Free Flow Of Information Act Of 2009

Floor Speech

FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION ACT OF 2009 -- (Extensions of Remarks - April 01, 2009)

* Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, thank you for allowing me to rise in support of this bill. I would also like to thank Chairman Conyers for helping to bring this bill, H.R. 985, Free Flow of Information Act of 2009, to the floor. I also would like to thank the author of this bill, Representative Boucher for this thoughtful legislation.

* This bill is popularly known as the ``press shield law.'' I urge my colleagues to support it.

* H.R. 985, protects the public's right to know by protecting the identities of reporters' confidential sources. The bill is identical to the one that passed the House in the 110th Congress by an overwhelming bipartisan vote of 398 to 21.

* H.R. 985 creates a balancing test that would determine when the federal government may compel journalists to disclose information that they have gathered. This balancing test protects journalists from being compelled to disclose information that the government may obtain through other available means. The bill gives substantial protection to journalists' confidential sources, allowing compelled disclosure where doing so would protect national security or serve the public interest.

* This legislation is necessary because it responds to a real and on-going problem. Since 2001, five journalists have been sentenced or jailed for refusing to reveal their confidential sources in federal court. Two reporters were sentenced to 18 months in prison and one reporter faced up to $5,000 a day in fines.

* A 2006 study estimated that in that year alone, 67 federal subpoenas sought confidential materialfrom reporters. Of those, 41 subpoenas sought the name confidential sources.

* This bill establishes reasonable and well-balanced grounds for when a reporter can be compelled to testify about confidential sources. Reporters would not receive protection if information is needed to prevent or investigate an act of terrorism or other significant harm to national security, to prevent death or substantial bodily harm, to investigate a leak of properly classified information or private health or financial information, and to furnish eyewitness observation of a crime.

* Forty-nine states and the District of Columbia have various statutes or judicial decisions that protect reporters from being compelled to testify or disclose sources and information in court. H.R. 985 would set national standards similar to those that are in effect in the states.

* This bill has relevance to Texas. One of my constituents, Vanessa Legget, served maximum jail time in case. She was not the defendant--she was a reporter whose first amendment right was under siege.

* I worked extensively on this issue. Ms. Leggett spent four years researching the 1997 murder of Doris Angleton for a book she was writing. When she refused to give in to threats and intimidation by an overzealous prosecution seeking her work product she was found in contempt and jailed.

* Because of this injustice, I wrote letters to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft requesting that Leggett be permitted to assert her journalist privilege. I also requested that she be freed from incarceration. Despite my ardent efforts, Leggett remained jailed. The facts and outcome in this case were absurd. Surely, the law could not have intended for the result that transpired in the Leggett case. The present bill if enacted would address such anomalies.

* When a federal grand jury was convened to investigate the possibility of filing federal murder charges against Houstonian Robert Angleton, the city braced itself for a media frenzy. In 1998, Robert Angleton had been acquitted in state court of murdering his wife, a well-known Houstonian, Doris Angleton, who was found shot to death on April 16, 1997, in her River Oaks home. The state court had been a media circus.

* However, the person who received the most attention was not directly involved in the murder. Vanessa Leggett, a part-time college instructor and aspiring true crime writer, stole the limelight when she refused to turn over to the federal grand jury information that she had gathered during her four-year investigation. On July 19, 2001, Leggett was held in civil contempt under 28 U.S.C. sec. 1826 as a recalcitrant witness. She went to jail the next day and was not released until January 4, 2002, when the grand jury ended its Angleton investigation without handing down a single indictment.

* Leggett was incarcerated longer than any reporter in U.S. history up to that time for refusing to disclose research collected in the course of newsgathering. Texas is one of the states that had and presently has no shield law. Leggett was forced to serve the maximum term for contempt of court, which was the shorter of either the duration of the grand jury investigation or eighteen months.

* But the most disconcerting aspect of the Leggett case is that no court in Texas adequately investigated the actions of the U.S. Department of Justice or balanced the interests of the First Amendment against the government's need for Leggett's research. Indeed, there may have been no need for her information at all. On January 8, 2002, four days after Leggett's release, the U.S. attorney empanelled another grand jury to investigate Robert Angleton. It was able to hand down an indictment in sixteen days without subpoenaing Leggett or her records.

* This bill is sound. The bill will address the situation that was present in the Leggett case. It adds balance and protection to journalists in the course of their vocation. I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

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