Maybe you've already heard. I got subpoenaed last week to testify in the federal racketeering trial of Mark Congi, Joel Cicero, Albert Celeste and Paul Bellreng, the four remaining Laborers Local 91 leaders who have not, as yet, been convicted or pleaded guilty in the case.
The subpoena came not from the U.S. Attorney's office, but from my friend, attorney Joe LaTona, who is a member of the Laborers' defense team. I won't go into the specifics of what they're looking for, other than to say it involves notes I made, documents I received at the paper and, perhaps, my testimony.
I've worked the 91 case for a long time. A quick check of the Reporter's incomparable online archive shows Dave Staba and I have combined for around 120 stories on the subject over the past five years. It was dicey business, especially before the May 2002 indictments were handed down. I was physically attacked, we had a cameraman roughed up and, on two occasions, I went downstairs to find my car window smashed or tires slashed.
So nobody had to tell me that speaking out publicly against the corrupt former leadership of Local 91 involved a certain amount of risk. Anonymous sources were the order of the day, and with good reason. As a mountain of evidence and testimony already presented in the case has shown, some of these guys were capable of doing some very bad things.
A lot of it was real cloak-and-dagger, meeting with a guy in a parking lot or a remote section of a public park, copies of documents slipped through the mail slot, sent anonymously through the mail or faxed from some Kinko's franchise. We followed up on every lead.
As has been my practice for decades, I disposed of my notes, along with the documents and tape recordings, as soon as I was through with them. The best newspaperman I've ever met, George Sample, said it only made sense.
"You don't want to get caught on a witness stand some day trying to explain what the shorthand you scribbled down two years ago means," he said.
How right he was. Back in 1999, while I was working at the Niagara Gazette, I was subpoenaed in a case involving the Niagara Falls Fire Department.
The paper's attorney, Ned Perlman, looked at me in disbelief when I told him I'd long since gotten rid of the notes, but, happily, I was never called to testify.
In any event, the only record of the Reporter's investigation into Local 91 is contained in the stories that were printed in the paper.
Which brings up the thorny issue. Would that you could as easily get rid of information you carry around in your head.
Reading over the stories now, I find that very few of them don't contain references to "a source close to the investigation" or "documents made available to the Reporter" or "a Local 91 member, speaking on the condition of anonymity."
If there hadn't been those kinds of sources, in fact, there would have been very few stories. I made promises to a lot of people, and I'm writing here today to tell them that those promises will be kept, regardless of the consequences.
Judith Miller, a top reporter for The New York Times, is sitting in jail today for refusing to reveal the name of the source on a story she ended up not even writing. A television reporter in Rhode Island, Jim Taricani, racked up $85,000 in fines and spent six months under house arrest earlier this year for refusing to reveal who gave him a copy of a videotaped FBI sting.
Journalism, and the First Amendment of the United States Constitution itself, are under an unprecedented assault in these early years of the 21st century. Corporations, government agencies and, now, union thugs are increasingly using the court system to intimidate and threaten. Freedom of speech is the very cornerstone of our democracy, and any price paid to preserve it is a bargain.
Anyway, we'll see how far they want to take this. I'm ready to go all the way.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Aug. 9 2005 |