<BR> Secret Agents <BR> Jeffco is a public-records embarrassment.<BR> BY PATRICIA CALHOUN <P> Jefferson County just doesn't get the<BR> message. <P> When confronted with bad news, Jeffco<BR> inevitably decides to kill the messenger rather<BR> than contemplate the message. Which,<BR> almost as inevitably, is this: Someone<BR> screwed up. Again. <P> The most recent screwup involves more<BR> leaked documents coming out of the<BR> Columbine investigation (the grand-champion<BR> screwup), including some grisly photographs<BR> of the crime scene. The mere thought that<BR> these photos somehow eluded Jeffco's crack<BR> security is enough to frighten families of the<BR> victims, who desperately hope that they<BR> won't log on to the Internet one day and find<BR> a photograph of their dead son or daughter.<BR> (The parents of Daniel Rohrbough didn't<BR> learn for certain that he'd been killed until<BR> they saw their boy, lying motionless on a<BR> sidewalk outside the school, in the April 21,<BR> 1999, Rocky Mountain News.) And the<BR> very mention that these photos now exist<BR> outside of the evidence room has been<BR> enough to panic Jeffco officials, who are<BR> desperately trying to track the leak to its<BR> source. <P> If they can charge that source and a few<BR> tributaries along the way with a crime, so<BR> much the better. <P> Since word of this latest leak seeped out<BR> earlier this month, the Jefferson County<BR> Sheriff's Department has been calling around<BR> town, trying to determine who has access to<BR> the photographs -- and how they got that<BR> access. Westword's turn came Monday,<BR> when Captain Dave Walcher -- Jeffco's<BR> incident commander at Columbine that<BR> bloody Tuesday three years ago and rarely<BR> heard in public since -- called a reporter and<BR> asked how he'd obtained certain documents, including two photographs<BR> published in our March 7 issue: one a photo of a timing device (carefully<BR> cropped), the other a Dylan Klebold-inscribed pipe bomb. <P> The real question, of course, is why these pictures are still deemed too<BR> sensitive to be released to the public; since Jeffco has officially closed its<BR> Columbine investigation, there's no reason not to release just about everything<BR> in the files -- except, perhaps, for medical records and the more graphic<BR> photos of bodies. (Those are making the rounds, too; I recently witnessed the<BR> casual exchange of a handful of photos showing Dylan Klebold dead in the<BR> library -- photos that have yet to surface anywhere in print.) And if Jeffco<BR> doesn't recognize that now's the time to come clean, then Attorney General<BR> Ken Salazar's new Columbine Open Records Task Force should do the job<BR> ("The Paper Chase," March 21). <P> But Walcher did not want to discuss the particulars of the Colorado Open<BR> Records Act. He wanted to know the source of the photos we'd published,<BR> whether we'd paid for the photos, whether we'd take money for the photos.<BR> And while we weren't about to give up our source -- not only are there<BR> journalistic principles involved, but hell, at this point, Jeffco is so full of leaks<BR> that the better query might be who isn't sneaking out public documents -- we<BR> made no secret of the fact that we would not be selling the photos. If, of<BR> course, we actually have any photos. <P> That doesn't mean that someone else won't sell them, though. The sheriff's<BR> department isn't the only group calling around. In recent weeks I've heard<BR> from family members, lawyers and private investigators, all trying to determine<BR> whether there are pictures for sale. The family members are asking because<BR> they don't want to see them in print; the lawyers and investigators, on the<BR> other hand, could well be looking to broker just such a deal. The National<BR> Enquirer has been sniffing around, and the calls are likely to become more<BR> insistent -- and the offers more lucrative -- as Columbine's third anniversary<BR> rapidly approaches. <P> And if, at some point, money does change hands, Jeffco stands ready to cuff<BR> them. <P> Not for the heinous crimes committed that day at Columbine. And not for the<BR> crimes of omission that the Jeffco sheriff's department may have committed in<BR> the year leading up to the shootings, when it failed to follow through on a<BR> search-warrant affidavit that could have led deputies to Eric Harris's diaries --<BR> and details of deeds still months in the offing. (Rather than ask who leaked<BR> Harris's diary entries, which first appeared on Westword's Web site in early<BR> December, Jeffco authorities pointed a finger at the Harris family, which had<BR> little reason to release Eric's rantings.) Not for the apparent crimes of<BR> commission in the years after Columbine, either: when Sheriff John Stone<BR> refused to talk to parents at the same time he was showing Klebold and<BR> Harris's basement tapes to Time magazine; when the Littleton Fire<BR> Department (our butt-ball buddies) started showing a Columbine tape around<BR> the country; when Jeffco's official report displayed obvious mistakes. <P> No, the big crime would be the selling of information. And unlike the horrors<BR> of