By Elaine Magliaro

Here’s an interesting story for you: Yesterday, Ryan Gimm of The Huffington Post reported that the Associated Press “dropped a significant scoop on Tuesday afternoon, reporting that in the last several years the U.S. government’s terrorism watch list has doubled.” He noted that just a few minutes after the AP story was posted at 12:32 p.m., The Intercept published “a much more comprehensive article.” That may not seem like a big deal—but here’s how the AP apparently got “the scoop” about the terrorist watch list story.

According to Grim, our government had “spoiled the scoop” for The Intercept. Evidently, after “The Intercept approached the National Counterterrorism Center for comment on a story about the government’s terrorist watch list, the agency then alerted the Associated Press to the story.” Grim said that “spoiling a scoop” happens to be “an informally forbidden practice in the world of journalism.”

Grim:

…To spoil a scoop, the subject of a story, when asked for comment, tips off a different, typically friendlier outlet in the hopes of diminishing the attention the first outlet would have received. Tuesday’s AP story was much friendlier to the government’s position, explaining the surge of individuals added to the watch list as an ongoing response to a foiled terror plot.

The practice of spoiling a scoop is frowned upon because it destroys trust between the journalist and the subject. In the future, the journalist is much less willing to share the contents of his or her reporting with that subject, which means the subject is given less time, or no time at all, to respond with concerns about the reporting.

The government’s decision to spoil a story on the topic of national security is especially unusual, given that it has a significant interest in earning the trust of national security reporters so that it can make its case that certain information should remain private.

A little more than twenty minutes after the AP story was posted, Jeremy Scahill tweeted the following:

US government, pissed we were publishing our story, tried to undermine us by leaking it to other news organization right before we published

12:55 PM – 5 Aug 2014

Grim said that The Intercept requested a conference call with the National Counterterrorism Center after the AP ran with the story. He added that a “source with knowledge of the call said that the government agency admitted having fed the story to the AP, but didn’t think the reporter would publish before The Intercept did.” The official admitted, “That was our bad.”

Grim said that when John Cook, editor of The Intercept, asked “if it was the government’s policy to feed one outlet’s scoop to a friendlier outlet, a silence ensued, followed by the explanation: ‘We had invested some quality time with Eileen,’ referring to AP reporter Eileen Sullivan, who the official added had been out to visit the NCTC.”

According to a source, the government official said, “After seeing you had the docs, and the fact we had been working with Eileen, we did feel compelled to give her a heads up. We thought she would publish after you.”

It was reported that Cook informed the official “that in the future the agency would have only 30 minutes to respond to questions before publication.”

Here’s a link to The Intercept’s story on the terrorism watch list that was written by Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Deveraux:

Barack Obama’s Secret Terrorist-Tracking System, by the Numbers

Excerpt from The Intercept’s article:

Nearly half of the people on the U.S. government’s widely shared database of terrorist suspects are not connected to any known terrorist group, according to classified government documents obtained by The Intercept.

Of the 680,000 people caught up in the government’s Terrorist Screening Database—a watchlist of “known or suspected terrorists” that is shared with local law enforcement agencies, private contractors, and foreign governments—more than 40 percent are described by the government as having “no recognized terrorist group affiliation.” That category—280,000 people—dwarfs the number of watchlisted people suspected of ties to al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah combined.

The documents, obtained from a source in the intelligence community, also reveal that the Obama Administration has presided over an unprecedented expansion of the terrorist screening system. Since taking office, Obama has boosted the number of people on the no fly list more than ten-fold, to an all-time high of 47,000—surpassing the number of people barred from flying under George W. Bush.

“If everything is terrorism, then nothing is terrorism,” says David Gomez, a former senior FBI special agent. The watchlisting system, he adds, is “revving out of control.”

SOURCES

Spy Agency Stole Scoop From Media Outlet And Handed It To The AP (Huffington Post)

Spy Agency Tipped Off The AP To Another Media Outlet’s Scoop (Talking Points Memo)