Judge Orders 'Time' to Turn Over Libby Documents -- 'NYT' Spared?

Published: May 26, 2006 1:30 PM ET

WASHINGTON A federal judge on Friday ordered Time magazine to turn over documents for a White House aide to use in his defense to perjury and other charges in the CIA leak case.

The order by U.S. District Reggie B. Walton also said the New York Times might have to turn over some information but reduced the scope of documents the newspaper and other news organizations would have to provide to lawyers for the defendant, former top vice presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Citing a lack of relevancy, Walton said that Judith Miller, a former Times reporter, doesn't have to provide two notebooks, her phone records or appointment calendars to lawyers for Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff.

Walton also said NBC News does not have to provide Libby's defense team with one page of undated notes taken by correspondent Andrea Mitchell because she is unlikely to testify at Libby's perjury trial, which is set for January.

In granting in part and denying in part Libby's subpoenas for the media's records, Walton ruled that reporters do not have a right to refuse to provide notes, drafts of articles or other information in a criminal case.

"The First Amendment does not protect a news reporter or that reporter's news organization from producing documents ... in a criminal case," Walton wrote in a 40-page ruling.

Walton said Time magazine must provide Libby's lawyers with drafts of first-person stories that reporter Matthew Cooper wrote about his conversations with Libby because the judge said he noticed inconsistencies between them.

All of the news organizations had asked Walton to review the materials sought by Libby-- including e-mails, drafts of articles and reporters' notes-- in hopes of convincing him that they were not relevant and that the defense was on a "fishing expedition."

During that review, Walton said, he found "a slight alteration between the several drafts of the articles" Cooper wrote about his conversations with Libby and the reporter's first-person account of his testimony before a federal grand jury.

"This slight alteration between the drafts will permit the defendant to impeach Cooper, regardless of the substance of his trial testimony, because his trial testimony cannot be consistent with both versions," Walton wrote.

It is unclear from Walton's ruling what those inconsistencies are.


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