On Friday, October 6, Charles Bakaly, former spokesman for Kenneth Starr's Office of Independent Counsel, was acquitted of contempt of court charges brought by the Clinton Justice Department. The charges were the product of a leak investigation instigated by Clinton lawyer David Kendall, who in February 1999 had pounced on a New York Times story quoting unnamed "associates of Mr. Starr" to the effect that they might indict the president after he left office. At the time, in a sworn declaration to federal judge Norma Holloway Johnson, Bakaly denied being the source of any grand jury secrets revealed by the Times story. Later, however, Bakaly acknowledged to FBI agents that he had, in fact, talked to the Times's reporter, Don Van Natta Jr., and was the source for some of the paper's information. That appeared to contradict his sworn declaration, so Bakaly was charged with contempt of court -- which prosecution now ends with his vindication by Judge Johnson, largely on grounds that the Times story contained no grand jury leaks.
All of which was reported by the Times itself on Saturday, October 7, in a dispatch by reporter David Stout. Curiously, though, Stout neglected to report much the most interesting conclusion Johnson reached in her acquittal decision -- even though it directly concerned his newspaper. For Judge Johnson found, as our David Tell previously predicted she would, that it was Times reporter Van Natta's "misleading," "deeply disturbing," and "fraudulent" journalism that allowed David Kendall to get this whole thing rolling in the first place. All the most inflammatory quotations Van Natta attributed to "associates of Mr. Starr," Judge Johnson points out, were in fact "lifted verbatim" from historical material concerning the Watergate investigation of 1974 -- and then "falsely described as present day debates within the OIC."
This is big news, one would think. But it wasn't fit to print in the Times. Too embarrassing to the paper's vanity.