News Leaks

Facing growing opposition, Orange County Supervisor James Silva on Tuesday unexpectedly withdrew a proposed ordinance that would have punished fellow supervisors and staff with jail time for leaking information from closed-door meetings. Silva withdrew the ordinance at the board meeting before any public testimony was heard, saying that the county's district attorney told him in a meeting that several state laws would supersede his proposal.

A Los Angeles Police Department disciplinary panel Wednesday decided that a detective should be fired for leaking confidential information about the investigation into a relative's murder. The final say on Det. Michael Slider's career rests with LAPD Chief Charlie Beck, who can affirm the firing or impose a lesser punishment on the 22-year veteran. Slider's case stems from a night in September 2006 when his teenage niece, Khristina Henry, was robbed at gunpoint outside a bowling alley near Los Angeles International Airport.

State security officials arrested a university student for "providing intelligence" to a foreign correspondent based in Peking, China said Sunday. The student, Lin Jie of Tianjin University, was accused of "secret collusion" with Lawrence MacDonald, an American reporter working for Agence France-Presse, the French news agency. MacDonald, 32, of San Luis Obispo, Calif.

The family attorney of a man fatally shot by a Northern California transit officer threatened Friday to pull out of a recent wrongful death settlement and alleged the transit agency had breached confidentiality. Oscar Grant's attorney, John Burris, accused the Bay Area Rapid Transit of leaking details about the settlement talks to a San Francisco Bay area TV station. Last week, Sophina Mesa, the mother of Grant's 5-year-old daughter, settled for $1.5 million with BART. Grant, 22, was shot on a BART platform in Oakland last year.

The head of the nation's communications intelligence agency said that his operations have been harmed more by news leaks in the last several years than at any point in recent history. Army Lt. Gen. William E. Odom, director of the National Security Agency, asserted that the United States had suffered "just deadly losses" in keeping tabs on Libya through electronic means thanks to news reports. He cited a loss involving intelligence from Syria also.

In newly unsealed court papers in the Monica S. Lewinsky investigation, independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr says the White House and defense lawyers--not the prosecutor's office--were the prime suspects in a flood of leaks to the news media. Clinton's attorneys scoffed at the suggestion the White House was the source of the leaks, accusing the prosecutor's office of "trying to deflect attention from itself." Early in the inquiry, Clinton lawyer David E.

Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh said today he would not prosecute reporters who obtain news leaks about criminal investigations but would charge federal officials who are their sources. Thornburgh said a new policy of prosecuting officials who leak details of criminal investigations for theft of government property does not include charging reporters with aiding and abetting or receiving such information.

Officials who leak information to news reporters about federal criminal investigations may be prosecuted for theft of government property under a new policy announced Wednesday by the Justice Department. The department has decided to alter a policy against prosecuting officials who leak information to inform the public, John C. Keeney, a deputy assistant attorney general in the criminal division, said in written testimony submitted at a congressional hearing.

Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito, wrestling with media coverage of the O.J. Simpson case and its potential impact on the jury, denied a defense request Friday for permission to conduct a far-reaching investigation of how a false report made its way onto television.

They do it over cocktails, on airborne C-5A military cargo planes and even within earshot of the Oval Office. Mostly, though, they do it on the phone. The leaking of information, as Rear Adm. John M. Poindexter made a point of saying at the Iran- contra hearings, "has become an art form in this city." The practice took its own peculiar twist at the hearings, when Lt. Col. Oliver L.

U.S. military officials clamped down on internal Pentagon security during President Obama's Afghanistan strategy review to prevent leaks and stem an erosion of trust between the White House and Defense establishment, according to military officials. Military leaders limited attendance at Pentagon meetings, excluding nonessential staff, and warned officers and others that no one was to discuss the administration's war council meetings or related assignments, officials said. Crucial to the strategy review was top U.S. commander Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who faces lawmakers on Capitol Hill today for the first time since taking command of allied forces in Afghanistan in June and is likely to face a range of questions, both from Republican critics and from Democrats who oppose an escalation.

Nearly half the members of the House subcommittee that oversees more than $600 billion in Pentagon spending have been targeted by ethics investigators who are probing the conduct of a once-influential Washington lobbying firm, according to a confidential document that the House Ethics Committee says was inadvertently exposed. The seven members -- five Democrats and two Republicans -- received campaign donations from clients of the firm while sponsoring federal spending on projects that benefited the clients.

My 1st Amendment hero brings close-up photos of celebrity rear ends to the world, under the witty, witty headline "Beach Bums." My 1st Amendment hero delivers us the news any time someone famous looks fat, drunk or plain gaga. My 1st Amendment hero posts Mini-Me's sex tape and treats the Kardashians as if they were America's first family. And my hero also lands real scoops that the rest of the media, including this newspaper, would love to have. Yes, Harvey Levin is my 1st Amendment hero, and I'm not (that)

The founder of TMZ.com has expressed outrage at revelations that the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department obtained his telephone records as part of its investigation into who leaked information about actor-director Mel Gibson's arrest. Harvey Levin, in his first remarks since a Times article revealed how sheriff's investigators obtained his phone records, said it was a violation of state and federal laws. He also called it an abuse of power by a department embarrassed by TMZ's scoop of Gibson's profane and abusive behavior when he was arrested in Malibu in 2006.

Media law experts and journalism groups expressed outrage Thursday that Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies obtained phone records from a notable Hollywood gossip journalist during a leak investigation, calling the action a serious violation of the reporter's rights. Several said they believed that sheriff's investigators violated state and federal law when they obtained a search warrant for the records of TMZ founder Harvey Levin as they tried to identify who gave him details about Mel Gibson's anti-Semitic tirade during a 2006 drunk-driving arrest.

A Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy suspected of leaking details about Mel Gibson's anti-Semitic tirade during a 2006 drunk-driving arrest will not face criminal charges, despite records showing that two calls were made from his home on the day of the arrest to a celebrity news website. The Los Angeles County district attorney's office concluded that investigators could not identify who made the brief calls from Deputy James Mee's home to the founder of TMZ.com or who leaked portions of his report about Gibson's arrest to the website.

There will be lots of embarrassing side shows going on in Washington during January's inaugural. One of the most interesting will probably get little media attention, though, because it's the media that will be most embarrassed.

The retired judge who mediated a secret deal under which Lockheed Martin Corp. agreed to pay $60 million to more than 1,300 neighbors of its Burbank plant has ordered some of the payments withheld pending a review of how the settlement became public, company officials said Tuesday. John K.

The identity of the first puppy -- the one that the Washington press corps has been yelping about for months, the one President Obama has seemed to delight in dropping hints about -- leaked out Saturday. The little guy is a six-month-old Portuguese water dog given to the Obama girls as a gift by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts. Malia and Sasha named it Bo. Bo's a handsome little guy.

Los Angeles Police Department officials on Friday were interviewing officers and scouring electronic records amid growing suspicion that someone inside the department leaked or sold to a celebrity website a photo of the singer Rihanna that depicted injuries to her face she suffered during an alleged assault by her boyfriend.