Senate Panel Urged to Subpoena Reporters Over Leaks : Inquiry: The special counsel formally asks committee to compel journalists to reveal their confidential sources.

Special counsel Peter E. Fleming Jr. formally asked a Senate panel Tuesday to enforce subpoenas against reporters for three news organizations as part of his investigation into leaks.

The reporters have said they would go to jail before they would cooperate with the investigation.

Fleming asked the Senate Rules Committee to compel the reporters for Newsday, the Washington Times and National Public Radio to identify their confidential sources, to answer other questions and to produce documents. He also asked the committee to enforce subpoenas served on C&P; Telephone Co. for records of telephone calls made by the reporters.

Fleming’s request left the committee to decide how far to pursue the investigation into leaks about sexual harassment charges against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas last October, and other leaks from a Senate Ethics Committee investigation of some senators’ involvement with former savings and loan executive Charles H. Keating Jr.

Committee Chairman Wendell H. Ford (D-Ky.) and the ranking Republican member, Ted Stevens of Alaska, said they would meet with Fleming today to discuss the request.

The reporters have refused to identify their sources and objected to the subpoenas, citing First Amendment protection.

To support his request, Fleming said the reporters “have no sustainable First Amendment claim” to avoid divulging their sources and answering other questions about the accuracy of their stories.

In addition, Fleming alleged that three of the reporters had identified a source to a third party. He said that such disclosures nullified any right to protect the sources.

Nina Totenberg of National Public Radio said she would go to jail rather than cooperate with Fleming.

“His questions are reminiscent of totalitarian regimes, in which reporters are constantly monitored and questioned about the stories they pursue, and I expect the United States Senate to protect me from those kinds of tactics,” Totenberg said. “If they don’t, I’ll go to jail. I will not cooperate.”

Newsday reporter Timothy Phelps expressed surprise that Fleming was pushing to have the committee compel the reporters to testify.

“I keep thinking that he’s going to see the light and drop this thing,” Phelps said. “Ultimately, of course, we’d be prepared to go to jail rather than to comply.”

Totenberg and Phelps broke stories about Anita Faye Hill’s sexual harassment charges against Thomas, her former boss. Their accounts last October, as the Senate was about to vote on Thomas’ nomination to the Supreme Court, triggered an outpouring of public sentiment and prompted the Senate Judiciary Committee to conduct hearings into the allegations, which it previously had kept confidential.

The Senate resolution authorizing Fleming’s probe also instructed him to investigate leaks from the Ethics Committee’s so-called “Keating Five” investigation.

Fleming issued subpoenas for Washington Times reporters Paul Rodriguez and Jerry Seper for information regarding a story published under Rodriguez’s byline on July 12, 1990. In it, the Washington Times reported that the special counsel in the Keating investigation had recommended in private that charges should be brought against three of five senators under investigation, and that charges against two others should be dropped.

Allen Farber, attorney for the newspaper, said: “We will not assist them in their efforts to locate source or sources of information, and we will oppose their efforts before the Rules Committee.”