December 19, 2006
By ADAM LIPTAK
Federal prosecutors in New York yesterday withdrew a subpoena to the American Civil Liberties Union that had sought to retrieve all copies of a classified document.
In an opaque and defensive four-page letter to the judge in the case, the prosecutors said they were acting “in light of changed circumstances” and their determination that “the grand jury can obtain the evidence necessary to its investigation from other sources.”
Another factor may have played a role. A transcript of a closed hearing in the case that was unsealed yesterday suggested the government was going to lose.
Anthony D. Romero, the A.C.L.U.’s executive director, sounded jubilant in describing the development. “The government blinked in this standoff,” Mr. Romero said. The subpoena was unusual in that it sought not only to gather evidence but also to confiscate all tangible traces of the information in the document, apparently with the goal of preventing its distribution.
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