Media Coverage and a Federal Grand Jury

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ors question a witness. Attorneys for witnesses must wait outside the grand jury room. Even prosecutors and transcribers are barred from being present while the grand jury deliberates or votes. And although witnesses may discuss their testimony afterwards, federal rules strictly forbid grand jurors, prosecutors or stenographers from doing so. 10 Grand jury secrecy is designed to protect the rights of innocent people who may unfairly come under suspicion by prosecutors but ultimately are not charged. Secrecy can also help encourage witnesses to testify without fear of publicity and can prevent criminal targets from fleeing or destroying evidence, or intimidating or silencing witnesses. 11 The grand jury system has deep roots in both American and British law. 12 Grand juries were originally dubbed the “People’s Panel” because they are composed of ordinary citizens and were intended to be a check on overzealous prosecutors. According to the Supreme Court, the grand jury has historically “been regarded as a primary security for the innocent against hasty, malicious, and oppressive prosecution; it serves the invaluable function in our society of standing between accuser and accused.” 13 However, grand juries have frequently been misused for political purposes. During the 1930s, New York prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey greatly expanded the use of grand juries to force testimony and thereby make it easier to imprison corrupt politicians. In the 1950s, government officials used grand juries to interrogate suspected Communists and then jail them for contempt of court when they refused to answer questions. By thus abusing the grand jury system, prosecutors were able to find a way to imprison dissidents even though authorities lacked sufficient evidence to convict them of any underlying crimes. By the 1960s, grand juries followed the recommendations of prosecutors in more than 97 per cent of all cases. The trend toward turning grand juries into proverbial “rubber stamps” of prosecutors—panels that would, to borrow another cliché, readily indict a ham sandwich 14 — only accelerated over time. F. Lee Bailey voiced the view of many defense lawyers of that era when he called the contemporary grand jury “a flock of sheep led by the prosecutor across the meadows to the finding he wants.” 15 In 1969, after being elected president on a law-and-order platform, Richard Nixon expanded the powers of federal grand juries and used them to crack down on street crime and leftist political dissent. Under the direction of Attorney General John Mitchell, a Nixon friend who managed the President’s political campaigns, the Justice Department began using grand juries to gather domestic po- 10 • American Journalism —
litical intelligence. The Republican administration forced left-leaning activists to answer questions under oath about who their associates were, much as the government did during the Redbaiting 1950s; this raw intelligence was then computerized and used to generate lists of other dissidents to question before future grand juries. 16 In addition, Nixon administration prosecutors began using the grand jury system in obvious “fishing expeditions” to try to force journalists to reveal confidential sources. 17 In contrast to its original historical design, one scholar noted, the grand jury system “became an important weapon in the hands of the prosecutors whose powers it had been created to check.” 18 Or as another expert put it, “an institution designed to protect us from the dangers of a police state has been used to bring us still closer to one.” 19 But ironically, in his second term as president, Richard Nixon began seeking ways to curb the power of the grand jury that he had helped to expand. The reason was not a philosophical change of heart but self-preservation: Nixon himself was personally the target of the Watergate grand jury. The Watergate Grand Jury In June 1972, Washington, D.C., police caught five men with illegal bugging devices at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate office complex. The arrest of the Watergate burglars—who turned out to be part of a wide-ranging political espionage and sabotage operation run by the Nixon campaign—eventually unraveled a much larger White House cover-up directed by the President himself, one that would lead to his resignation in disgrace twenty-six months later. Nonetheless, the President’s press secretary dismissed the break-in as a “third-rate burglary” and the case was initially handled in a manner similar to other routine crimes—with a grand jury investigation led by federal prosecutors from the local U.S. attorney’s office. 20 At first, media coverage of the Watergate break-in was typical of any other local crime story, covered off the police blotter by metro beat reporters who interviewed detectives and attended the suspects’ arraignment. As the hometown newspaper with the greatest local bench strength, the Washington Post scored the earliest scoops about the case, thanks to verbal leaks by police, witnesses, and attorneys involved in the grand jury investigation. 21 The Post’s reporting suggested the story was of national import and other me- — Spring 2007 • 11
Page 1 and 2: American Journalism, 24(2), 7-33 Co
Page 3: Historical and Legal Background At
Page 7 and 8: grand jury testimony “compared th
Page 9 and 10: Jack Anderson has them—ugh—verb
Page 11 and 12: want to get into a diversionary bat
Page 13 and 14: tion, no threats, no coercion of an
Page 15 and 16: grand jury. But the new attorney ge
Page 17 and 18: 1976), 99; and Timothy Mark Chamble
Page 19 and 20: 18 Cowan, 37. 19 Goodell, 24, 22. 2
Page 21 and 22: tice Department. Glanzer stated tha
Page 23 and 24: And to my total astonishment, the g
Page 25 and 26: Washington, D.C. In his memoirs, An
Page 27: 2000). 82 Timothy Robinson, “Wate

Media Coverage and a Federal Grand Jury

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