Justice failed to send transcripts so Swiss said no on Polanski

LOS ANGELES — The Swiss government asked the U.S. Justice Department to release sealed transcripts in the Roman Polanski case just days before a Los Angeles judge was told that the Swiss did not request that information, according to a letter from Swiss officials that points to apparent miscommunication in the case.

The officials said that the denial of access to the information was the key factor in the refusal to extradite the film maker to the U.S., according to the letter to the U.S. Embassy in Bern, Switzerland.

A district attorney's spokeswoman said their office was never notified of the Swiss request and did not know that the Justice Department had turned it down.

The letter dated Monday was obtained by The Associated Press on Wednesday night. It provided a time line of when the request was filed and when it was turned down.

The letter blamed the denial of extradition solidly on the refusal by the Justice Department to show transcripts of testimony by the film director's original prosecutor to Swiss officials.

"Since the additional documents requested were not transmitted in full, extradition of Roman Polanski to the United States of America is thus denied," said the letter.

Justice Department spokeswoman Laura Sweeney said she had no comment on the matter.

Director Roman Polanski reprises "limousine liberal"

"Hollywood's rally around admitted rapist Roman Polanski has resurrected the limousine liberal, reminding much of middle America why they hate the left.

It figures. On the eve of the Democratic Party’s greatest triumph—when, after decades of pangs and false alarms, universal health care has finally crowned—a coterie of powerful liberals go ahead and hand a real bullet to Republicans who have otherwise been firing blanks. The limousine liberal, that Democrat who puts privilege before principle and the status in status quo, is back, with a cocktail of issues (pedophilia, Hollywood, France) so volatile that Roger Ailes could not have scripted it better himself. As the Democratic Party makes its final push for a health-care overhaul, some of its members are reminding Middle America why sometimes it’s so easy to hate the left.

For this, we can thank Roman Polanski. You could pave a boulevard in Los Angeles with the names of his apologists: Whoopi Goldberg, Harvey Weinstein, Martin Scorsese, and Woody Allen, among others. Journalists joined in—Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum, Nation editor Katrina van den Heuvel (who backed off a bit when called on her stand by Katha Pollitt)—as did big-name authors like Salman Rushdie and Paul Auster. Even Washington advocates got into the act: “My personal thoughts are let the guy go," said Peg Yorkin, founder of the Feminist Majority Foundation. "It's bad a person was raped. But that was so many years ago. The guy has been through so much in his life. It's crazy to arrest him now.”