News Leaks

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)

It only seemed as if it took six weeks. On Jan. 30, Advertising Age was the first to flat out declare what everyone in the New York media world had been whispering about for months: Married Rolling Stone Publisher Jann Wenner had done the unmentionable--he'd acquired a male companion. By the time six weeks had passed, the mainstream press had gone full tilt into action, rippling out waves of reportage now that another publication had named names.

Restaurateurs and chefs across Southern California were congratulating one another Friday on their Michelin ratings, even though the highly anticipated restaurant guide -- the first ever for Los Angeles -- wasn't scheduled to be announced until Monday. Some chefs already had figured out a way to access the list of starred restaurants on the Michelin guide website in advance of the official announcement.

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.

Toward the end of a steamy summer week in 2003, reporters were peppering the White House with phone calls and e-mails, looking for someone to defend the administration's claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. About to emerge as a key critic was Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former diplomat who asserted that the administration had manipulated intelligence to justify the Iraq invasion.

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.

Months after U.S. troops stormed into Iraq, the Pentagon drafted a top-secret document using classified intelligence to spell out Baghdad's involvement with Al Qaeda. It supported one of President Bush's strongest arguments for the war. Within days, big chunks of the classified report appeared verbatim in a conservative magazine, the Weekly Standard, complete with the paragraph numbers that are a telltale feature of Defense Department documents. Headlined "Case Closed: The U.S.

The scandal over the snooping of confidential phone records at Hewlett-Packard Co. widened Monday as Congress and the FBI launched investigations and the company's board debated the fate of Chairwoman Patricia Dunn. Federal investigators want details on the methods used by HP as it tried to ferret out leaks to the media this year. That hunt, it turned out, included potentially illegal looks at the call records of HP directors and reporters covering the company.

When Al Qaeda operative Wadih El-Hage blamed false testimony he had given to a federal grand jury on confusion and jet lag, then-assistant U.S. Atty. Patrick J. Fitzgerald was not impressed. "I submit to you," Fitzgerald told jurors at El-Hage's 2001 trial in New York, "you heard 10 of the most pathetic excuses of perjury ever known." El-Hage, once Osama bin Laden's personal secretary, is serving life in prison without the possibility of parole -- convicted of perjury, among other things.

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.

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)

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.

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.

Gov. David Paterson on Monday tried to distance himself from critical remarks about Caroline Kennedy that were leaked to the media after she withdrew from consideration to fill Hillary Rodham Clinton's Senate seat. Paterson denied a role in the leak, which included unproven allegations that Kennedy had problems with taxes, payment of a nanny and in her marriage. The Friday morning leak was provided on the condition of anonymity by a person close to the governor.

California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown won't investigate complaints by former IndyMac Bank employees that U.S. Sen. Charles E. Schumer violated state law by making comments that allegedly triggered the collapse of the big Pasadena mortgage lender.

Former IndyMac Bank workers who blame Sen. Charles E. Schumer for the collapse of the large Pasadena thrift have found an ally in their quest to hold the New York Democrat to account: a public relations firm with a Republican-heavy client list.