Fbi’s Informant Sting Criticized Journalists Group Urges Agency To Forbid Posing As Newsgatherer

The Society of Professional Journalists is protesting the FBI’s use of an informant who posed as a reporter in Spokane.

In a letter sent Wednesday to FBI Director Louis Freeh, SPJ President G. Kelly Hawes urges the agency to adopt a policy forbidding the use of agents or informants who pose as reporters.

Similar criticism came from Jane Kirtley, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

Using informants or agents who pose as journalists erodes the separation between government and the watchdog role of the news media, Kirtley said.

“I am writing on behalf of the 13,500 members of the Society of Professional Journalists to let you know of my distress on learning that your agency had been involved in a sting operation involving an informant posing as a journalist,” Hawes told Freeh.

The SPJ president referred to revelations that David Elton III, a 30-year-old self-described political consultant, posed as a reporter while secretly making tapes for the FBI during interviews with a Spokane Gypsy leader.

Hawes called the practice deplorable.

The SPJ president, who works for the Muncie Star in Muncie, Ind., urged the FBI director to “take the steps necessary to forbid such practices in the future.”

The Society of Professional Journalists opposes the practice of police officers or FBI agents, or their informants, posing as journalists to obtain information, Hawes said.

“The reason is simple,” he told Freeh.

“Prospective news sources should not have to ask themselves in granting an interview whether they’re talking to a reporter or a criminal investigator,” Hawes said.

If that suspicion arises, Hawes said, fewer news subjects will grant interviews.

“And if that happens, the American public will be deprived of insight into the workings of its criminal justice system.”

“It is imperative that the FBI and other law enforcement agencies be able to do their jobs,” Hawes told Freeh. “The American system of justice depends on it.”

“But it is also imperative that journalists be able to do their jobs, acting as the watchdogs on government and the criminal justice system,” Hawes wrote.

Journalists should not pose as police officers, and police officers should not pose as journalists, the SPJ president said. “The welfare of the republic requires it.”

There is no federal law forbidding the FBI from having its agents or informants pose as reporters, and federal appeals courts have upheld the practice. Last year in Michigan, two Postal Service inspectors investigating a fraud case posed as reporters.

The SPJ protested that instance in a letter to the postmaster general, who subsequently changed Postal Service regulations to forbid the practice, Hawes said.

The society and the Reporters Committee have jointly pushed for federal legislation forbidding CIA agents or operatives from posing as journalists. That legislation has passed the House and is pending in the Senate.

, DataTimes