Leaks Lead the Press to Devil’s Pact

When the hunter becomes the hunted, all manner of truth is revealed. Last week, it was Kenneth Starr’s turn to be on the defensive. Judge Norma Holloway Johnson, who oversees his Monica Lewinsky investigation, declared that there was a prima facie case that Starr’s office had violated the grand jury secrecy law.

If this proves true, Starr’s culpability is more egregious than anything he’s come up with so far on the president. As Johnson ruled, Starr must now prove his innocence “at a show cause hearing to avoid being held in contempt.” Johnson’s scathing comments on Starr’s modus operandi--”the serious and repetitive nature of disclosures to the media”--only came to light after Starr failed in an attempt to get an appeals court to overrule Johnson on this issue.

The appeals court, in authorizing Judge Johnson to proceed with an investigation of leaks by Starr’s office, noted that violations of grand jury secrecy “are not to be taken lightly” and quoted Justice Felix Frankfurter, one of the U.S. Supreme Court’s defining jurists, as having warned: “To have the prosecutor himself feed the press with evidence . . . is to make the State itself through the prosecutor, who wields its power, a conscious participant in trial by newspaper, instead of by those methods which centuries of experience have shown to be indispensable to the fair administration of justice.”

But thanks to Starr, trial by newspaper, magazine, television and Internet has set the national agenda during his seemingly endless investigation of the president. In the process, the media have been complicit with Starr’s office in undermining the basic principal of innocence until proven guilty.

Johnson referred to five instances in which news organizations--the New York Times, New York Daily News, CBS, FOX and NBC--publicized what should have been protected information while citing unnamed sources in Starr’s office. She also blasted Starr for “confirming the existence and substance of a sealed court ruling” to the media in “violation of a court order not to discuss the ruling.” Starr’s defense was to blame the media: “Newspaper articles and media reports supporting the allegation may be capable of various interpretations. They may even be erroneous.”

Are they? Only the reporters know if Starr is telling the truth; they are now central to the story about the leaks, but they are not talking.

“The dispute has put news organizations in a paradoxical position,” reporter James Bennet of the New York Times wrote. “Besides the leakers, reporters covering the Lewinsky investigation are the only ones in Washington who know the truth of the accusations against Mr. Starr. Yet, because they have guaranteed their sources anonymity in exchange for information, they are unable to inform their readers, listeners or viewers.”

Bennet has been one of the leading reporters covering Clinton’s troubles, and his statement is a damning admission that the media’s obligation to inform the public was betrayed by any deal with Starr to protect the source of the leaks.

Certainly reporters knew that any leak of grand jury information would violate Rule 6(e)(2) of the federal code, as Johnson and the Appeals Court have now affirmed. Why wasn’t that news reported when the source of grand jury leaks became a major story? Journalists knew that Starr’s office was the source of leaks yet protected him while he apparently lied and blamed the White House.

The need for those reporters to come forth with the truth now is even more pressing because they alone can dispute Starr’s assertion that the press reports, which are the basis of Johnson’s investigation, are “erroneous.” Surely whatever guarantee of anonymity they offered Starr is negated by his calling their own integrity into question.

The media claim to have a 1st Amendment right to protect sources as necessary to the pursuit of truth. But that argument, justifiable when truth is truly the goal, is made specious by journalists who put themselves obediently at the service of those like Starr with an ax to grind. The reliance on secret official sources in such cases becomes nothing more than an excuse for the milling of gossip and innuendo as a means of advancing ratings, profits and careers.

The 1st Amendment was designed to protect against the official misuse of power, not to abet it. Leaks from Starr never had anything to do with investigative reporting, since he was already obligated to report any criminal wrongdoing to Congress. His responsibilities do not include convicting the president through leaks of innuendo and fragmented evidence, which involves the media as co-conspirators in suborning due process.