A newspaper reporter facing a court order to identify his confidential sources for a story about a spy investigation is asking a federal judge to drop the demand.

Attorneys for the journalist, William Gertz of the Washington Times, filed a motion late yesterday asking Judge Cormac Carney to quash the subpoena he issued last month requiring Carney to appear next Friday in the judge’s Orange County, Calif. courtroom to name his sources for a May 2006 article predicting an imminent new indictment in the case of a Chinese espionage ring involving an electrical engineer and his family.

Judge Carney ordered Mr. Gertz to testify after a Justice Department investigation into possible violations of grand jury secrecy and illegal disclosures of classified information was unable to pinpoint the leaker. The unsuccessful probe was “comprehensive” and involved more than 500 interviews with potential leakers, the judge said in his order.

The most straightforward argument the lawyers made on Mr. Gertz’s behalf is that because his story predicted a revised indictment in the case the article did not, in a literal sense, disclose matters which had occurred before the grand jury.

“Disclosure of a mere expectation that prosecutors will add charges does not necessarily implicate the grand jury process,” the journalist’s lawyers, “Siobhan Cullen, Allen Farber, and Charles Leeper, wrote in their 42-page motion. “The discussion of information about a government investigation, even if that investigation leads to grand jury proceedings, does not violate Rule 6(e),” they argued, referring to the federal court rule on grand jury secrecy.

Mr. Gertz’s attorneys also contend that the talk of a new indictment in the article in question actually comes not from unnamed sources, but from a hearing that took place in open court about a week before the story appeared. In that exchange, under questioning by Judge Carney, a prosecutor, Gregory Staples, discussed the possibility of a new indictment “within a matter of weeks.”

The lawyers also state, perhaps uncomfortably for Mr. Gertz, that a new indictment filed in the case a few weeks later did not contain the additional charges he outlined. Some were filed in yet another indictment in October 2006.

Mr. Gertz’s legal team also argues that he should be protected by a so-called reporter’s privilege against testifying absent a compelling need for his information. “The First Amendment rights of Mr. Gertz and the reading public should prevail over any general public interest in ascertaining the identity of any alleged Rule 6(e) violator in these circumstances,” the attorneys wrote. While the contours of a privilege for journalists are uncertain at the federal level, the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals, which oversees California, has placed limits on the issuance of subpoenas to journalists.

Mr. Gertz’s predicament highlights some anomalies in the way the Justice Department handles leak cases. Even though prosecutors told Judge Carney that some leaks to Mr. Gertz may have been criminal, the criminal investigators apparently did not try to force the journalist before a grand jury to testify about his sources.

However, when a federal judge in San Francisco ordered a Justice Department investigation into leaks of testimony in a recent grand jury investigation into steroid use by professional athletes, prosecutors did move to compel the appearance of two San Francisco Chronicle reporters, Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, before another grand jury examining the leaks. Judge Jeffrey White ordered the journalists jailed and their newspaper fined. The men were free pending appeal when a defense attorney, Troy Ellerman, admitted being the newspaper’s source. He is now serving a 2 1/2 year prison term.

Five people were ultimately charged in the case Mr. Gertz reported on: an electrical engineer, Chi Mak, his wife, his brother and sister-in-law, and their son. Chi Mak was never charged with espionage but was charged with acting as an unregistered agent of China, attempting to violate export control laws and lying to investigators. A jury convicted him on all charges following a trial last year. The other family members pleaded guilty soon thereafter.

In March, Judge Carney sentenced Chi Mak, 65, to more than 24 years in prison. The motion which led to Mr. Gertz’s subpoena came from a lawyer for Chi Mak’s wife, Rebecca Chiu. She is awaiting sentencing.

It is unclear whether Judge Carney plans to press ahead with the June 13 hearing for Mr. Gertz or to delay the session so prosecutors and possibly defense attorneys can respond to the journalist’s motion to quash the subpoena. If Mr. Gertz is ordered to identify his sources, he is expected to refuse to do so, which could result in his jailing or being subjected to ruinous fines.

The initial investigation into Mr. Gertz’s sources and the order last month requiring his testimony were first reported by The New York Sun.