May, 2012: Z-gate and the Sanctity of the Grand Jury

This essay, carried on Real Clear Politics, was triggered by the disclosure on April 29, 2012, in an article by Jeff Himmelman in New York Magazine [The Red Flag in the Flower Pot] that Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein had, in fact, interviewed a grand juror—something he had denied for the previous four decades. The essay discusses the importance of grand jury secrecy—and raises the issue of whether the interview(s) might not have constituted jury tampering:

Z–Gate and the Sanctity of the Grand Jury