Judge Weighs Libby's Media Records Request

[cal04]

A lawyer for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby told a federal judge Tuesday that the former White House aide's right to a fair trial outweighs any special protection claimed by media organizations touched by the CIAleak investigation. We are in a case that for better or worse, the press is right in the middle of," said William Jeffress, one of Libby's lawyers.

During a three-hour hearing in U.S. District Court, Jeffress debated lawyers for NBC News, The New York Times and Time magazine over subpoenas seeking access to e-mails, drafts of news articles and reporters' notes that he said are essential to Libby's defense. U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton was skeptical of many of the defense's requests, saying he respects "the important role the press plays in society." He did not rule immediately.

Instead, the judge said he will privately review some of the media materials Libby wants before deciding whether to order that they be turned over. Jeffress wants to use the records during Libby's trial early next year to cast doubt on the prosecutor's claims that Libby lied about outing a CIA officer to punish her husband for criticizing the Bush administration's reasons for going to war in Iraq.

The materials include: uncensored portions of two notebooks that former New York Times reporter Judith Miller kept during the period in which she talked to Libby in 2003, a transcript of a tape-recorded interview Times reporters did with Miller for an article the paper published in October 2005 about her role in the case and a document that Time magazine has that refers to Valerie Plame but not to her CIA affiliation.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060517/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/cia_leak

[Kagemusha]

1. At least the judge is looking the stuff over.

Makes a big difference, since he has a lot of lofty Libby defense claims to check against reality.

[benddem]

2. if you don't have the truth on your side

baffle them with bull shit. They are attempting to overwhelm the system.

[rfkrfk]

4. why piss off, the judge?

with requests that end up being meaningless?

[Peace Patriot]

3. In Miller's case, it could be argued that she isn't a journalist, and her

notes are not entitled to any protection. I don't think there has ever been a so-called journalist, outside of Stalinist Russia, who was such a tool of the government. They funneled Ahmed Chalabi's lies about Iraq WMDs through her right to the front page of the NYT, and simultaneously used his lies as internal "intelligence" so that there seemed to be two sources of these lies. That, and her protection of Libby as if he were some sort of "whistleblower"--her going to jail for him!--and her clandestine 'Mata Hari' meetings with him to destroy CIA agent Plame and the entire CIA WMD counter-proliferation network that Plame headed, putting all of its covert agents and contacts at risk of getting killed, and her omissions--and probably lies--about David Kelly, make her into a mere shill for the Bush junta. We'll probably find out some day that she was on the Pentagon payroll, too (like Chalabi).

As for the other war profiteering corporate news monopoly reporters, it's hard to have any sympathy for them. It was their owners who got us into this heinous, illegal war, as much as the Bush junta did. They ARE the Bush junta in many ways. Are their employees reporters? Are they journalists? Do they have any entitlement to the protections of that noble profession, fourth pillar of our democracy?

Really, what these corporate news monopolies deserve is to be busted up, not protected. I just don't know what I would do, if I had to judge this. I suspect that the judge in the case will narrowly construe it--allow some limited evidence if it is relevant.