Football
Associated Press 18y

SF Chronicle writers challenge Bonds leak subpoena

SAN FRANCISCO - Two San Francisco Chronicle reporters subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury about how they got Barry Bonds' leaked testimony urged a judge on Wednesday to let them off the hook.

The Chronicle's Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, the latest reporters to become entangled in the federal government's ramped-up efforts to investigate leaks, argued that the First Amendment protects reporters and their sources.

In an affidavit accompanying their filing, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Carl Bernstein wrote U.S. District Judge Martin Jenkins of San Francisco that anonymous sources were instrumental in breaking the Watergate scandal.

Fainaru-Wada and Williams have been have been subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury investigating who leaked them the secret testimony of San Francisco giants slugger Bonds, the Yankees' Jason Giambi and other professional athletes.

About two dozen athletes were called before an earlier San Francisco grand jury in 2004 as part of the government's investigation into the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative - the California nutritional supplement lab that was exposed as a steroid ring.

The Chronicle published the testimony in a series of stories beginning in late 2004. Both Fainaru-Wada and Williams say they aren't going to comply with the supoena, which means they could be fined and jailed until they divulge their sources. The reporters also could be jailed for a fixed term for contempt if Jenkins forces them to appear the grand jury.

In his affadavit, Bernstein wrote that the ability to guarantee sources anonymity was crucial to investigative journalism. He and Bob Woodward would not have been able to expose the Watergate scandal unless they guaranteed confidentiality to Mark Felt, the former No. 2 at the Federal Bureau of Investigation who outed himself last year as Deep Throat, Bernstein said.

"Almost all of the articles I co-authored with Mr. Woodward on Watergate could not have been reported or published without the assistance of our confidential sources and without the ability to grant them anonymity, including the individual known as Deep Throat," he wrote.

Mark Corallo, a former press secretary to Attorney General John Ashcroft, also submitted an affadavit on behalf of the newspaper reporters, characterizing the subpoenas as "a waste of government and taxpayer resources."

According to the two reporters, Bonds testified that he ingested substances provided by his trainer, Greg Anderson, but said he thought it was flaxseed oil. Anderson was among the five defendants convicted in the BALCO probe.

The Chronicle stories developed into a 2006 book called "Game of Shadows."

The articles paved the way for Major League Baseball to adopt stricter rules against steroid use.

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