WASHINGTON (AP) – Attorney General Eric Holder says he played no direct role in the Justice Department’s secret review of Associated Press phone records. But Holder says it was part of an investigation into what he termed a grave national security leak.
 
     Holder says he had removed himself from the matter because of congressional testimony he had given and his dealings with the news media.
 
     The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The AP in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a massive and unprecedented intrusion into how news organizations gather the news.
 
     Holder says officials had been looking into what he calls “a very serious leak” that “put the American people at risk.” He has assigned Deputy Attorney General Jim Cole to handle the phone records case.