... through which we can compare the severity of his ruling.I have stayed focused on that and was greatful when Lawrence O'Donnell brought front-and-center on July 7, 2005:
"All the judges who have seen the prosecutor’s secret evidence firmly believe he is pursuing a very serious crime, and they have done everything they can to help him get an indictment."<clip>
In February,
Circuit Judge David Tatel joined his colleagues’ order to Cooper and Miller
despite his own, very lonely finding that indeed there is a federal privilege for reporters that can shield them from being compelled to testify to grand juries and give up sources. He based his finding on Rule 501 of the Federal Rules of Evidence, which authorizes federal courts to develop new privileges “in the light of reason and experience.”
Tatel actually found that reason and experience “support recognition of a privilege for reporters’ confidential sources.” But Tatel still ordered Cooper and Miller to testify because he found that the privilege had to give way to “the gravity of the suspected crime.”Judge Tatel’s opinion has
eight blank pages in the middle of it where he discusses the secret information the prosecutor has supplied only to the judges to convince them that the testimony he is demanding is worth sending reporters to jail to get. The gravity of the suspected crime is presumably very well developed in those redacted pages.
Later, Tatel refers to “aving carefully scrutinized voluminous classified filings.”Some of us have theorized that the prosecutor may have given up the leak case in favor of a perjury case,
but Tatel still refers to it simply as a case “which involves the alleged exposure of a covert agent.” Tatel wrote a 41-page opinion in which he seemed eager to make new law -- a federal reporters’ shield law -- but in the end, he couldn’t bring himself to do it in this particular case. In his final paragraph,
he says he “might have” let Cooper and Miller off the hook “were the leak at issue in this case less harmful to national security.”<clip>
From
The One Very Good Reason Karl Rove Might Be Indicted
by Lawrence O'Donnell July 7, 2005
More at the link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/lawrence-odonnell/the-one-very-good-reason-_3769.htmlDiscussion here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=4041542 Judge Tatel was willing to 'write new law," but didn't because of the facts he had access.
Congressman Waxman brought everyone's attention to
SF-312 and the implications of violating it, recently summarized here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4263356Perhaps we will learn more of the truth when Mr Fitzgerald moves from discovery to action.
Thank you for your insightful comments.
Peace.
www.missionnotaccomplished.us
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