Too bad for the G-men. The Jack Anderson family isn't biting.

This family, which claims deep Utah roots, is standing up to a government that has lied and manipulated facts to promote a war (weapons of mass destruction), stopped far short of holding top military brass accountable for human rights abuses (torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib) and eavesdropped on Americans' private conversations (necessary to root out possible terrorists).

This government seems to find no end of reasons for running a rake over civil liberties in the name of national security. And too few of us have mustered the guts to say "enough."

The Andersons have.

When three FBI agents requested access to more than 60 years of files belonging to the late investigative journalist Jack Anderson, his widow Olivia and their adult children said flatly, "no."

I like to think that Anderson, who died Dec. 17 at age 83, would be growling a feistier "Hell, no!" from his grave. This is the man who exposed a CIA-Mafia plot to kill Fidel Castro, broke stories on the Watergate cover-up in his "Washington Merry-Go-Round" column competitively with the Washington Post's Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein and won a 1972 Pulitzer Prize for revealing how the U.S. government had shifted its alliance from India to Pakistan.

Anderson fought government secrecy and its rush, at the faintest provocation, to classify information. His surviving children and biographers have noted that Anderson fiercely believed in a "divinely inspired" Constitution and clung to a couple of favorite guiding thoughts: First, that the press was intended by the Founding Fathers "to serve as the government's watchdog, not its lapdog." And second, that the press has an obligation to defend "the public's right to know and control, rather than the official's prerogative to conceal and manipulate."

With a president who has capitalized beautifully on Americans' post-9/11 tensions, it's really no surprise that three FBI agents came knocking earlier this year on the Anderson door. Special Agents Keith Salette, Robert J. Porath and Leslie G. Martell want Anderson's papers for possible information to aid them in a domestic spying case against the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The agents told the family that two former lobbyists for the committee may have acted as sources for the journalist.

Kevin Anderson, a Salt Lake City attorney and Jack's son, told The Tribune on Tuesday "we are prepared to defy the government."

The family has retained a Washington, D.C., law firm to represent them. Attorney Michael D. Sullivan on Tuesday sent a four-page letter to the FBI telling the agents what they could do with their request to pick through 200 boxes of Anderson's work product.

That's two-hundred boxes. So Sullivan notes that the government's request is "overly broad." The agents hope to remove all materials marked "classified" and either permanently retain them or edit them to their satisfaction.

That kind of review concerns the family because it might reveal the identities of other anonymous sources and whistle-blowers Anderson relied on during his long career. ". . . this could potentially expose Jack Anderson's sources to criminal prosecution," Sullivan wrote. "To do so would obviously be contrary to Mr. Anderson's wishes."

Fresh from the Judith Miller-Scooter Libby case, and basking in the glow of their reputation for trying to undermine one press freedom after another, the president's minions have now taken to casting a net over the entire work product of a dead patriot.

That's correct. Anderson, devout Mormon, father of nine, political independent, lover of freedom and patriot. His survivors say they will even go to jail if necessary to fight this government intrusion. Anderson has left a legacy.

Call it a no-fishing zone.

hmullen@sltrib.com or (801) 257-8610