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To: Mr. Palau who wrote (741919)	6/2/2006 4:38:22 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 769670

this happened under slickbillie watch and cost taxpaers:Atomic Scientist Settles Privacy Suit Against U.S. By ADAM LIPTAK Published: June 2, 2006 Wen Ho Lee, an atomic scientist once suspected of espionage, yesterday settled an invasion of privacy lawsuit against the government for $1,645,000. In the suit, Dr. Lee claimed the government violated privacy laws by telling reporters about his employment history, finances, travels and polygraph tests. Five reporters had been held in contempt of court in the case and ordered to pay fines of $500 a day for refusing to disclose the identities of their sources. Though the reporters were not defendants in the privacy suit, the settlement included a $750,000 contribution from their employers. Specialists in media law said that such a payment by news organizations to avoid a contempt sanction is almost certainly unprecedented. Some said it was troubling. In a joint statement, the five news organizations — The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Associated Press, The Washington Post and ABC — said they made the payment reluctantly. "We did so," the news organizations explained, "to protect our confidential sources, to protect our journalists from further sanction and possible imprisonment, and to protect our news organizations from potential exposure." The New York Times has long maintained that it will not settle libel suits in the United States for money. Its lawyers said that the payment to Dr. Lee did not violate the principles behind that policy. The Times covered the charges against Dr. Lee aggressively. In 1999, federal investigators accused Dr. Lee of giving nuclear secrets to the Chinese, and he spent nine months in solitary confinement awaiting trial. But Dr. Lee ultimately pleaded guilty only to one felony count of illegally gathering and retaining national security data and received an apology from the judge in the case. The Times published a lengthy note "from the editors" in September 2000, saying that despite "careful reporting that included extensive cross-checking," there were "some things we wish we had done differently in the course of the coverage to give Dr. Lee the full benefit of the doubt." In their statement today, the news organizations said the settlement was not connected to their coverage of the case against Dr. Lee. "The journalism in this case — which was not challenged in Lee's lawsuit — reported on a matter of great public interest," the statement said, "and the public could not have been informed about the issues without the information we were able to obtain only from confidential sources." More Articles in Washington »