Did the Chicago Tribune halt the Blago investigation?

By Thomas Lifson

Writing in the Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire, Cam Simpson makes the startling case that it was the Chicago Tribune which caused the Blago wiretaps to be wrapped up before the actual crime of selling a senate seat was accomplished, by publishing news that the feds were taping Blago and an adviser was cooperating with the investigation.

"At Fitzgerald's request, the paper had been holding back a story since October detailing how a confidante of Blagojevich was cooperating with his office... But editors decided to publish the story on Friday, Dec. 5, ending the Tribune's own cooperation deal with the prosecutor."

Randall Hoven adds:

Here's my thinking on keeping secrets. If you want to keep a secret, you don't tell anybody about it. If you want to publicize something, you tell the newspapers about it.

The last person you would share a secret with is a newspaper editor! Don't they teach that in prosecutor school - in Undercover Ops 101?

I guess to be fair to Fitzgerald, it might not have been he or his office who told the Tribune. Maybe it was the "confidante of Blagojevich" himself. The story doesn't say.

I sure hope this is not the way federal prosecutors normally keep secrets.