Fitzgerald Strikes Back at Dow Jones
14 November 2005 11:37 pm by Taylor Marsh
Fitzgerald Strikes Back at Dow Jones
The prosecutor in the CIA leak case has
sparked another fight with the news media, this time over access to material
that prosecutors will turn over to attorneys for I. Lewis “Scooter”
Libby. Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald is seeking a protective court order
that would bar Libby and his legal team from publicly disclosing “all materials
produced by the government.” Dow Jones & Co., the publisher of the
Wall Street Journal, went to court yesterday to fight the proposal. … The
news organization said any asserted need for secrecy in the Libby case is further
undercut by the fact that Fitzgerald conducted a news conference to discuss
the facts in the case. “Moreover, many of the likely witnesses in the case
have already disclosed the substance of their grand jury testimony to the public,”
lawyers for Dow Jones argued. Dow Jones referred to first-person accounts of
testimony in the investigation by Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper, then-New
York Times reporter Judith Miller, NBC reporter Tim Russert and Washington Post
reporter Walter Pincus.
Dow
Jones Seeks Access To Documents In Libby Case
A couple of weeks ago, I told you about the Dow
Jones’ effort to unseal 8 pages of documents in the Libby indictment case.
Now Fitzgerald is seeking a protective order that would bar Libby’s lawyers
from publicly disclosing what he’s got. Obviously, he doesn’t want people still
in his sights to know the case he’s constructed. Libby’s lawyers, aided by the
Wall Street Journal’s parent company, want to stop Fitzgerald’s case any way
they can. The judge hasn’t ruled yet, but this is an important one.
UPDATE: Also see updates from TalkLeft and Firedoglake.
