Polanski affair: WSJ says that Marcia Clark says that prosecutor says he lied about improper ex parte contacts?

Lurking behind the Polanski affair has been an ethics issue: the notion that a prosecutor may have used improper ex parte contacts to poison the judge's attitude toward Polanski -- causing Polanski to flee the US.  I will let the WSJ Law Blog explain this odd story about how that notion may have gotten started.  (Imho, hearsay on hearsay, especially in cases that garner publicity, is generally unreliable.)