One question in the Bernie Ward child porn case is — If he was really doing research for a book when he downloaded those images, where are his notes or other evidence that shows he was working on a book? That’s the question Ben Fong-Torres asked in his Chronicle Radio Waves column a couple weeks ago, and he has since received an answer from the liberal talk-show host:

“I did have notes,” he wrote in an e-mail. “Notes on what I was doing and conversations I had, etc. I told people I was going to write a book, and one of those people also saw the index cards that I had notes on.” He also had a meeting at Perry’s on Union Street with a publisher’s rep, he says, and that meeting was scheduled by his producer at KGO. Ward says he has informed KGO about his notes but hasn’t had access to them “because of the fear of being accused of adding to them or doctoring them in some way.”

Fong-Torres’s column doesn’t say who Ward informed KGO-AM about his notes or when. The day Ward’s indictment was unsealed, Operations Director Jack Swanson said in a statement that the station “just recently made aware of these serious charges.” Ward is accused of downloading the images in December 2004. Ward has known he was being investigated by federal authorities since at least early 2005 when his computer was seized. Ward did not reveal he was under investigation to his listeners in the three years before he was indicted.