Bredesen administration seeks to silence critics: Admits to Investigating reporter

Another bombshell dropped today as we learned that one of the Bredesen administration's illegal background checks was on Tennessean reporter Brad Schrade who has exposed various wrongdoings by the administration. By running an illegal background check, did the administration plan to intimidate Schrade as they have their political opponents?

Brad Schrade, who has reported on the highway patrol for years and first reported the probe earlier this month, received a call Saturday morning from a highway patrol special agent who said that Lt. Ronnie Shirley, the subject of the probe, had accessed Schrade’s background information.

The highway patrol confirmed that the agent who contacted Schrade, Troy Human, is one of a team of THP officers who have been calling those on the list about the unauthorized checks. Human did not discuss specifics but requested a meeting, Schrade said.

Schrade otherwise declined to comment, referring calls to Tennessean editors.

Tennessean Editor Mark Silverman questioned “whether this was truly the actions of one rogue officer or whether it was condoned by his supervisors.”

“For a state police agency or one of its agents to investigate a reporter who has produced legitimate and critically important coverage of the agency smacks of the intimidation and retribution you would expect to find in a totalitarian state,” Silverman said.

We now have two confirmed names of victims of Bredesen's Watergate:
1. Brad Schrade, a reporter for the Tennessean
2. Lt. Robert Eckerman

Developing . . .

UPDATE:
Postpolitics.net