DOJ OFFICIAL’S TESTY EXCHANGE WITH REPORTER CALLED ‘A CLEAR MOVE…TO SILENCE THE PRESS WITH AN EFFECTIVE THREAT’

Department of Justice Spokesperson Brian Fallon is being accused of trying to “silence the press with an effective threat” after an unfriendly email exchange between him and a USA Today reporter was published online Thursday.

As seen in the email chain, investigative reporter Brad Heath presses Fallon for information on a report he wrote on the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The reporter had apparently filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and was seeking information about why the DOJ didn’t address judges’ concerns about the NSA’s broad scope of surveillance power.

“If you have answers to my questions, please share them. If not, I don’t see that we have any alternative but to write what we have been told. Please let me know by noon,” Heath wrote.

Fallon sent a brief and cold response: “I’m done negotiating. Go forward if you want, and I will work with someone else afterwards explaining why what you reported is off base.”

Heath argued he was not trying to “negotiate,” but rather get “answers to basic questions.”

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