Here is more clarification from the WSJ today
"As for the person who converts to a Roth: In a conversion, you have to hold the assets in a Roth for five years or until turning 59½, whichever comes first, to make penalty-free withdrawals of your converted amounts. Here, each conversion has its own five-year clock.
If you already are 59½ and you convert traditional IRA assets to a Roth, you can withdraw the assets you convert at any time without worrying about a five-year deadline or penalties. Again, it is a different story with any earnings on those assets: You have to have held a Roth account for five years to withdraw any earnings tax free. But you generally don't need to worry about separating the converted funds from the earnings, since the withdrawal rules for Roth IRAs say that any distributions first come from contributions, then from conversions, and finally from earnings, says Ed Slott, an IRA consultant in Rockville Centre, N.Y."
Basics of 5-Year Rule on Roth IRAs - WSJ.com. This article is in the WSJ's weekend addition so if you can not get from WSJ a lot of newspapers have in their Sunday editions.
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