Gov't Asks Court Not to Block Records

[cal04]

The Justice Department on Saturday asked the Supreme Court to refrain from stepping into another First Amendment battle featuring federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and The New York Times.

The case involves a leak probe by Fitzgerald to track down the confidential sources of Times reporters Judith Miller and Philip Shenon for stories in 2001. Miller, who spent 85 days in jail in 2005 in connection with Fitzgerald's separate CIA leak probe in the Valerie Plame case, retired from the newspaper a year ago.

In the current case, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has said prosecutors can see the journalists' phone records. Earlier, a federal judge had ruled in the newspaper's favor, saying the First Amendment supplied a qualified privilege to reporters to protect confidential sources.

On Friday, the newspaper asked Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to temporarily block the government from going through the records and said it was prepared to file a petition by Dec. 24 asking the court to take up the case.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6238775,00.html

[Kagemusha]

1. It's hard for the paper to win this.

As much as newspapers want to pretend this never happened, a case in 1972 or so established the legal precedent that there's no absolute protection for newspaper-related records. The Supreme Court made clear it didn't see seizing such records as something to be done for frivolous reasons but, a "if you need it bad enough" standard for the government means that a case involving - from the government's point of view - leaks that compromised a federal terror investigation more than fits that standard. Obviously, the NY Times wants the court to just ignore everything litigated in 1972 (I think it was '72.. law's not my professional field) and make up the shield for journalistic sources that the Times wishes existed but, that's not generally how the law works. If the government needs the information badly enough, there is no protection unique to reporters. Yes, a lot of people feel the government NEVER needs information that badly, but the circuit court said the standard was met. Either the Supreme Court can dispute that judgment - not a matter of law, but of fact (which isn't what Supreme Courts like to have argued before them) - or not, in which case all the Times has done is drag the matter out for years. Hope it's happy.

[Peace Patriot]

2. This may not be just a leak case. It could be a treason case, involving Judith

Miller (NYT "journalist") in yet more acts in furtherance of the NeoCon/Bushite agenda, in this instance, foiling the 9/11 money trail. (The Bush Junta is notorious for "bungling" terrorist investigations.)

The Guardian article states (re: events just after 9/11, for which Fitzgerald wants the reporters' phone records):

"The reporters' stories disclosed the government's plans to freeze the assets of two Islamic charities, the Holy Land Foundation and the Global Relief Foundation. The freezing of assets was in connection with a terrorism-funding probe.

"Shenon and Miller called the two organizations for comment about the information on freezing assets, a move the government says tipped off the charities of planned government raids. The federal judge who ruled in the Times' favor said there is no evidence in the case even suggesting the reporters tipped off the charities about the raids or that the reporters even knew of the government's plans to raid either charity.

"The Justice Department replied that 'the fact that the reporters here relayed disclosures from a government source to targets of an imminent law enforcement action substantially weakens any claim of freedom of the press.''

"At issue are 11 days of phone records the government wants to review for the two reporters in 2001 - Sept. 27-30, Dec. 1-3 and Dec. 10-13. In his declaration this month, Fitzgerald says the statute of limitations 'on certain substantive offenses that the grand jury is investigating'' will expire on Dec. 3 and Dec. 13 of this year. Those dates are five years to the day after the second and third set of phone records the prosecutor wants to review, pointing to the deadline for filing criminal charges.

"In June 2005, the Supreme Court refused to take up a separate case involving the First Amendment in which Fitzgerald sought to compel Miller to reveal her sources in the leak of Plame's CIA identity.

"That leak probe led to Miller's jailing before eventually agreeing to testify in Fitzgerald's investigation. Her testimony was critical in the indictment of Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby."

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It's also possible that the two cases are related--Miller involved in foiling the investigation of a 9/11 money trail, and then later involved in the Bushites' outing of the entire Brewster-Jennings WMD counter-proliferation network, headed by Valerie Plame, an act that put the lives of all of our covert counterproliferation agents/contacts around the world at great risk. Who tipped Plame off to the raids on the Islamic charities? Was it the same people who wanted to destroy our eyes and ears on WMDs around the world?*

Treason.

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*(--I'm smelling Rumsfeld and the real reason for his resignation. Miller claimed to have a special embed contract, signed by Donald Rumsfeld, allowing her to accompany the US troops who were hunting for the WMDs that everybody knew weren't there, post-invasion. She became an annoyance to local commanders, ordering them around and citing her Pentagon connections. The WMD-planting theory of Treasongate is that the Bushites intended to PLANT nukes in Iraq, to be "found" by the troops, with Miller possibly set up to get "the scoop"--but this nefarious scheme was foiled, quite possibly by someone in our own WMD counter-proliferation network, and that the outing, which was NOT just of Plame, but of the entire B/J network, was aimed to punish and destroy those who stopped the illicit weapons movement. One candidate for this (foiler of the plot) is David Kelly, the Brits' chief WMD expert, who died, in highly suspicious circumstances, four days after Plame was outed. His office and computers were searched, and, four days later, the entire Brewster-Jennings network was outed, in a second column by Novak. There is an intriguing Miller connection to Kelly. They were colleagues. She had used Kelly as a major quoted source in her book "Germs." And it was to Miller that David Kelly wrote one of his last emails, on the day he died, in which he expressed concern about the "many dark actors playing games." It could be that Kelly just stumbled upon something he wasn't supposed to know (re: the WMD planting plot). But it would have been like him to foil such a plot, if he could. He was a true believer in his counterproliferation work. This would also supply him with a motive for his own whistleblowing to the BBC, in late May of the same year (2003, after the invasion). He had wanted Saddam ousted, but, after the invasion he did a turnabout and began whistleblowing anonymously to the BBC about the exaggerated pre-war WMD intel. This was about a month before Joe Wilson published his article on the phony Niger/Iraq nuke allegation--supposed trigger of the Plame outing. Kelly was outed to his bosses (by whom is still a mystery) and interrogated at a "safe house" in early July. On July 7, one day after the Wilson publication, Tony Blair was informed that Kelly "could say some uncomfortable things." Could say; not HAD said. (Hutton Report.) And ten days later he was dead (in the middle of the Plame/BJ outings). Whatever the validity of this theory--which answers quite of few puzzles in both the Plame and Kelly events--Donald Rumsfeld was in the most likely position to orchestrate a plot involving the Niger forgeries, illicit weapons movements, and outing our own agents, controlled all the resources to implement these and other plots--including resources to kidnap, detain, torture and kill witnesses--and was so hostile to the honest professionals at the CIA that he was running his own (cooked) intelligence shop. Judith Miller may be the key to Rumsfeld's involvement in a number of dark deeds. This may be why Fitzgerald is pressuring her on the post 9/11 "blunder" that blew the Islamic charities investigation--and is seeking the phone records for potential prosecution. Her NeoCon contacts and Rumsfeld might be at the center of a number of different plots to manufacture war and cover their tracks. People tend to accept the corporate news monopoly narrative that Rumsfeld resigned because the war is going badly, but it may be that he resigned because of his pivotal role in the criminal scheming on how the war was started.)