Odd, yet legitimate. Here comes something called Judicial Watch, which is suing the Clinton administration, trying so far without success to subpoena Whitewater-related notes and data about New Yorker writer Jane Mayer's dealings in the past five years with nearly everyone who is anyone in Washington. There goes ABC handing over to Starr out-takes from an interview Diane Sawyer did with former Clinton friend and Arkansas associate Susan McDougal. And there goes, too, Pittsburgh station WPXI handing over videotape of an interview it did with Lewis Fox, the retired Secret Service officer who may or may not have seen interesting doings in the Oval Office. Here comes Starr seeking information from The Wall Street Journal and Time about facts gathered by a reporter who had worked for both.
Grand juries operate in secret, and much of a special prosecutor's activities take place under seal.
The prosecutors themselves are barred from disclosing who has been subpoenaed. In the past, yelping was usually response number one. The yelping itself led the Justice Department in 1973 to issue guidelines limiting the government's power to subpoena the press. Under those guidelines, subpoenas can be issued only in criminal cases, only where there appears to be no other source for the information sought, only if the information is considered essential to the government's case, and only after negotiation with the news organization to try to find ways to ensure its rights and accommodate its needs. What's more, except in rare cases, the subpoenas can be used only to verify information that already had been printed or aired.