Villanova Law Professor Granted FBI Investigation Files
By John Ostapkovich
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) --- A Villanova law professor has won a victory for freedom of information, as a federal judge has ordered the FBI to give him files on a long-ago investigation of a celebrity.
Actor George Hamilton and President Johnson's daughter Lynda were an item in 1966, and the FBI looked for dirt on Lynda's suitor. That doesn't interest the plaintiff in the case, Professor Tuan Samahon, as much as whether that off-the-books probe might have turned up dirt on Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas instead.
Fortas resigned during the first year of the Nixon Administration after a whisper campaign and a call for impeachment.
"And so I thought it would be relevant and important to know if it seemed at all probable these allegations, if they were credible, that may be he might decide that, you know, it's not worth hanging in there as an associate justice of the Supreme Court," Samahon said.
Samahon says he expects the Hamilton papers to be redacted by the FBI, citing concern for the privacy of a guy whose privacy it invaded.
Samahon has a current lawsuit against the Obama Administration, seeking access to Bush Administration legal opinions on presidential recess appointments, which President Obama has been accused of abusing.