SAN FRANCISCO Contempt case over rally video

A federal judge has ordered a freelance journalist to surrender video footage of a July 2005 clash between San Francisco police and anarchist demonstrators or face jail for contempt of court.

The journalist, Josh Wolf, said Monday he would refuse to turn over the tapes, even if U.S. District Judge William Alsup rejects his legal defense at a hearing Thursday.

"I am prepared to go to jail,'' said Wolf, 24. He said that his tapes don't show the event federal prosecutors say they are investigating -- the alleged vandalism of a police car -- and that yielding the videos would turn him into "a surveillance camera for the government.''

Wolf's lawyer, Jose Luis Fuentes, said Wolf could be jailed for as long as a year, the possible duration of the federal grand jury investigating the incident.

The case arises against a backdrop of the federal government increasingly seeking to require journalists to disclose confidential sources and unpublished material.

New York Times reporter Judith Miller, one of several reporters targeted by a special prosecutor, was jailed for 85 days last year for refusing to identify the source of her information that Valerie Wilson, the wife of Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson, was a CIA agent.

A federal judge has scheduled a hearing Aug. 4 to determine whether Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams should be ordered to reveal their sources of testimony by Barry Bonds and other athletes before a grand jury investigating a laboratory's illicit distribution of steroids. The reporters could be held in contempt and jailed if they refuse to testify.

Fuentes said he would ask Alsup to transfer Wolf's case to U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White, who is hearing the case of the Chronicle reporters. The lawyer said the two cases should be considered together because they raise the same issue: whether federal law provides any implicit protection for journalists who withhold confidential information from grand juries.

Wolf's case arises from a protest July 8, 2005, in the Mission District against an international economic summit in Scotland. As officers pursued a band of anarchists, a San Francisco police car was allegedly set on fire.

Federal prosecutors have said in court filings that the vandalism could be a federal crime because the Police Department receives federal funds. Federal law, unlike California law, contains no explicit protections for reporters who refuse to reveal confidential sources or unpublished material.

Part of Wolf's video of the demonstration was shown on local television. Prosecutors have been seeking the rest of the footage since February.

Alsup first ordered Wolf to produce the material June 15, after a closed-door hearing. According to a transcript that Alsup later made public, the judge told Wolf he had no basis for withholding the tapes, and cited Miller's case.

Wolf appeared before the grand jury later that day, declared that he had a constitutional right to remain silent and to discuss the jury's questions with his lawyers, and was abruptly excused from the hearing by a prosecutor without explanation, according to Wolf's attorneys.

But prosecutors returned to Alsup three weeks later with a request to hold Wolf in contempt of court. The judge signed an order July 10 telling Wolf that, unless he justified his refusal to comply with the demand for the tapes, he would be held in civil contempt for the rest of the grand jury's term.

Fuentes said the grand jury investigating the demonstration convened in January and could remain in operation through next July.

The lawyer said he would assert a variety of defenses for Wolf, including a claim that he had the right to remain silent to avoid possible self-incrimination. Fuentes declined to explain how Wolf could incriminate himself, but said he would provide a written explanation to Alsup under seal.

If Alsup upholds Wolf's self-incrimination claim, a claim he rejected in the earlier hearing, the government could grant Wolf immunity from prosecution and ask the judge to order him to testify.