Did the AP Rip Off CQ?

To paraphrase Gus Haynes, you never really want to call another reporter a rip-off artist. At a wire service, it can be hard to credit someone who broke a story if that story isn't all over TV or the big papers. But it seems like the AP may owe Congressional Quarterly's Jeff Stein an apology.

On Friday, Stein, CQ's crack national-security reporter -- you probably remember him from such triumphs as Silvestre Reyes Plays Himself -- wrote about how the White House is blocking families of the victims of Libyan terrorism from getting their due compensation. He reported a letter that the Bush administration sent to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) asking Congress to exempt the families from a bill allowing victims of terrorism to sue their aggressors:

“When states, at our urging take the necessary steps [to get off the terrorism list], the United States has a strong interest in developing commercial and security relations with them to provide a continuing incentive to stand with us against the threats of global terrorism,” said the letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid , D-Nev., signed by Bush and the secretaries of State, Defense, Energy and Commerce.

The existing law will have “a chilling effect on potentially billions of dollars in investments by U.S. companies in Libya’s oil sector,” the letter went on, “investments affecting U. S. energy security, and on substantial anticipated U.S. construction projects with Libya.”

The letter was two days old when Stein filed his column. Maybe my Nexis and Google skills are atrophying, but I don't see AP reporting on it at the time. I do, however, see them reporting it today:

The administration's request to Congress came in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and their Republican counterparts in the House and Senate, as well as relevant committee chairmen and ranking GOP lawmakers. The letter, dated March 18, was from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Energy Secretary Sam Bodman and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez.

Now, there's no reason why AP shouldn't report about the Libya maneuver. It just wouldn't kill them to say that they're re-reporting something that CQ wrote about five days ago.

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