WASHINGTON — Risking prosecution in a rare Senate investigation of news leaks, a Newsday reporter refused Thursday to answer hundreds of questions regarding the source of his article last fall on sexual harassment charges against then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.
The reporter, Timothy Phelps, repeatedly invoked the First Amendment guarantee of press freedom. He was interrogated during almost six hours of questioning behind closed doors by the Senate special counsel, who was assigned to discover how confidential Senate Judiciary Committee information became public.
The newspaper's editor, Anthony Marro, also resisted efforts by special counsel Peter E. Fleming Jr. to discover how Newsday broke the story of allegations by Anita Faye Hill, a law professor at the University of Oklahoma, that Thomas had harassed her.
The First Amendment guarantee of press freedom, most journalists believe, also gives them the right to protect the identities of their sources. Journalists fear that sources often would be reluctant to come forward unless they could count on anonymity.
Without such a promise of confidentiality, Phelps said in a statement: "I might never again be able to tell my readers what their government does not want them to know."
After the session, Phelps described the process as potentially "intimidating to other reporters. It will have a chilling effect on the job we do."
Hill's charges led to explosive public hearings last October in which she and Thomas testified--she elaborating on her allegations in sometimes graphic testimony and he denying them while accusing the Senate of a "high-tech lynching." He was later confirmed by a Senate vote of 52 to 48, one of the narrowest in history.
Faced with widespread criticism of the Judiciary Committee's conduct of the sexually explicit televised hearings, the Senate decided to name a special counsel to try to determine how Newsday and National Public Radio reporter Nina Totenberg learned of the charges Hill had made in confidence to the committee.
Like Phelps, Totenberg has said she will refuse to answer questions about confidential sources on grounds that disclosing their identities would dry up vital information the public has a right to know. She has been subpoenaed to appear Tuesday.
