US government seizes AP phone records THE US Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for the Associated Press in what the news co-operative's top executive called a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into how media organisations gather the news. The records obtained by the Justice Department listed outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, for general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Connecticut, and for the main number for AP in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to lawyers for AP. It was unclear if the records also included incoming calls or the duration of the calls. In all, the government seized the records for more than 20 telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of last year. In a letter of protest sent to US Attorney-General Eric Holder yesterday, AP president and chief executive Gary Pruitt said the government sought and obtained information far beyond anything that could be justified by any specific investigation. He demanded the return of the phone records and destruction of all copies. There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of the Associated Press and its reporters. These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the news-gathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP's news-gathering operations and disclose information about AP's activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know," Mr Pruitt said. Officials have previously said in public testimony that the US attorney in Washington is conducting a criminal investigation into who may have provided information contained in a May 7, 2012, AP story about a foiled terror plot.The story disclosed details of a CIA operation in Yemen that stopped an al-Qa'ida plot in the spring of last year to detonate a bomb on an airplane bound for the US. In the letter notifying AP, received on Friday, the Justice Department offered no explanation for the seizure, according to Mr Pruitt's letter and attorneys for the AP. The White House said other than press reports it had no knowledge of the matter.