Knox College graduate and trustee David Schulz '74 is at the center of the controversy, representing the Associated Press in its battle with the U.S. Department of Justice over the seizure of extensive phone records from several AP bureaus.

Schulz, who has represented numerous media outlets in cases involving freedom of speech, has been interviewed extensively on the AP phone records case, including appearances on PBS, NPR and NBC:

From: PBS: Newshour (Washington, DC)

Judy Woodruff of PBS Newshour talks with [Knox College graduate] David Schulz, legal counsel for the Associated Press, about the procedures for accessing information from the news media about confidential sources, what constitutes "crossing the line" by the government and whether the current investigation was justified by the gravity of the situation.

[Schulz told PBS] "this was really a very large-scale intrusion into AP's news-gathering activities... if the government can get from the press any time it wants to information about who its sources are, pretty soon the only thing we are ever going to know about the government is what the government wants to tell us. This just really is not how things work. And it's a tremendous adverse effect on a free press..."

From: NPR: National Public Radio (Washington, DC)

The Associated Press is protesting what it calls a massive and unprecedented intrusion into its gathering of news. The target of that wrath is the U.S. Justice Department, which secretly collected phone records for several AP reporters last year. The AP says it's caught in the middle of a Justice Department leak investigation.

The scope of the Justice Department subpoenas is what gives [1974 Knox graduate] David Schulz, a lawyer for AP, pause. "It was a very large number of records that were obtained, including phone records from Hartford, New York, Washington, from the U.S. House of Representatives and elsewhere where AP has bureaus. It included home and cellphone numbers from a number of AP reporters," Schulz says... Read more...

From: NBC News: Rachel Maddow Show

Rachel Maddow: Is it the AP's position that the Justice Department is within its rights to investigate these leaks?

David Schulz: ... There is an inherent conflict between the government's ability to keep secrets and the ability of the people to oversee their government. You have to have access to government information. You need confidential sources to give you that information,or the only things you'll know about the government is what they want to tell you... It's not necessarily we don't take [the government's national security justification] at their word, but a judge should be reviewing that... Read more...

A member of the Knox Board of Trustees since 1989, Schulz received his bachelor's degree at Knox in economics, and his master's and law degrees at Yale University. He is a partner in Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz in New York. Among his notable cases, he argued for public and media access to trials at Guantanamo Bay military base, and has been named a "Top 10 First Amendment Lawyer."