By: E&P Staff Two famous names, one old, one new, are about to go head-to-head in court in the Plame/CIA leak case: It's Dow Jones vs. Pat Fitzgerald.
Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald is seeking a protective court order that would bar I. Lewis Libby and his legal team from publicly disclosing "all materials produced by the government" in the sensitive case. Dow Jones & Co., publisher of the Wall Street Journal, went to court yesterday to fight the proposal.
Dow Jones said, among other things, that any claimed need for secrecy in the Libby case is undercut by the fact that Fitzgerald held a lengthy TV news conference to discuss the facts in the case.
The Supreme Court has recognized, it said in court papers, that the criminal justice system "exists in a larger context of a government ultimately of the people, who wish to be informed about happenings in the criminal justice system."
Dow Jones cited a case in which a judge entered a similar broadly worded protective order that was subsequently overturned by a federal appeals court as unjustified.
"The fact that ... this is a criminal case heightens the public interest in disclosure," Dow Jones argued in court papers. "The need for openness is heightened in cases such as this one, which involve issues of great national importance that have already generated considerable media coverage."
Moreover, "many of the likely witnesses in the case have already disclosed the substance of their grand jury testimony to the public," lawyers for Dow Jones argued.
Denying a blanket protective order does not necessarily mean that documents produced by prosecutors will be publicly disclosed, nor does it prevent prosecutors or defense lawyers from seeking more limited protection regarding documents "for which there is a legitimate need for secrecy," Dow Jones said.
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