(Updated: Originally published December 2, 2006)
Interesting repost in light of the events of the last few days, wouldn't you say, readers?
Also see:
Everyone Knows About the New York Times
The New York Times' McClellanGate Watch
The New York Times' McClellanGate Watch (different day, link)
Enjoy this blast from the past, readers.
The Times obviously does not consider this story important since it was placed on page A20 of the paper.
This is why the government wants the phone records -- to trace reporter's confidential sources.
You know, I just found out that Germany had newspapers under Hitler.
They were just propaganda organs, but history classes never tell you that.
Of course, why would they when the MSM of today far outdoes Goebell's and his minions in the black-op, false-flag art of propaganda.
"Court Clears Way for Prosecutor to Review Records in Times Case" by ADAM LIPTAK
The United States Supreme Court refused yesterday to stop a federal prosecutor from reviewing the telephone records of two reporters for The New York Times. The records, the newspaper said, include information about many of the reporters’ confidential sources.
In a one-sentence order offering no reasoning and noting no dissenting votes, the Supreme Court rejected a request from The Times to stay a lower court’s decision while the paper tried to persuade the justices to review the case.
Yesterday’s order effectively allows the United States attorney in Chicago, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, to begin reviewing the records, which he has already obtained from the reporters’ phone companies, as early as this week.
The Justice Department told the Supreme Court on Friday that Mr. Fitzgerald was under enormous time pressure. “The statute of limitations,” the government said, “will imminently expire on Dec. 3 and 13, 2006, on certain substantive offenses that the grand jury is investigating.”
The grand jury, in Chicago, is looking into who told the reporters, Judith Miller and Philip Shenon, about actions the government was planning to take in December 2001 against two Islamic charities in Illinois and Texas. The disclosures to the reporters, the government lawyers wrote on Friday, may have amounted to obstruction of justice.
In August, a three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in Manhattan ruled, 2 to 1, in favor of Mr. Fitzgerald, saying that the reporters were not entitled to shield their sources in the unusual circumstances of the case. The government contended that the reporters had tipped off the charities to the impending actions against them. The Times said the reporters had engaged only in routine newsgathering.
The appeals court also rejected The Times’s argument that the grand jury subpoenas, issued directly to the phone companies, were too broad. The subpoenas, the government said, covered 11 days in September and December 2001. Lawyers for The Times said the requested records could expose scores of confidential sources, most of them unrelated to the two charities.
The appeals court responded by sending the case back to the trial judge to allow The Times an opportunity to black out information concerning those other sources. But because that exercise would, in effect, identify the sources of interest to Mr. Fitzgerald, lawyers for the paper have indicated that they will not cooperate.
In a letter to the Supreme Court on Friday, government lawyers said they hoped to obtain authorization from the trial judge, Robert W. Sweet of Federal District Court in Manhattan, to begin their review as soon as tomorrow.
Ms. Miller, who retired from The Times last year after serving 85 days in jail in connection with an unrelated leak investigation also supervised by Mr. Fitzgerald, said the phone records by themselves might not satisfy the government.
“It doesn’t end there,” Ms. Miller said. “Then there will be subpoenas for, ‘What did you say to that person?’ ”
Randall Samborn, a spokesman for Mr. Fitzgerald, declined to comment.
Yesterday’s decision is the latest in a series of setbacks for the press in the federal courts. “It’s more bad news for the First Amendment,” Ms. Miller said, “and therefore it’s more bad news for the public’s right to know.”
Floyd Abrams, a lawyer for The Times, said the decision was a battle lost in a larger war.
“This case is the latest of a number of skirmishes in an ongoing and far from concluded conflict about the public’s right to information” Mr. Abrams said. “We remain hopeful that in the end, whether in the courts or in Congress, that right will be vindicated."
Well, Judy Miller got what she deserved; however, does it not strike you as odd that the Times not making a major, page one report on this?
My feeling is that it is all a GAME of FOOLEYS!
Times does the administration's bidding despite the "criticism" -- oh, was I ever prescient one year ago, huh? -- therefore, no heed to treat this "infringement" on the "free press" as anything substantial!
America's "free press" is just ONE MORE CULTURAL MYTH!
And look how the Neo-Con whore Miller was rewarded:
Judith Miller Finally Lands in the ‘Right’ Place
