Win Ho Lee

Playing catch up today. Or maybe it's catsup? .. Wen Ho Lee has settled his case out of court for a large sum of cold hard cash. But lest you think they just paid him what they found stashed in Jefferson's freezer, think again:

WASHINGTON (AP) - Wen Ho Lee, the former nuclear weapons scientist once suspected of being a spy, settled his privacy lawsuit Friday and will receive $1.6 million from the government and five news organizations in a case that turned into a fight over reporters' confidential sources.

They put up an impressive fight for that shield law, eh?

The payment by AP, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and ABC is the only one of its kind in recent memory, and perhaps ever, legal and media experts said. The companies said they agreed to the sum to forestall jail sentences for their reporters, even larger payments in the form of fines and the prospect of revealing confidential sources.

Among other things. Here's my previous all important and earth-shattering comment on the matter.

Gotta be a tie-in with the upcoming Libby case, right? Presumably the same precedent set by judicial orders in the Lee case would apply to the Libby case, compelling reporters to testify or hit the big house. Not quite sure, so I'll let the lawyer bloggers or Tom Maguire figure it out. I'm more interested in the politcal angle.

By making the Lee case go away the big media effectively protected their Clinton-era sources from embarrassment (some of which might still have political aspirations) while also removing any sideshow aspect of the Libby pre-game show, which will be coming to a TV set near you this fall.

Imagine them trying to hype the Libby trial, a case involving government leaks, while simultaneously trying to explain why those same reporters were fighting a little old man whom they'd earlier smeared by passing government leaks.