	id AA01943; Tue, 6 Dec 94 15:12:39 CST
Subject: Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 3 Num. 13


              Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 3  Num. 13
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                    ("Quid coniuratio est?")
 
 
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Court muzzles paper, keeps Whitewater quiet
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USA Today - 12/06/94
Point of view by Michael Gartner
 
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- If you have any outrage left -- if you 
haven't used it all up on Jesse Helms or Hillary Clinton or Newt 
Gingrich or whomever you're mad at this week -- direct it at 
David Sentelle, John Butzner, and Peter P. Fay.
 
They are doing far more damage to you and to your country than 
are the front-page, household names you're used to grousing 
about.
 
Sentelle is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District 
of Columbia circuit, and Butzner and Fay are senior appelate 
judges. They have issued a ruling in a case involving *The Wall 
Street Journal*, and they have told the *Journal* -- and the rest 
of the press -- that it can't even print what the ruling is.
 
Let me go over that one more time for you:
 
A court has ruled in an important case and told the press it 
can't tell you and me what it ruled.
 
It's outrageous.
 
It's bizarre.
 
It's unconstitutional.
 
But it has happened. In America.
 
Here are the facts:
 
In January, Attorney General Janet Reno appointed Robert Fiske to 
investigate the Whitewater matter. He looked into the death of 
Vincent Foster, the removal of documents from his office, and 
that whole mess -- alleged mess, at least -- involving the 
Clintons, Whitewater Development Corp. and Madison Guaranty 
Savings and Loan.
 
In August, after a change in the law about how investigations 
were to be handled, a special arm of the Circuit Court of Appeals 
took jurisdiction from the attorney general and replaced Fiske 
with Kenneth W. Starr. Fiske then turned in -- apparently -- his 
final report, filing it with the Circuit Court.
 
In October, *The Wall Street Journal* heard that Fiske had indeed 
filed his report and that it had been sealed by the court. The 
*Journal* then went to court and asked for a copy of the report 
-- if such a report exists.
 
Nothing happened.
 
Fiske and Starr filed responses with the court but didn't tell 
the *Journal*.
 
A *Journal* lawyer then called the office of each man and asked 
for a copy of his response.
 
Each "refused to comment on that topic, and would not even 
disclose whether they had filed a response," a court document 
states.
 
In November, the court ruled on the *Journal's* request for a 
copy of the Fiske report. Presumably, the court said the 
*Journal* couldn't have it. But -- and here the outrage 
quadruples -- the court sealed its own response.
 
And it told the *Journal* it could not print a story saying what 
that response was.
 
This is known, in the language of the law, as a "prior 
restraint."
 
"Prior restraints on speech and publication are the most serious 
and the least tolerable infringement on First Amendment rights," 
the Supreme Court noted in 1976. The "damage can be particularly 
great when the prior restraint falls upon the communication of 
news and commentary on current events," it added.
 
Not even the Pentagon Papers -- that explosive history of the war 
in Vietnam with reams of classified information -- were deemed 
too sensitive for our eyes. The Nixon administration tried to 
stop us from reading them -- it sought a prior restraint -- but 
the Supreme Court said no.
 
In appealing to the Supreme Court to overturn this prior 
restraint, lawyers for the *Wall Street Journal* wrote: "It is 
inconceivable that there can be any legitimate, much less 
extraordinary, reason for shielding the public from knowledge 
that" -- and there the sentence ends. For the appeal is a public 
document, and therefore it cannot say what's under seal.
 
It implies that the *Journal* lawyers know what's in the sealed 
document, but if they do they aren't talking.
 
The Appeals Court "did not even attempt to explain or justify the 
prohibition against publication before entering it," the brief 
states.
 
I called the Appeals Court and asked the clerk why the decision 
had been sealed. "I can't answer it. I can't even discuss it," he 
said. "There is no public record of it, so I can't speak about 
it." Perhaps I could speak to one of the judges, I said. "The 
court speaks through me," he replied.
 
*The Wall Street Journal* appealed to Chief Justice William H. 
Rehnquist, and Monday he apparently sidestepped the issue.
 
So this is the situation:
 
Robert Fiske, the Whitewater investigator, presumably has written 
and filed a final report. *The Wall Street Journal* has asked to 
see a copy. The court apparently has said "no." And the court has 
told *The Wall Street Journal* that it can't even tell that to 
anyone.
 
Why?
 
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Aperi os tuum muto, et causis omnium filiorum qui pertranseunt.
Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et 
  pauperem.                    -- Liber Proverbiorum  XXXI: 8-9 

 Brian Francis Redman    bigxc@prairienet.org    "The Big C"
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    Coming to you from Illinois -- "The Land of Skolnick"        
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