Jury Testimony

LOS ANGELES - The three-man staff at the Smoking Gun had been crashing on the story well into the wee hours Wednesday night and then through the day Thursday - scrambling to review, scan and post hundreds of pages of what the Web site claimed was grand jury testimony from the Michael Jackson sexual molestation case. "We need a back room full of monkeys to put all this stuff up there," said William Bastone, co-founder and editor of the New York-based news outlet. "We are not called on very often to process this much stuff."

Developer Ronald H. Lipscomb paid $8,750 for a political survey for a state delegate running against Sheila Dixon for mayor in 2007, according to an account of the transaction in court papers filed Monday. Del. Jill P. Carter, a Baltimore Democrat, denied any knowledge of the poll in an interview on Monday. She has not been accused of accepting donations over the $4,000 limit on individual contributions. The poll was disclosed in documents filed by attorneys for City Councilwoman Helen L. Holton, who has been charged as part of a wide-ranging City Hall corruption probe with accepting a poll from Lipscomb.

WASHINGTON -- It's grist for historians now: 4,250 pages of newly released grand jury testimony in the U.S. Justice Department's case against Alger Hiss, who was accused of being a Communist spy. Had his lawyers succeeded in their effort to see the secret material 50 years ago, however, one historian and an advocacy lawyer say, they would have had a strong argument for getting the former State Department official off the hook.As it was, the Baltimore native and Johns Hopkins University graduate went to federal prison for nearly four years after being convicted of perjury in 1950, launching a debate about his guilt or innocence that for decades has reflected the shifting politics of the day. Now come more fodder for the debate, new leads for scholarly inquiry on Cold War politics, more reasons to wonder "what if?"

WASHINGTON -- Freelance videographer Josh Wolf defied in July a federal grand jury's order to hand over raw footage of anarchists clashing with police in San Francisco. He said he was protected by the First Amendment. A federal judge said he was in contempt of court. On Aug. 1, the 24-year-old blogger reported to the federal detention facility in Dublin, Calif., and has been there since - except for a brief period in September. As of Tuesday, he had been incarcerated longer than any journalist in modern U.S. history.

Two men shot during a break-in at a Glyndon business, and the two brothers implicated in the shooting, have been asked to testify next week before a Baltimore County grand jury at what lawyers say will be a highly unusual legal proceeding. The grand jury will decide whether criminal charges should be filed against Dominic "Tony" Geckle and Matthew Geckle, owners of Back River Supply Inc., who were armed with shotguns and guarding the concrete plant the night of the shooting. They say they acted in self-defense.

WASHINGTON -- Months before she began secretly taping Monica Lewinsky, Linda R. Tripp set out to expose President Clinton's affair with the former White House intern, believing the president's actions were an "unconscionable" abuse of power, according to testimony by Tripp made public yesterday.Tripp's justification for her betraying her former friend -- one of the enduring mysteries of the Lewinsky matter -- is one of many new details to emerge from 4,610 additional pages of documents sent to Congress by independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr.

An article in yesterday's editions of The Sun about grand jury secrecy wrongly attributed to Georgetown University law professor David D. Cole a quotation about why secrecy had to give way in the case of President Clinton's videotaped grand jury testimony. The quotation came from Columbia University law professor Gerard E. Lynch.The Sun regrets the error.Pub Date: 9/19/98

SAN FRANCISCO - Victor Conte Jr., the president of BALCO, said yesterday that he had never provided steroids to San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds. "I want to inform the world I have never given anabolic steroids or any other performance-enhancing drug to Barry Bonds," Conte said during an impromptu news conference outside the federal courthouse. "In fact, I never had a discussion about anabolic steroids with Barry Bonds, and that's the truth." Conte, one of four people indicted in February for conspiracy to distribute steroids in the BALCO case, was speaking in public for the first time since the indictment.

Lawyers for two brothers on trial as drug kingpins accused the lead investigator yesterday of misleading the grand jury that indicted their clients on charges of running the largest marijuana ring in county history.County police detective Mike Chandler testified that he saw James M. Emory, 47, driving to and from storage lockers where police found hundreds of pounds of marijuana during raids Oct. 29, 1992."Was it your intention to mislead the grand jury when you said they met like 'clockwork?

Federal prosecutors charged noted Maryland con woman Deborah Kolodner yesterday with obstruction of justice and tampering with a grand jury witness -- namely, a 76-year-old man she intimated she would marry if he would recant incriminating testimony, a federal affidavit said. Kolodner, 47, an attractive redhead alleged to have enticed numerous well-to-do men to act as pawns in an elaborate mortgage-flipping scheme, was accused yesterday of writing two beguiling letters from jail to Robert Wesley Harris.

WASHINGTON -- I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby told a federal grand jury three years ago that he did not believe he had discussed the wife of an administration critic with officials from the CIA and the State Department, contradicting sworn testimony by the officials at Libby's perjury trial here. The revelation came yesterday as prosecutors began playing audio tapes of Libby's eight hours of testimony before a federal grand jury that was investigating how the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame became public.

--The damage wrought by the steroids controversy keeps growing. You already know about the compromised sanctity of the game, you know about the potential dangers posed by performance-enhancing drugs and you know about the influence that sporting officials fear will spread to our high schools and our teenage athletes. Now, with inalienable First Amendment rights lined up in the crosshairs, we're really starting to understand the depths of the danger. More than 100 people filled the seats at the U.S. District Courthouse yesterday, and there were two questions that must've threaded their way from person to person: Was it all worth it?

Matthew Cooper, a reporter for Time magazine, said the White House senior adviser Karl Rove was the first person to tell him that the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV was a CIA officer, according to a first-person account in this week's issue of the magazine. The account also stated that Rove said that Wilson's wife had played a role in sending Wilson to Africa to investigate possible uranium sales to Iraq. The article, a description of Cooper's testimony Wednesday to a federal grand jury trying to determine whether White House officials illegally disclosed the identity of a covert intelligence officer, offered the most detailed personal account of how a White House official did not merely confirm what a journalist knew but supplied that information.

LOS ANGELES - The three-man staff at the Smoking Gun had been crashing on the story well into the wee hours Wednesday night and then through the day Thursday - scrambling to review, scan and post hundreds of pages of what the Web site claimed was grand jury testimony from the Michael Jackson sexual molestation case. "We need a back room full of monkeys to put all this stuff up there," said William Bastone, co-founder and editor of the New York-based news outlet. "We are not called on very often to process this much stuff."

At least one state employee appeared before a federal grand jury this week as prosecutors continue their probe into former Baltimore County state Sen. Thomas L. Bromwell and his relationship with a construction company that received high-profile state jobs. Officials confirmed that an employee of the nonpartisan Department of Legislative Services, which provided staff for the powerful Senate committee Bromwell headed for seven years until 2002, testified Tuesday. "I am aware of one of my staffers who has been subpoenaed," Karl Aro, the department's executive director, said yesterday, adding he didn't think the employee provided valuable information.

SAN FRANCISCO - Victor Conte Jr., the president of BALCO, said yesterday that he had never provided steroids to San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds. "I want to inform the world I have never given anabolic steroids or any other performance-enhancing drug to Barry Bonds," Conte said during an impromptu news conference outside the federal courthouse. "In fact, I never had a discussion about anabolic steroids with Barry Bonds, and that's the truth." Conte, one of four people indicted in February for conspiracy to distribute steroids in the BALCO case, was speaking in public for the first time since the indictment.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton's controlled grand jury testimony, disproving speculation that he would blow his stack at his aggressive interrogators, was not the only surprise in the release of materials from independent counsel Kenneth Starr to the House Judiciary Committee.Mr. Starr also turned over information that unwittingly feeds Mr. Clinton's central argument, first voiced when Hillary Clinton complained of "a vast right-wing conspiracy," that the independent counsel is a partisan zealot out to drive him from office.

NOTHING produced by the Starr report or the subsequent deluge of evidence and testimony comes within the historic understanding of grounds for impeachment of the president.That need not stop the House of Representatives from reinterpreting the Constitution for the next century. But should the House expand the meaning to lesser and private misdeeds, it would drastically reduce the four-year presidential term to four years pending good behavior in the eyes of one's enemies.Politics would be redefined around "gotcha"-style investigations for all office-holders to come.