderson files and about what they said was the Bush Administration's penchant for secrecy.

Mr. Leahy, with an eyebrow cocked slightly, asked if the FBI wanted to get the Anderson papers because they contain personal information about J. Edgar Hoover.

On this, and many other questions, Mr. Friedrich refused to comment. Frustrated with Mr. Friedrich's stonewalling, Mr. Leahy said: "Why were you the one picked to come up here?"

The panel of witnesses also included Kevin Anderson, son of Jack Anderson. "At a time when members of Congress and even the White House were afraid to take on J. Edgar Hoover," he said, "Dad had his staff openly rifle through Hoover's trash to give the former FBI director a taste of his own medicine."

Asked in an interview after the hearing if the files might contain incriminating documents about Hoover, Mr. Anderson said he doubted it. "Dad kept a file on Hoover," he said. "But I would think that all the juicy stuff would have been reported."

However, during his testimony, Mr. Anderson said that the files contain information about his father's secret sources, and that he has been "contacted by several sources who still feel that their identification would harm them politically or professionally."

Another witness, Gabriel Schoenfeld, senior editor at Commentary, a magazine frequently associated with the neoconservative movement, said the Anderson papers were very likely "ancient history," and that the FBI's interest in them was a "misallocation of government resources."

Speaking on the larger issue of reporters' privilege regarding classified information, Rodney Smolla, the dean of the law school at the University of Richmond, argued that journalists should not be subject to government intimidation -- that there was no tradition in American culture or law to support prosecuting journalists for reporting secret information.

Mr. Feldstein, a former professional journalist himself, said: "The problem is not that the press is too aggressive in national-security reporting. It is that they are too timid."

• In Pursuit of Anderson's Papers, FBI Says It Will Go to Prosecutors if Talks With Family Fail (4/20/2006)

• George Washington U. to Receive Jack Anderson's Papers -- but FBI Wants to See Them First (4/18/2006)

Opinion:

• Protecting the Nation's Memory 5/19/2006