In 1971, the Nixon White House created a covert unit called the Plummers to conduct

special leak investigations, an initiative that eventually spawned the Watergate Breakin.

Many of us assume that shadowy government gum shoe squads, operating like the Plummers,

entirely without any Justice Department or Congressional oversight, went away with the

demise of Nixon.

But this week, our Yahoo News colleague, Jana Winter, discovered the existence of another

secret investigations unit, this time inside the Department of Homeland Security, that

was snooping into the private lives of journalists, as well as congressional staff members, NGO

workers, and others, pulling phone records, travel records, personal contacts, and much

else.

All under the guise of cultivating them to help with the legitimate government investigation

into, of all things, cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The secret unit launched an initiative called Operation Whistle Pick, the targeted journalist.

Informally, it called itself Wolf, for way out there in left field, a worthy successor

to the Plummers.

We'll talk to Winter, the reporter who broke the story, and to an ACLU lawyer about why

this is so alarming on this episode of Skull Duggery.

On my Galizagov, Chief Investigator correspondent for Yahoo News.

And I'm Victoria Besedi, a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice.

So when I was a young reporter at the Washington Post many years ago, working for Bob Woodward,

who discovered the existence of the Plummers, he used to talk about the holy shit story,

the story that would shake things up that would expose some outrageous conduct that nobody

...