ARMAVIRUMQUE: Is the New York Times About to be Indicted? ARMAVIRUMQUE: Is the New York Times About to be Indicted?

Armavirumque (from Virgil's opening line) asks: Is the New York Times About to be Indicted? Michael Barone in the U.S. News and World Report makes a similar point in an article titled: Official secrets as well as Scott Johnson in the Weekly Standard in an article titled: Did the New York Times break the law with its wire-tapping story?

Barone asks if the legal theory of latches applies, since newspapers have never been prosecuted for this sort of leaking. Johnson answers this indirectly by citing New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971; otherwise known as the Pentagon Papers case), where a concurring opinion specifically referred to the statute under which the NYT could be prosecuted (18 U.S.C. 798) as one under which papers could be prosecuted - after the fact, but not preemptively as was litigated in that case.