Times E-Mail Part of Hatfill Libel Case

[DoYouEverWonder]

January 5, 2007

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- Lawyers for a former Army scientist suing The New York Times for libel said Friday that an editor at the paper warned columnist Nicholas Kristof to remove incriminating passages from a column that raised suspicions that Steven Hatfill was involved in the 2001 anthrax attacks.

Kristof left the passages in the May 2002 column despite the warning, said lawyers for Hatfill, who claims that a series of Kristof columns that year falsely implicated him as the culprit in the anthrax mailings that left five people dead.

The editor's warning to Kristof was voiced in an e-mail uncovered during the extensive pretrial discovery process, said Mark Grannis, one of Hatfill's lawyers. Grannis did not give specifics on the passages at issue outside court; he said some details of the case have been sealed.

The accusation came as a federal judge again heard arguments on whether to dismiss the lawsuit. The newspaper's lawyers argued that under federal libel law, Hatfill should be considered a public figure. The law makes it more difficult for public figures to prevail in libel cases.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-anthrax-hatfill,0,4152323.story?coll=sns-ap-nation-headlines