US marshal defends Scalia speech erasure

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press said Thursday that the deputy violated the law and "the fundamental tenets of press freedom."

But Rube's boss, Nehemiah Flowers, the US marshal for the Southern District of Mississippi, defended the deputy's actions, saying yesterday that one of the service's responsibilities is to provide a traveling Supreme Court justice with security.

"The justice informed us he did not want any recordings of his speech and remarks and when we discovered that one, or possibly two, reporters were in fact recording, she took action," Flowers said. "Even with hindsight, I can't think of what other steps she could have done."

Scalia spoke Wednesday at Presbyterian Christian High School and at William Carey College. He did not warn the high school audience that recording devices would be forbidden, but issued a warning before the college speech.

Flowers said the fact no announcement was made at the high school regarding Scalia's wishes, "could have possibly been a faux pas on our behalf."

"It would have been handled, on hindsight, a little bit different," he said.

Later yesterday, Dave Turner, a spokesman for the marshals service in Washington, said: "At this stage, ascertaining the facts of exactly what happened is important to anything the marshals service might do in the future."

In a letter to Flowers, US Marshals Service director Benigno G. Reyna, and Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, the reporters group said the deputy violated the Privacy Protection Act. The act says government officers may not seize journalists' materials.

"It is clear that the statute's purpose is to provide maximum protection for the news media against seizures of work product," the group said in a letter signed by the committee executive director, Lucy Dalglish, and two other staff members.