James Winters vs. Andrew Greeley: James Winters' Deposition

Winters Deposition, pp. 226-260

1       STATE OF ILLINOIS       )
                                )       SS:
2       COUNTY OF COOK          )

3       IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF COOK COUNTY
        COUNTY DEPARTMENT       LAW DIVISION
4
        JAMES WINTERS,                          )
5                                               )
                Plaintiff,                      )
6                                               )
        VS.                                     )       No. 82 L 14410
7                                               )
        ANDREW GREELEY,                         )
8                                               )
                Defendant.                      ) 
9

10              The discovery deposition of JAMES WINTERS, 

11      taken under oath on the 2nd day of July, 1985, in 

12      Room 1200, at 111 West Jackson Boulevard, Chicago,

13      Illinois, pursuant to the Rules of the Supreme 

14      Court of Illinois and the Illinois Code of Civil 

15      Procedure, before Linda McMahon, a notary public 

16      in and for the County of Cook and State of Illinois,

17      pursuant to notice.

        APPEARANCES:
18
                WILLIAM D. MADDUX & ASSOCIATES, by
19                      MR. BRUCE M. LANE,
                                for the plaintiff,
20
                MAYER, BROWN & PLATT, by
21                      MR. PATRICK W. O'BRIEN and
                        MS. HOPE G. NIGHTINGALE,.
22                              for the Defendant.

23

24
                       Sullivan Reporting Company
                      Chicago, Illinois   782-4705

PART 8: PP. 226-260

1 JAMES WINTERS,
2 the Plaintiff herein, having been previously duly
3 sworn, was recalled as a witness herein, and
4 testified further as follows:
5 EXAMINATION (Cont'd.)
6 BY
7 MR. O'BRIEN:
8 Q Mr. Winters, yesterday we gave you some
9 documents --
10 MR. LANE: For the record, you understand you
11 are still under oath today?
12 THE WITNESS: Yes, I do.
13 MR. O'BRIEN: Q Numbered pages in the lower
14 right-hand corner of 786 through 992. Have you
15 reviewed that material overnight?
16 A I have. I gave it a cursory glance.
17 Q Is that material which was marked as
18 Exhibit No. 2 at this deposition a record of your
19 transcripts apart from that which you reconstructed
20 which we discussed yesterday of your interviews with
21 Greeley in March of 1980 in Tucson, Arizona?
22 A Yes.
23 Q And you know of no other transcripts other
24 than Exhibit No. 2?
227

1 A Of those particular interviews, no, sir.
2 MS. NIGHTINGALE: I would like to make one
3 statement which we neglected to make, that this
4 deposition is taken pursuant to the Protective Order,
5 and that all materials are to be kept confidential,
6 Pursuant to that Order.
7 MR. LANE: So stipulated.
8 MR. O'BRIEN: Ms. Reporter, would you mark as
9 Winters' Exhibit No. 3 some documents numbered in the
10 lower right-hand page 05 through 118, and the first
11 page numbered 05 says in the upper left-hand corner,
12 "By Jim Winters," and then the first paragraph begins,
13 "John Cardinal Cody, administration of the
14 Archdiocese of Chicago is the target of two current
15 newspaper investigations."
16 (Whereupon, Winters'
17 Exhibit No. 3 was marked
18 for identification as of
19 this date.)
20 MR. O'BRIEN: Q Now, sir, I show you Winters'
21 Deposition Exhibit No. 3 previously described and
22 ask you, sir, if that is a draft of the article that
23 you wrote sometime in 1980 or 1981?
24 A The first four pages of the exhibit is a
228

1 brief summary of the draft.
2 Q First four pages, all right, sir.
3 A And the remainder, which is an article
4 wrote in 1981, a draft of an article.
5 Q And the first four pages, when did you
6 write those?
7 A 1980.
8 Q We will come back to that later.
9 Now, sir, we sort of jumped forward to
10 August yesterday, but I want to back up to your
11 appearance at Rosary College, which we did not touch
12 upon in any detail, and you were there two and a half
13 days in July?
14 A Three days in July.
15 Q Again, sir, what were those dates?
16 A I believe they were the 7th, the 8th, and
17 the 17th.To my knowledge, the 17th.
18 Q All right. Now, before you went to -
19 physically went to Rosary College you had talked with
20 Sister Mary Field, had you not?
21 A I had.
22 Q Had you talked to anybody else?
23 A No, sir.
24 Q And who is Sister Mary Field?
229

1 A To my knowledge, she was the librarian who
2 had responsibility for those papers.
3 Q Now, would you give us -- I think you have
4 touched on this, I will ask it, when you called the
5 Sister, you described who you were, that you worked
6 for the Notre Dame Magazine, and that you were writing
7 an article on Andrew Greeley, and you wished to look
8 at his archives?
9 A I wished to examine the papers that he had
10 in his archives.
11 Q Is that a fair summary of what you told her
12 on the telephone?
13 A That is, yes.
14 Q What did she say?
15 A She said she had to check with the
16 superior about that. She left the phone for a while.
17 She came back after a few minutes and said, "Okay,
18 fine."
19 Q Did she tell you who she checked with?
20 A No.
21 Q So you made a date with her to appear on
22 July 7?
23 A No. I made that date to appear on May 3rd.
24 Q Then you didn't show up, but you did show
230

1 up on July 7?
2 A I called her ahead of time in between.
3 Q Did she tell you what the, quote, "Father
4 Greeley archives," end of quote, consisted of?
5 A No.
6 Q When you got to Rosary, did you meet with
7 Sister Mary Field?
8 A I did.
9 Q Would you describe Sister Mary Field for us.
10 please?
11 A She is a nun, middle-aged, pleasant looking
12 pleasant personality.
13 Q When you arrived, sir, would you give us
14 the substance of what you said to Sister Mary Field?
15 A I introduced myself again as Jim Winters
16 from the Notre Dame Magazine, and she said, "Oh, I
17 love the magazine." She took me down a corridor into
18 a conference room.
19 She had told me on the phone previously
20 that she was upset that I had not come the first date
21 because she had gathered this material together for me.
22 She said the material was not stored in one place,
23 and they had brought the material together to this
24 conference room for my use, and when I did not come
231

1 on May 3rd. she was upset by that and she wondered
2 what was going on. I told her I had assumed that it
3 was altogether in one place all the time and it would
4 not make any difference if I came May 3rd. They
5 apparently had gone to some trouble, so I apologized
6 for that on the phone.
7 So she takes me into the conference
8 room and in the conference room there were 18 file
9 boxes.
10 Q Were these cardboard, or what?
11 A They were cardboard.
12 They were varying sizes, mostly
13 standard-file box sizes, I suppose.
14 She said to me, "You have a lot of
15 work to do on this rainy day," and I sort of laughed
16 and said, "Yes, I guess I do."
17 And then you started in?
18 A No. Then I asked her about the possibility
19 of making copies of the material.
20 Q This is before you looked at any of them?
21 A Yes, sir. And she said that could be done.
22 There were copying machines there on the premises of
23 the library. She showed me where those were. I
24 looked at the machines and noticed that they either
232

1 operated on a nickel, or with a key, and I asked if
2 I could use the key so I didn't have to mess around
3 with all those nickels, and she went and got the key
4 and gave it to me.
5 She also offered to have a person
6 come in and help me lift the boxes onto the table
7 in the conference room if I wanted that, and I said
8 that that wouldn't be necessary.
9 Q Okay. So you were alone in the room with
10 all these boxes then and the key-to the Xerox machine!
11 A It wasn't a Xerox machine. It was a
12 copying machine. Some other brand.
13 Q And what arrangements, if any, sir, did
14 you make for paying for the copies that you were going
15 to make?
16 A She told me when I was done with my work
17 to pay a librarian who would be there, and I told her
is I would be there fairly late, and she said that she
19 leaves at dinner time, so just pay whoever was at the
20 desk a nickel apiece.
21 Q So whatever copies you made you paid for?
22 A I did.
23 Q And then, sir, what time of day was it that
24 you arrived, day one, at Rosary College?
233

1 A 11:00 a.m.
2 0 And tell us what you did, sir, after
3 Sister Mary Field left you alone in the room, key to
4 the Xerox machine in hand, and 20 boxes of Andrew
5 Greeley's materials available to you, what did you
6 do?
7 A I believe there were 18.
8 Q All right. 18.
9 A Well, I picked up one of the boxes. I
10 Put it on the conference table in the room, opened
11 it up, and began to methodically go through the
12 material. The material was not organized in any
13 fashion that was discernible. There was no index.
14 There was no way to know what was in any given box
15 until you opened it up, and you may find any number
16 of things in a given box.
17 There was no real organization to it
18 at all.
19 There was a rough organization some
20 times within the boxes of some sort of chronologically,
21 or the material be roughly of the same type in some
22 cases, but in other cases that wasn't true, so there
23 was nothing you could rely on in terms of what was
24 in the file boxes.
234

1 Q Did that surprise you?
2 A Yes.
3 0 You had expected an index, did you not?
4 A I did.
5 Q And there was none?
6 A There was none.
7 Q okay. well, on day one what did you
8 discover?
9 A Well, I moved through the file boxes very
10 slowly, slowly, methodically looked at just about
11 everything in each box unless it clearly was something
12 that at a cursory glance I knew was irrelevant for
13 some reason or another.
14 Q At that time, sir, what was your definition
15 of relevance?
16 A I was looking for material that would be
17 helpful to me in writing this article about Andrew
18 Greeley and that would be information that would be
19 useful to my understanding of Father Greeley and my
20 communication of that understanding.
21 Q Okay.
22 A So I went through the material slowly and
23 methodically-and looked at things very carefully for
24 the most part, and put the material back where I
235

1 found it when I was done with it.
2 The way I did it, I set up a system
3 where I would look through the files, look through
4 the materials, and I would set aside material one by
5 one until I had about 25 pieces of paper to copy, and
6 then I would go to the copying machine and copy those
7 25 pieces, which took a little bit of time because
8 there was no feed mechanism on the copying machine,
9 so I had to put the pages down one by one, so it was
10 a laborious process.
11 Q Did you make just one copy, or more than
12 one copy?
13 A Just one.
14 When I was done with that process, I
15 would bring the 25 or so pieces back to the conference
16 room and I would replace, as best I could, the
17 material in the various folders or whatever that I
18 found them in.
19 And when I was done with all the
20 folders in a box, I would put the cover back on the
21 box, or fold the flaps down on the box, as the case
22 may be, and I would take the box and I would put it
23 at the opposite side of the conference room so I
24 know I had examined that box.
236

1 Q These boxes, did you get any impression as
2 to whether these were boxes from any markings on
3 the boxes that somebody had shipped the material to
4 Rosary, or did you have any impression from your
5 examination of the boxes as to whether or not these
6 were shipment boxes from Greeley's office, say, to
7 Rosary, or whether Rosary had taken something
8 received from Greeley's office and put them in these
9 boxes?
10 A As I recall, and I don't recall the
11 specifics of this, but as I recall, there was some
12 indication on some of the boxes that some had been
13 shipped or transported in some way, and there was
14 no indication on other boxes of that sort, so it
15 varied.
16 Q But were the boxes, these 18 boxes,
17 basically uniform in size?
18 A No. There were many that were the same
19 size, but there were many that were not the same
20 size.
21 Q Okay. And you mentioned folders, cover
22 folders, within the boxes containing documents?
23 A In some cases there were folders. In some
24 cases there were not.
237

1 Q with respect to correspondence, was that
2 all in the folders?
3 A Much of the correspondence, as I recall, was
4 in folders.
5 Q They were labeled correspondence?
6 A Pardon?
7 Q Labeled correspondence?
8 A I don't recall any labels.
9 Q Okay. What other labels do you recall on
10 the documents?
11 A There was a variety of labels. I mean
12 every manuscript had a label on them, everything had
13 a label I suppose.
14 There were lots of labels. They were
15 uniformly labeled. They were labeled haphazardly,
16 and they were not labeled in any sort of system.
17 They were not labeled in any sort of research system.
18 Q What attracted you to the ten tapes that
19 you took back to South Bend with you; what was there
20 about them that caused you to want to remove them?
21 A Well, on the second day of my research I
22 came across these so-called diaries.
23 Q Roman Diaries, for lack of a better word.
24 A The various names he put on them, Adventures
238

1 in Rome, and that sort of thing. And I came across
2 that material and I looked through that.
3 Q That is to say the written material?
4 A The written material. And I made some
5 copies from that material and I examined those when
6 I got back to South Bend and recognized exactly what
7 they were; that they followed a chronology of
8 Greeley's trips to Rome in '75, '76, and '77, and
9 I realized also that those tapes finished the story;
10 that these were the tapes from the trips to Rome in
11 178, and I could find no transcript of those tapes.
12 Q Tell me again how did you find out that
13 these ten tapes were ‘78 tapes?
14 A I believe they said ‘78 on them, or
15 something to that effect, but it was clear that is
16 what they were.
17 Q Did you discover the relationship of the
is untranscribed tapes to the transcribed material when
19 you were back at Notre Dame and studying the kind of
20 stuff you made copies of?
21 A No. I understood the relationship between
22 them in the library. I understood the newsworthiness
23 of them and the importance of them to understanding
24 how this scenario played itself out after I reflected
239

1 on it back at Notre Dame.
2 Q All right. And at any time while you were
3 at Rosary did you communicate with anybody at all
4 about what you thought you were finding, or about the
5 things you were copying?
6 A No, sir.
7 Q This is day two that you were going through
8 the process that you previously described?
9 A That's correct. The process was the same
10 throughout the day since there were 18 boxes, and
11 since there was so much material in it, it was a
12 tedious process.
13 Q In addition to the copies you made of
14 material that interested you, sir, did you make any
15 notes as you went along?
16 A No, sir.
17 Q okay. When you were at Rosary during these
18 three days, where did you stay?
19 Did you stay with your parents?
20 A I did.
21 Q Where do they live again?
22 A In Evergreen Park.
23 Q And then you spent -- you were there July
24 7 and July 8 and then the 17th?
240

1 A That's correct.
2 Q Now, when -- had you finished your copy
3 work by July 8?
4 A No, sir.
5 Q Where did you go after you left Rosary on
6 July 8; did you return to South Bend?
7 A I did.
8 Q On July 8, when you left the Rosary library,
9 did you take with you on that date the ten tapes
10 that you described?
11 A No.
12 Q They were left at Rosary?
13 A They were.
14 Q What, if anything, did you remove; did you
15 take copies on July 8 when you left?
16 A I made copies, paid for them, and left with
17 them, yes.
18 Q Did you make any more copies when you
19 returned on July 18, or had you completed your copy
20 work by July 8?
21 A No, I made copies on the 18th, I still had
22 boxes to go through and other work to do there.
23 Q Between July 8 and July 17? in that time
24 frame, sir, was when you had the conversation before
241

1 you came back from Rosary you had a conversation
2 with Roy Larsen on July 16, did you not?
3 A I did.
4 Q And you described that already?
5 A I have.
6 Q Is it a fact, sir, that between leaving
7 Rosary College on July 8 and returning to Rosary
8 College on July 17, was it during that period that
9 you had a conversation that you described with Ron
10 Parent, or was it after you finally made your final
11 Visit to Rosary that you had your conversation with
12 Ron Parent?
13 A I believe it was before that.
14 It was in that interim period.
15 Q Okay. And is there anything more that
16 we did not cover on your conversation with Ron
17 Parent?
18 A No, sir, not to my recollection.
19 Q So you returned to Rosary on the 17th. How
20 long were you there, sir, on the 17th?
21 A Quite a while. I was there most of the day,
22 as I recall. I would stay until about 9:00 o'clock
23 in the evening, generally speaking, and I would get
24 there in the morning, toward the end of the morning,
242

1 around 11:00 or 11:30, and I would take a break for
2 lunch and a break for dinner. So that was the day.
3 Q Now, sir, when you paid for your Xeroxes,
4 did you pay Sister Mary Field?
5 A No, sir.
6 Q Was there generally some student helper
7 in the library?
8 A As I recall, yeah.
9 Q As you recall, it was a student?
10 A I don't know if she was a student. She was
11 a young person.
12 Q And did you tell apart from the student -
13 you paid the money by cash, I take it?
14 A I paid by cash, yeah.
15 Q For the copies that you had been making
16 during that day, did you tell Sister Mary Field the
17 amount of material you were copying?
18 A No, sir.
19 Q Did you tell anybody?
20 A The woman who took the money knew obviously,
21 but, no, I did not tell anybody. It was obvious,
22 however, because librarians were there and they saw
23 how much I was copying. They didn't know the specifics.
24 Q Now, when you finished work on the 17th,
243

1 about what time of day was that?
2 A As I recall, it was about 8:30 p.m.
3 Q And I take it a student was-on duty that
4 day, or some sort of young person, a librarian
5 assistant?
6 A Yeah.
7 Q And you paid her for the documents you
8 copied that day?
9 A I think there may have been librarians on
10 duty, but Sister Mary Field left at dinner time.
11 Q And how were you carrying the stuff as you
12 exited the library at Rosary on July 17th; what were
13 you carrying; did you have a big briefcase?
14 A I had no briefcase.
15 Q What did you have; a sack?
16 A I had no sack. I had nothing. I just
17 carried the material out.
18 Q And did you carry out the tapes, the ten
19 tapes, that you described on July 17th?
20 A I did.
21 Q Did you inform anybody that you were leaving
22 with these tapes?
23 A No, sir.
24 Q Why not?
244

1 A It didn't occur to me that it was necessary.
2 Q You didn't ask whether you should sign a
3 receipt as you were taking a library book out?
4 A No, sir, there didn't seem to be any
5 procedure for that.
6 Q And you didn't ask if there was, though,
7 did you?
8 A No, I didn't-.
9 Q Now, we have discussed -- this is now
10 July 17th, and we have discussed your contacts with
11 Father Greeley on July 29, 180.
12 Now, sir, between July 17 -- and let
13 me ask you this -- these tapes that you took, these
14 ten tapes, you had not listened to them before you
15 left Rosary College, had you?
16 A No, I had not.
17 Q When you got back to South Bend in your
18 apartment or home or whatever, did you then play them
19 A No, sir.
20 Q When did you first play them?
21 A August 7, 1980, I first heard a portion of
22 them.
23 Q Had you had copies made of these tapes
24 prior to August 7?
245

1 A No, sir. I had attempted to do that
2 through the audiovisual center at Notre Dame, but
3 they had no equipment for copying microcassettes.
4 I had attempted through my secretary. I asked her
5 to see if that could be done.
6 Okay. So it had not been done on August
7 17th?
8 A August 7th.
9 0 On August 7th, sir, when you listened to a
10 portion of the tapes, that was when, as you
11 previously described, you were with Mr. Carlton
12 Sherwood of Gannett?
13 A Yes.
14 Q And of the material that you had copied,
15 that is to say, the copying, not the tapes, the
16 written material that you copied, did you give any
17 of that, or copies of that material to Mr. Carlton
18 Sherwood?
19 A I showed them to him in my apartment, but
20 I did not give him any of it to leave with.
21 Q Did you ever send him any copies of any
22 of that material?
23 A No, sir.
24 Q Did he ever ask you for them?
246

1 A Yes, he did.
2 Q What was your response?
3 A I told him I couldn't do that.
4 Q Why not?
5 A Well, this was in October of 1981.
6 Q There was a gap in your communication
7 between his leaving on August 7, 1980 and --
8 A No, there was no gap. He just didn't ask
9 until October of 1980 for this particular request,
10 and I had no interest in giving it to him. I didn't
11 want to. I didn't want to give it to him.
12 Q Did you not want to give the material to
13 him free, or did you not want to give it to him?
14 A I did not want to give it to him, period.
15 He could have offered me $100,000, and I wouldn't
16 have given it to him.
17 Q Now, sir, with respect to the research you
18 did at Rosary in the course of your journalistic
19 career, sir, have you ever had occasion to visit an
20 archive prior to that visit to Rosary?
21 A Yes.
22 Q When?
23 A Around '78.
24 Q And what happened in '78 with respect to
247

I some kind of an archive?
2 A Well, I visited the University of Notre
3 Dame's archives.
4 Q What happened during the course of your
5 visit?
6 A I looked through material and asked that
7 some of it be copied.
8 Q What was the material you looked at?
9 A It was material from the papers of
10 Professor Frank O'Malley.
11 Q Is he the English Professor that was
12 featured when he died, or the anniversary of his
13 death?
14 A He was.
15 Q And that was in connection with that
16 article?
17 A No, sir.
18 Q What was it in connection with?
19 A We were planning this issue on Christmas
20 and I had been informed -- I don't know by whom --
21 that Frank O'Malley had written a piece on Christmas.
22 He was dead by that time. And I thought it might be
23 nice to include it in this package. So I asked for --
24 I asked to look through his papers to find this, and
248

1 I found it and I asked it to be Xeroxed for me.
2 Q Was there an index of Professor O'Malley's
3 material?
4 A Yes, there was.
5 Q And you did not look then and were not
6 shown his correspondence, were you?
7 A I don't recall.
8 Q Were you shown anything by Notre Dame
9 archives that originated with Professor O'Malley that
10 was marked "Top Secret-My Eyes Only"?
11 A I don't recall.
12 Q But you were looking for an article he had
13 written?
14 A That is what I was looking for.
15 Q That your declared intention, was it not?
16 A That's right.
17 Q At the time Professor O'Malley was dead,
18 correct?
19 A That's right.
20 Q Sir, have you had any other experience with
21 archives?
22 A Before that?
23 Q Yes, or since, apart from the Rosary
24 College incident.
249

1 A Well, I wouldn't call it Rosary College
2 archives.
3 Q I agree with you. Let's talk about honest
4 to goodness archives.
5 A okay, okay. I was at the Franklin D.
6 Roosevelt Library in April of 1984.
7 Q Where is that located?
8 A Hyde Park, New York.
9 Q What were you doing there, sir?
10 A I was researching an article on the
11 Archdiocese of Chicago.
12 Q And what sort of material were you provided-.,
13 A I asked for the correspondence between
14 President Roosevelt and Cardinal Mundelein.
15 Q Was it given to you?
16 A It was.
17 Q And, I take it, that it was indexed?
18 A I assume, yes.
19 Q Did you ask for it and that is what you
20 got?
21 A You got it.
22 Q At this time in 184 both Cardinal Mundelein
23 and President Roosevelt had long been since dead, had
24 they not?
250

1 A They had.
2 Q Anything else?
3 A That is it.
4 Q In your conversations while you were in the
5 course of your work at Rosary nobody, I take it,
6 suggested that you should check back with Greeley
7 about these copies you made of this material?
8 A No, sir.
9 Q And you did not do it, did you?
10 A No, sir.
11 Q But yesterday, Mr. Winters, I used the words
12 "Greeley papers," and you sort of smiled at me and
13 you said, "I call them the Winters' papers."
14 A I was disputing Greeley papers. I think
15 papers would probably cover it.
16 Q We have discussed the reasoning behind your
17 copying this material and we discussed upon what you
18 base your removal of the tapes.
19 Did it occur to you when you ran
20 across folders labeled in connection with the Rome
21 material labeled "Personal, Confidential, Top Secret,'
22 to check and see if that had mistakenly been shown to
23 you by anyone connected with Rosary?
24 A The folders were not -- if there were any
251

1 folders, the folders were not labeled anything.
2 I am not even sure there were folders on that
3 material.
4 Q You don't recall any cover sheets on the
5 Roman diary materials with the words "Top Secret"?
6 A Cover sheets, or folders?
7 Q Either one, sir.
8 A Make a specific. You asked about folders.
9 Q You are quibbling, but let's try it this
10 way.
11 You did not notice whether it was on
12 the face of a folder cover, or on the cover sheet of

13 the Roman diary transcriptions, the words "Top
14 Secret, Conf idential"?
15 A I did see those on cover sheets.
16 Q Cover sheets?
17 A That's right, sir.
18 Q Why did you feel, based upon the
19 conversations you had had with Greeley, that you had
20 the right to look at that material?
21 A Well, I saw several indications that what-
22 ever confidentiality or secrecy may have once
23 accrued to those documents no longer accrued to them.
24 Q What were those indications that you just
252

1 referred to, sir?
2 A The fact that Greeley had sent the material
3 to a library; the fact that the material was in boxes
4 that were so casually kept; the fact that no distinc
5 tion had been made among the material in terms of how
6 they were kept between what was secret and what was
7 not; that everything was open; and the fact that
8 Greeley had given me unrestricted access to all the
9 material in his archives knowing I was a reporter
10 seeking information for an article.
11 Q Did you think it was, apart from once
12 having put the words "Top Secret" on certain material,
13 that it was his duty to go to the library and see
14 whether or not the library had honored its commitment
15 to him, to honor any labels he put on the documents
16 he turned over to them?
17 A Sir, I believe that how Father Greeley
18 kept his papers was his responsibility.
19 Q But, in any event, it never occurred to
20 you before you read and copied that material labeled
21 Top Secret to check with Father Greeley?
22 A I knew what my agreement with Father
23 Greeley was. I did not have to check with it further.
24 Q And the agreement with Father Greeley was
253

1 what again?
2 A It was an unrestricted access. He put no
3 restrictions whatsoever on my access to those files,
4 none.
5 Q It never occurred to you, sir, that
6 Greeley had put restrictions on Rosary College which
7 Rosary College had not honored when you saw that
8 label Top Secret?
9 A That was Rosary College's responsibility.
10 That was not my responsibility.
11 Q I am asking you, sir, that maybe Rosary
12 had done wrong by Father Greeley?
13 A It did not occur to me, sir.
14 Q Did you mention to Roy Larsen that you had
15 looked at the papers labeled Top Secret?
16 A I may have mentioned that. I don't
17 recall.
is Q Did you mention it to Ron Parent when you
19 talked to him between July 8 and July 17?
20 A I don't recall.
21 Q And it never occurred to you, of course,
22 to check with Father Greeley about the use you had
23 started making with this material as early as
24 July 16 when you talked with Roy Larsen?
254

1 A I had nothing to ask him at that point.
2 Q And it was your position, was it not, sir,
3 as of August 4, 1980, that the First Amendment gave
4 you the right to copy the materials that you copied
5 and to take from the library the tapes that you took?
6 A Yes.
7 Q Have you had a chance since 1980 to
8 reconsider that position?
9 A Yes.
10 Q And having reconsidered that position, do
11 you still think the First Amendment gave you the right
12 first, to copy the pages you copied?
13 A I do.
14 Q Do you think the First Amendment gave you
15 the right, sir, to walk out of Rosary College with
16 the ten transcripts made by Father Greeley that you
17 walked out with?
18 A You mean tapes?
19 Q Tapes.
20 A I do.
21 Q And you have nothing further to add to
22 support for that position other than what you said,
23 the reporter's handbook, or something that you
24 identified on the record?
255

1 A Common sense would tell me that.
2 Q Common sense, okay.
3 A Yes, sir.
4 Q Now, sir, if you turn to page 2 of your
5 letter of August 4th,
6 A I do not have it in front of me.
7 Q Here. The words you take issue with are,
8 "That you intend to write an expose'."
9 A No, sir.
10 What I take issue with in this
11 paragraph is I will read to you.
12 I take issue with the sentence, "In
13 your letter to Ron Parent I discussed this matter
14 with Mr. Winters and he informed me that he intends
15 to write an expose' of me."
16 I said, "I intend to write as best I
17 can a full and fair profile of you."
18 Q Expose' was a word, according to your
19 testimony yesterday, that Father Hesburgh used in
20 your conversation with Father Hesburgh on August 4,
21 1990?
22 A Yes.
23 Q And Father Hesburgh told you on August 4th
24 did he not, sir, that Notre Dame was not in the
256

1 business of printing expose's
2 A Notre Dame Magazine.
3 Q The Magazine. Did he tell you that?
4 A Yes.
5 Q Now, sir, did there ever come a time when
6 you told either Father Greeley or someone like
7 Monsignor Egan, or someone similarly placed close to
8 Father Hesburgh, that you had, in fact, returned the
9 tapes and the material to Rosary College?
10 A That I had, in fact, returned them?
11 Q Yes.
12 A I never told it to Father Hesburgh.
13 Q I know, sir. Did you tell it to anybody,
14 in other words, Hesburgh did ask you, did he not, to
15 return the material?
16 A Yes.
17 Q And you did not say you would or wouldn't,
18 I gather, from your testimony yesterday?
19 A That's correct.
20 Q You stood mute on that, or dodged it; you
21 did not respond to it?
22 Did you say you would do it, or you
23 would not do it, or would you stand silent?
24 When Father Hesburgh on August 4th, in
257

1 his office at the meeting that commenced at 3:30 p.m.,
2 Sir, when Father Hesburgh, as you have testified,
3 Said, "We are not in the business of printing expose's
4 in the Notre Dame Magazine and return --he material,"
5 meaning the Greeley material, the tapes and the
6 copies of the documents, what did you respond to that,
7 if anything?
a A I said, "Father, you are asking me to do
9 something that would be a violation of myself as a
10 Journalist."
11 Q And what did Father Hesburgh say to that?
12 A He said, "No, it wouldn't be that." And
13 then he paused.
14 Q And then what?
15 A I said, "I got the material responsibly and
16 honorably. I did not nothing wrong to get it."
17 And then he handed me a column and he
18 said, "Greeley wrote this column."
19 He gave me the column. It was from the
20 Universal-Press Syndicate. It was dated August 1,
21 1980, and it announced Greeley's intended -- it
22 announced his intended resignation from the active
23 priesthood, and he said he was retiring from
24 the active priesthood because of the harm that his
258

1 activities had done to his family and friends.
2 He wrote that.
3 Q To Hesburgh?
4 A He didn't write it to Hesburgh. He wrote
5 it as a column and he sent it to Hesburgh and it was
6 an official column.
7 Q That was a draft column, was it not?
8 A It looked like -- it wasn't a printed
9 column from the newspaper, but it was the thing the
10 newspaper gets and then prints.
11 Another thing I told Father Hesburgh
12 was that what he was doing, "What you are trying to
13 do. amounts to a cover-up." And he said, "No, it
14 wouldn't be that. There is some truth that should
15 not be known. I have things in my file that shouldn't
16 come out until everybody is dead. They are in there.
17 I am not trying to hide them from the record, but
18 they shouldn't come out right now."
19 And I said, "Well, if you don't want
20 it to come out, you don't give it to a reporter, and
21 if you do give it to a reporter, you expect to see it
22 in a newspaper or someplace."
23 And he said,'Yes, Greeley has been
24 certainly irresponsible on how he handled these
259

1 papers. He may take them out of Rosary. I don't
2 know. They may lose it. Maybe that wouldn't be such
3 a loss."
4 That is some of what was said in that
5 conversation.
6 Q Did you inform Father Hesburgh of your
7 letter you received dated July 29 from Andrew Greeley?
8 A I don't recall.
9 Q And you had drafted your response which
10 finally went out on August 4th, I think you testified?
11 A That's right. Both the letters were copied
12 to Hesburgh as I recall, at least the Parent letter
13 Was copied to Hesburgh.
14 Q Did you discuss the letter from Greeley
15 with Father Hesburgh?
16 A No, sir.
17 Q Did you discuss at that point your draft
18 letter response that you finally mailed out on
19 August 4 ?
20 A No, sir.
21 Q Did you tell Father Hesburgh that the
22 First Amendment gave you the right to copy Greeley's
23 material and to appropriate his tapes?
24 A I told him that the material essentially
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Electronic edition copyright © 1998 Ingrid H. Shafer

Posted 25 August 1998