Ex-Reporter Questioned on Past Uses of Information : Prosecutor Hits Winans’ Integrity

A federal prosecutor, seeking to cast further doubt on the integrity of former Wall Street Journal reporter R. Foster Winans, suggested Tuesday that Winans had improperly used information gathered by fellow reporters in his own stories when he worked at the Trentonian newspaper.

Cross-examining Winans during his trial for stock fraud and conspiracy, Assistant U.S. Atty. Peter Romatowski questioned Winans on whether he had “pumped” a colleague for information on a sensational stabbing murder in 1979, then used the information in a story he sold to the New York Times.

Romatowski also asked whether Winans had secretly entered the Trenton, N.J., newspaper’s computer data bank to retrieve notes that another reporter had gathered for a story on an alleged case of child abuse. Winans later sold a story on the case to the Philadelphia Daily News, according to testimony.

Winans, his roommate David Carpenter and former stockbroker Kenneth P. Felis are on trial for their roles in an alleged stock-trading scheme that used information from the Journal’s Heard on the Street column. Winans, who wrote the column, has testified that he leaked information on its contents in advance of publication but that he did not know such leaks were against the paper’s policy.

Romatowski asked Winans whether use of information gathered by other reporters did not show that “you had no regard whatever for how you used confidential information from a newspaper.”

Winans denied that any information had been gained improperly. He said he had taken the information from stories after they appeared in the Trentonian and confirmed it in interviews with sources. He said the accusations came from a fellow reporter who was “jealous” of Winans’ relationship with the New York Times. The accusations were first publicized in a Journal story about Winans last April.

In other testimony, Winans’ attorney sought to discredit the motives of Winans’ immediate supervisor at the Journal, who earlier had testified that Winans was made aware of a Journal policy that forbade leaking information from the column or trading on it.

Under questioning by attorney Don D. Buchwald, Winans said that, on the night before he planned to confess his scheme to officials of the Securities and Exchange Commission, his telephone answering machine recorded a telephone message from his former boss, Richard Rustin. According to Winans, Rustin said: “Foster Winans, this is Dick Rustin and I just want to say you are the scum of the earth.”

Winans said: “I don’t think he’s objective about me in any way.”

Winans burst into tears as he testified about his fears of hurting the reputation of the Journal and his former colleagues. He broke down and sobbed into a handkerchief as he described his desire to apologize to Gary Putka, the reporter who worked with him on the influential Heard on the Street column. As he wept, his roommate and co-defendant, Carpenter, hurried to the stand to comfort him.