New York - The journalist jailed in Texas for refusing to turn over interview notes and tapes to federal prosecutors has written an impassioned column in Newsweek magazine this week charging that her imprisonment is a result of her refusal to sell her information to the FBI, Elaine Lafferty reports.
Ms Vanessa Leggett (33) was interviewing people for a book about a Texas murder case. "Two years after the state-court acquittal, the FBI sought my help in its investigation of Robert Angleton for federal charges, including murder for hire," Ms Leggett writes in Newsweek. "Agents offered me a confidential-informant contract, which stipulated that I would provide them with my research in exchange for cash. I declined... As I pushed the document back across the table to one agent, another agent handed me a federal-grand-jury subpoena. The government continued to file subpoenas in the next few months, and I continued to resist."