The Inmate

(Page 2 of 2)

It was a terrific story. At the pretrial hearing, I sat in a row near the front with a large group of Houston newspaper and television reporters. When I took a moment to look around the rest of the courtroom, I saw a young woman sitting a few rows back, her head bent toward her lap, furiously scribbling notes. I did a double take. It was Leggett. "This is just like Blood and Money," she breathlessly told me out in the hallway, referring to the Tommy Thompson best-seller about the 1969 murder of a River Oaks socialite. "This is the book I want to write." Again, I tried not to smile, and I wished her luck. If someone had told me at that moment that Leggett would soon become one of the most interesting and controversial figures in the entire Angleton saga and that I would end up writing about her, I would have laughed out loud.

Then Leggett scooped me and every other reporter on the story: She got between forty and sixty hours of taped interviews with Roger just before his mysterious suicide in a Harris County jail cell before Robert's trial. In those interviews, he told Leggett in detail how Robert had hired him to murder Doris. When the Harris County district attorney heard about the tapes, Leggett was hit with a subpoena demanding that she turn them over. She willingly provided copies to the DA, though the interviews ultimately were not introduced at trial because, according to the judge, they amounted to hearsay from a dead man who could not be cross-examined. With that potential bombshell under wraps, Robert Angleton was acquitted of murder charges in August 1998.

Although the rest of us in the news media moved on, Leggett became more obsessed with the Angleton case than ever, and when word broke last year that the U.S. attorney's office and the FBI were investigating him again—according to Angleton's attorney, they were trying to amass evidence to reindict him for capital murder and racketeering charges—she found herself way ahead on the story. By then, she had done several interviews with Angleton. She had gone to New York to investigate Angleton's alleged underworld connections. She had interviewed his schoolteachers and childhood friends along with River Oaks residents who had socialized with him and his wife. She had spoken to his former employees and clients in the bookmaking business, as well as rival bookies and Houston cops who had used him as an informant. Many of those sources, she says, talked to her only if she promised not to reveal their names.

Apparently, she was also way ahead of the feds. I remember Leggett telling me last year that she was meeting with the Houston-based FBI agents who were looking into the Angleton case. She said she told them the things she knew and they told her the things they knew. She also appeared before the federal grand jury investigating Angleton and talked about what she had learned. Clearly she was no stereotypical anti-establishment reporter. She loved cops, loved talking to them, and didn't mind helping them out.

But in November 2000, when the FBI took the unusual step of asking her to become a paid informant, her willingness to cooperate came to an end. She feared the feds would try to control the dissemination of the information she was gathering about Angleton, complicating her plans to write a book, so she turned them down—and only then did she receive the subpoena asking for all of her information and sources.

"I'm going to be an inmate," Leggett told me, nearly in tears, when she called me the day after a judge ruled she'd go to prison if she didn't comply with the subpoena.

"Look on the bright side," I said, naively assuming her incarceration would last only a few days before a deal would be struck to let her out. "You might get a little publicity out of this. It might even help you get a book deal."

ACCORDING TO THE JUDGE'S RULING, Leggett must remain in custody as long as the federal grand jury investigates the Angleton case. The grand jury is scheduled to expire in early January but may be extended for another six months, which means Leggett would be behind bars until at least next summer. Even then, the U.S. attorney's office could keep her in prison by indicting her and trying her on a new set of criminal contempt charges.I agree with Leggett's tormentor, assistant U.S. attorney Clark, about one thing: If a journalist has information that can help law enforcement officials get to the bottom of a crime, he or she should quickly publish it or make sure the authorities know about it. But what is so peculiar about his subpoena is that it specifically asks Leggett to reveal the content of her conversations with Angleton's attorneys and certain Houston homicide detectives and FBI agents. Why in the world would he need to find out from Leggett the names of the law enforcement officers she had spoken to? And how would that information help Clark put together a criminal case against Angleton?

I wanted Leggett to tell me why she thinks the subpoena is so broad, but at the request of DeGeurin, who has counseled her not to speculate about what Clark's motives might be, she won't say. Still, there are several possible explanations. Clark could be worried about how Leggett characterizes the FBI agents in her notes. If she writes, for instance, that the feds told her about their determination to find a way to bring down Angleton, then Angleton's attorney, Michael Ramsey, could use that information in a future trial to argue that his client was the target of a vindictive government prosecution. Maybe Clark believes Leggett has shared information with Ramsey about her conversations with the FBI, and thus he wants to know what Ramsey knows. Leggett insists, however, that she has told Ramsey nothing. Ramsey tells me too that Leggett has not shared the content of any of her interviews with him. Then there is the possibility that Clark and the FBI are trying to prevent Leggett from getting her book published before any trial because they don't want to be embarrassed by any anecdotes she might have gathered on Angleton's role as an FBI informant. Or maybe they want to punish Leggett because she wouldn't become an informant herself.

Whatever the case, Leggett spends her days in an eight-by-ten cell. In August a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit refused to overturn her contempt citation, saying there was no evidence of "governmental harassment" against her. DeGeurin says he's willing to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. "If they are allowed to do what they've done here, then all reporters are in jeopardy of becoming lapdogs instead of watchdogs," he declares.

That's a bit of a stretch. When I was researching my Texas Monthly story, I talked to Robert Angleton. I had drinks with other bookies and former Angleton employees. I had plenty of intimate conversations with his attorneys and friends about what might or might not have happened between Angleton and his wife. Did FBI agents ask me to act as a confidential informant? They did not. But DeGeurin may have a point so far as freelancers are concerned. I think Clark and the FBI saw a chance to take advantage of Leggett because she was vulnerable: She had no ties to a major media organization and therefore no one to defend her. They figured they could use Leggett to get information out of shady people they hadn't been able to get to themselves. They thought the subpoena would scare her into working with them. They had no idea she'd fight back.

I think Clark knows he's in a jam here, but he doesn't want to humiliate himself by backing down and letting Leggett go. But at the very least, if he's determined to keep her in prison, he should tell us what he's looking for, which I'm not sure he can. Even the Harris County assistant district attorney who prosecuted the Angleton murder case has told reporters that he doubts Leggett has anything of value to help Clark.

If Clark does not find the evidence to try and convict Angleton on some federal charge, Leggett could end up spending more time in jail than Angleton ever did (he was released after twelve months in August 1998). Nevertheless, she remains in good spirits, as earnest as ever about her career as a true-crime writer. During my visit with her, she tells me she is passing the time by rereading a true-crime book by Ann Rule, one of her heroines. When I ask her how her own book is going, she gives me a pained expression and tells me she hasn't been working on it that much because she is worried the authorities might come into her cell without warning and confiscate what she has written.

For a moment, it occurs to me that Leggett might never finish her book—that all she'll get out of this will be pats on the back from other journalists for standing up for her principles. But she assures me her plans won't be derailed. She has come up with a working title for the book, Million Dollar Murder, and she's written a new first paragraph. "The book opens with my meeting Angleton in a lonely parking garage after his acquittal," she says excitedly. "The paragraph now begins, 'Those who got too close to the man I was about to meet tended to end up dead or behind bars. Women were no exception.'"