Cases pit US crime fighters against a free press

Americans weary of the widespread coverage of Chandra Levy's disappearance may find it difficult to appreciate the importance of a free press just now.

But this summer, journalists and First Amendment experts are increasingly concerned that press rights are under fire and that the government is the one taking aim.

Tomorrow, a woman who has been sitting in a Houston jail cell since July because she wouldn't comply with a subpoena to turn over research, will break the record for the longest time served by a writer for contempt of court.

Last week, an Associated Press reporter received a letter from a US attorney explaining that the government had subpoenaed his phone records from the phone company in May without telling him, in what some in the media assume was an attempt to find a government source.

And if that weren't enough to send those in the media running for their copies of the Constitution, tomorrow, the Senate is scheduled to hold hearings on legislation that would punish current and former government employees for leaking classified information - an effort to stifle the news before it can get to reporters.

The convergence of these situations, particularly the subpoenas, has prompted a debate about whether the new administration is shifting Washington's decades-old policy about treatment of the media during investigations, or is just making a few mistakes as it settles in.

"I'm not persuaded yet that this is a new policy," says Floyd Abrams, a First Amendment lawyer. "I think the administration is feeling its way. But even if that's correct, it's disturbing that the Department of Justice has twice in such a short time taken positions so troubling."

It's been 10 years since the last time the Justice Department is known to have subpoenaed a journalist's phone records. It's been even longer since federal regulations were set up to protect members of the fourth estate from government invasions of privacy.

During the Watergate era, the government took steps to regulate its treatment of the media. Subpoenaing reporters' phone records was addressed in particular -a step to be taken only when all other reasonable alternatives had been exhausted. It's even rarer for a reporter not to be informed in advance, although it's allowable if a threat to the integrity of the investigation might exist.

Democratic and Republican administrations have followed the regulations for the past 30 years, and the Bush Department of Justice said last week that it has made no changes to the policy with regard to subpoenas.

But the AP case has alarmed many observers. The assumption, based on the timing of the subpoena, is that reporter John Solomon's phone records were wanted in connection with a story he wrote in May about a wiretap connected with the federal investigation of Sen. Robert Torricelli (D) of New Jersey. Unlike other subpoenas the wire service receives, it didn't have a chance to dispute this one ahead of time.

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