In what is becoming a high drama, two reporters still face contempt charges and jail time for refusing to turn over their notes in federal probe involving the leaked identity of a CIA operative.
The leak came from somewhere in the Bush administration and the two reporters, Judith Miller of the New York Times (NYT) and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, refused to give up their sources. Time Inc. turned over Cooper’s noted, which many presumed would take at least Cooper off the hook. Right now, that doesn’t seem to be the case.
What adds a degree of peculiarity is Bob Novak, a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times. He also got the skinny on the CIA operative and he’s the one that chose to print the identity of Valerie Plame in a column back in 2003. Cooper reported some on the case but wrote no story and Miller didn’t write a story until well after the fact. Novak, on advice from his attorney won’t talk about the case until after everything is over but promised to “reveal all” in a discussion with CNN.
Time released a statement saying they weren’t pleased with the ruling but was willing to follow the rules. The NYT said they were sorely disappointed in the decision by Time citing the instance when their reporter went to jail for a little over a month during an investigation back in the late 70s.
There are certainly other twists to the story. The chief special investigator for the case, Patrick Fitzgerald was appointed to investigate the leak and look to see if any law had been broken, which apparently might not have happened to begin with. Fitzgerald built an impressive record as an ardent enemy of organized crime and unless you approach this with a fair amount of cynicism, this doesn’t involve organized crime. He’s gone after this case with equal tenacity.
In a good editorial by the Wall Street Journal, a point is made that Fitzgerald isn’t following Justice Dept. guidelines in dealing with reporters and their unnamed sources and hasn’t disclosed why he needs the notes from the periodicals or their reports to the public or even said reporters.
The other point the Journal mentions is that many editorial columns from many media outlets called for a special investigation. It would seem the Journal is attempting to point out the various news folks may brought this on themselves.
If Cooper and Miller head for the hoosegow, they’ll be housed in federal penitentiaries for men and women for about four weeks, the time remaining for the grand jury investigation. Whether Time and the New York Times will receive fines is also unknown although those measures were threatened.
What happens now remains to be seen but one thing’s for sure, and that is the fact that the ending is an unknown quantity. A number of things could happen. Indictments could be handed down, the whole thing could be dropped or something else entirely. In any event, people would do well to pay attention to this story because it could determine how they receive their news in the future.
John Stith is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
