Leaks

The author of a popular syndicated travel column was subpoenaed by the Department of Homeland Security after publishing a new security directive issued after the recent attempt to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight into Detroit on Christmas Day.

The D.C. federal district court ruled Thursday that a U.S. attorney’s personal e-mail correspondence, sent from his work account, was private and cannot be used to bolster former Justice Department attorney Richard Convertino’s lawsuit against the government, The National Law Journal reported.

Most of the FBI's interview of former Vice President Dick Cheney about the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity must be released to the public, a federal judge ordered today.

A former Baltimore police official's lawsuit, alleging his free-speech rights were violated when he was fired after leaking a memo to a newspaper, was revived Thursday in a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond (4th Cir.).

The Associated Press wants a Pennsylvania judge to open up his inquiry into grand jury leaks from a casino owner's perjury case, in an ongoing matter that has so far seen more than a dozen subpoenas of reporters sent out, and then quashed.

A sheriff's deputy in North Carolina posed as a Newsweek reporter to coax an anonymous source out of a local newspaper journalist. And it worked.

In a case of scandal climbing atop scandal, the deputy got The (Jacksonville) Daily News reporter Lindell Kay to hand over the phone number of a source in a high-profile homicide case, leading to criminal charges against an intern in the local district attorney's office.

A lawyer investigating a grand jury leak turned to Pennsylvania state legislative staffers to get the cell phone numbers of at least eight reporters already subpoenaed in the case, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Senate Minority Leader Robert J. Mellow said it was a routine constituent service for his staff to help attorney Sal Cognetti find cell numbers of reporters subpoenaned in an investigation involving his client.

U.S. District Court Judge Cormac Carney ordered Washington Times reporter William Gertz to identify the confidential sources who provided information for a 2006 story he wrote about the prosecution of a Chinese spy ring in California.

In the story, Gertz correctly reported that new charges would be filed against Chi Mak, an engineer who worked for several American defense contractors, and several of his relatives. 

Less than a week after U.S. District Judge Jeffrey S. White lifted an injunction against the whistleblower Web site Wikileaks, the Swiss bank dropped its lawsuit.

Julius Baer and Co. said it reserved the right to pursue its case at a later date in the same court or elsewhere.

Last week a federal judge ordered a Web site that posts leaked material to disable itself entirely before coming back to say it only needed to stop posting certain documents related to a case brought by a Cayman Islands bank.