Accusing the Justice Department of stonewalling, media company Associated Press filed a suit Thursday against the FBI for failing to turn over information under the Freedom of Information Act about a criminal sting operation in which it created a bogus news story and impersonated an AP journalist.
The federal suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., also demands that the government catalog all instances since 2000 when it has impersonated the news media and that it disclose its internal policies governing the practice.
The media group says that it learned last October that the FBI had “masqueraded as a member of the news media -- specifically, as the AP -- in order to deliver surveillance software to a criminal suspect’s computer.