Court Hears Appeal on Government Access to Times Reporters' Phone Records

[TacticalPeek]

Court Hears Arguments on Government Access to Times Reporters' Phone Records

By ADAM LIPTAK

Published: January 20, 2005


A federal prosecutor argued yesterday that the government should be allowed to examine the telephone records of two reporters for The New York Times to identify their sources for several articles about Islamic charities.

"We want to find out who leaked national security information," the prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, said in a federal court hearing in New York.

...

In an unrelated case involving confidential sources, a federal judge in Washington has ordered Ms. Miller jailed for refusing to name her sources to a grand jury investigating the disclosure of the identity of a covert C.I.A. officer, Valerie Plame. Ms. Miller, who did not write about the Plame matter, is free pending the ruling of the federal appeals court in Washington. Mr. Fitzgerald is the prosecutor in both cases. In the case argued yesterday, Mr. Fitzgerald said he was investigating the disclosure of impending government action against two Islamic charities, Holy Land Foundation of Texas and Global Relief Foundation in Illinois in 2001. Before the assets of the charities were blocked and their offices raided, Mr. Fitzgerald said, a Times reporter called each charity for comment, alerting them to the coming actions.Whoever told the reporters about the government plans might have violated the law, Mr. Fitzgerald said. He said the reporters were not themselves targets of his investigation.

In court papers, the reporters disputed the assertion that they had tipped off the charities. They said the charities had long been subjects of government scrutiny and knew the government planned to act. The reporters added that seeking comment from the subjects of news articles is standard journalism practice.


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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/20/national/20leak.html

[rwenos]

1. "Standard Journalistic Practice"

Might in this case also be obstruction of justice.

These wartime cases are so difficult. The press is in a position to get vital information. Nobody wants to blow getting the Bad Guys.

I'm on the Court, in this case I compel disclosure of the names. The wartime value of the information is too great, when weighed against the infringement of the First Amendment.

Any First Amendment scholars out there? How would YOU rule?

[NVMojo]

3. hmmmm. I see your point ...this is not just a routine, garden variety case

BUT ....maybe someone high and might court person should go after Novak and Rove's cell phone records in the Plame case???

[Supersedeas]

7. Motion to Compel denied.

The damage, in so much as the Government can prove any, has been done.

The reporters have submitted affidavits that they were not 'tipped' off.

Granting the motion is both overbroad and an infringment upon the journalist privilege and for what purpose, to 'reprimand' an overzealous investigator who wanted to make sure the bust was publicized.

The investigating department can take care of this internally.

The precedent set by this discovery fishing expedition will cause much more damage than to First Amendment protections and thus outweighs the overzealous interests asserted by the Government.

On a completely separate tangent, I find it more than coincidental that these journalistic privilege cases are being 'publically' litigated simultaneously.

Tinfoil hat time? Probably not...but still worth noting.

[H2O Man]

8. Neither is being

publicly litigated. The public has little information regarding what is going on inside these cases. Both are being kept quite secret. For a simple example, you don't know if Novak has been called before the Plame grand jury -- much less if he has appeared before it. More, you could not come up with a single sentence from inside the grand jury hearing of either case.

[UL_Approved]

2. We will have to see how this goes

Yet another attempt to erode civil liberties and to censor media. I await the ruling. I hope that the court rules that phone record don't have to be released.

[madrchsod]

4. fitz wants the records to

prove that these two reports tipped off the saudi`s in chicago that fitz was going to raid their offices. the one reporter has big time ties to the saudi`s and the us government...fitz found this out during the invest. of the plame affair....

[rwenos]

5. So if Fitz Wants the Names

He should be willing to offer the reporter transaction immunity. If he won't -- then his assurances the "journalists are not a target of the investigation" look pretty thin, don't they?

[TacticalPeek]

6. Morning kick.

:kick: