-Caveat Lector-
I haven't noticed anything about these on the list:
>From APBnews.com
http://www.apbnews.com/newscenter/breakingnews/2000/11/09/waco1109_01.html
Former Waco Prosecutor Indicted
Charged With Lying, Withholding Evidence
Nov. 9, 2000
AP
Former assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Johnson is charged with lying and obstruction of
justice.
ST. LOUIS (AP) -- A former government prosecutor has been indicted on federal charges
of obstructing the investigation into the 1993 siege at the Branch Davidian compound
at Waco, Texas, that he helped set in motion.
Former assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Johnston was charged with two counts of
obstruction of justice and three counts of lying to investigators and a federal grand
jury.
The indictment was returned Wednesday as Waco special counsel John C. Danforth
released his final report absolving the government of wrongdoing in the siege.
Attorney Michael Kennedy, while acknowledging that Johnston made mistakes in his
dealings with the special counsel, called the charges baseless and unfair.
"Danforth seeks to destroy the messenger and whitewash the governmental excesses of
Waco," he said. "While Bill's mistakes were harmless, the same cannot be said for so
many other government employees, who today are merely chastised or ignored completely
by Mr. Danforth."
Johnston helped draft the search warrant that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and
Firearms tried to execute on Feb. 28, 1993, at the Waco compound. The botched raid
turned into a gunfight in which four federal agents and six Davidians were killed.
81 dead
The shootout sparked the 51-day standoff that ended on April 19, 1993, with a fire
that consumed the compound, killing sect leader David Koresh and some 80 followers
inside.
Johnston in 1994 helped convict nine Davidians during their criminal trial.
In 1999, federal Judge Walter S. Smith Jr. ordered the government to give him all
records and evidence connected with the standoff. Johnston then complained publicly
that the Justice Department was covering up evidence showing FBI agents had fired
pyrotechnic tear gas at the compound.
Incendiary devices
Justice Department and FBI officials denied for years that the government had used
anything capable of sparking fires when they employed tanks and tear gas to try to end
the standoff.
The FBI's subsequent confirmation that some pyrotechnic tear gas was used prompted
Attorney General Janet Reno to ask Danforth to investigate.
In July, Danforth in a preliminary report absolved the government of blame in the
blaze. A week earlier, an advisory jury hearing a $675 million wrongful-death lawsuit
brought by surviving cult members and the victims' families reached the same
conclusion.
Didn't turn over notes
Johnston left the U.S. attorney's office in February, and Danforth's investigators
questioned him repeatedly. He admitted in July that he had withheld several pages of
notes from 1993 dealing with the FBI's use of pyrotechnic gas.
A congressional report issued last week praised Johnston for helping reveal the use of
pyrotechnics but condemned his failure to surrender the notes, which indicated he was
told in 1993 that FBI agents fired several incendiary military tear gas grenades.
"I don't perceive him as a whistle-blower," Danforth said. "Because I think the
meaning of whistle-blower is somebody who brings into the light things that were
hidden. The allegations in this indictment are to the contrary: somebody who hides
things."
Johnston said in a statement Wednesday that he withheld the notes out of fear that
hostile colleagues might try to use what he had written to discredit him. He added
that he didn't reveal the notes to Danforth because his investigators "treated me with
the same loathing and hostility that I had encountered from the Justice Department."
----------------------------------------------------------
Also from APBnews.com
http://www.apbnews.com/newscenter/breakingnews/2000/11/09/globe1109_01.html
Tabloid Editor Cleared in Ramsey Case
Globe Agrees to Fund Journalism Ethics Course
Nov. 9, 2000
By Keith Coffman
AP
JonBenet Ramsey
GOLDEN, Colo. (APBnews.com) -- A tabloid newspaper plans to donate $100,000 to a
journalism school in exchange for criminal charges being dropped against an editor who
tried to buy evidence in the unsolved JonBenet Ramsey murder case.
While the Globe newspaper admitted under a deal struck with prosecutors that editor
Craig Lewis was "wrong" when in April 1997 he attempted to buy a purported ransom note
in the case, the Florida-based tabloid stopped short of admitting to breaking any laws.
"The newsgathering practices ... were the result of attempts to obtain newsworthy
information concerning the Ramsey homicide," the Globe said in a written statement
issued today. "Whether this conduct violated the laws of the state of Colorado has not
yet been determined."
The donated money will go to fund journalism ethics courses at the University of
Colorado in Boulder, the statement said.
The case was a sideshow to the unsolved slaying of the child beauty queen.
Six-year-old JonBenet was found beaten and strangled to death in her parents' Boulder
home on Dec. 26, 1996. A grand jury probing the murder disbanded in October 1999
without returning an indictment, although authorities say the parents, John and Patsy
Ramsey, remain under suspicion in their daughter's death.
Lewis, 45, was indicted by a grand jury in December 1999 under obscure Colorado laws
of criminal extortion and commercial bribery.
The indictment alleged Lewis offered a private investigator hired by the Ramseys
$30,000 for a copy of the ransom note that Patsy Ramsey told police she found in her
home. The investigator, former Denver police Detective J. Donald Vacca, refused to
part with the document.
Case dismissed
Lewis' attorney, Jeffrey Pagliuca, told APBnews.com that his client, who faced a
maximum nine-year prison sentence and up to $600,000 in fines if convicted on all the
charges, was pleased with the outcome.
"The case was dismissed so it doesn't get any better than that," he said. "The other
positive result is that there will be continued discussion to reach legal and
journalistic clarity on these ethical issues with the Globe's donation."
Jefferson County District Attorney Dave Thomas, who presented the case to the grand
jury, called the settlement "restorative justice."
"This donation will do much more than a sentence or fine to teach others that the
conduct described in Mr. Lewis' indictment is not acceptable in our community," Thomas
said.
The case has gone through 11 months of legal wrangling as lawyers for the Globe tried
to have the indictments quashed on First Amendment grounds, but ultimately the
Colorado Supreme Court allowed the charges to stand.
The University of Colorado's interim dean of journalism, Stewart Hoover, said he was
"well aware of the irony" of a paper with the Globe's reputation funding a journalism
ethics course.
"There was debate among the faculty on whether to accept the money," Hoover told
APBnews.com. "But like any other public entity, we have to rely on external resources,
so we decided to make some lemonade from the lemons."
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