Posted on 08/09/2004 12:37:45 PM PDT by cyncooper
Time Magazine's Cooper Threatened with Jail for Not Revealing Source
A reporter is being held in contempt of court and faces possible jail time, and another was earlier threatened by a federal judge with the same fate, after they refused to answer questions from a special prosecutor investigating whether administration officials illegally disclosed the name of a covert CIA officer last year.
Newly-released court orders show U.S. District Court Chief Judge Thomas F. Hogan two weeks ago ordered Matt Cooper of Time magazine and Tim Russert of NBC to appear before a grand jury and tell whether they knew that White House sources provided the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame to the media.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Please tell me they had the good sense not to have children.
Hmmmmmmm ... they were Order??
The plot thickens
Regards,
From Novak's comments and other things I heard when this first broke, Plame's CIA identity was already common knowledge among many Washington insiders, so it had either been "leaked" or divulged way before Novak wrote his column or Wilson went to Niger. The WH "leaker" was merely repeating in an ofhand manner what he/she already knew from scuttlebutt; I don't think the leak involved revealing privileged information.
Normally reporters can't be forced to name their sources, but in this case the name of the reporter's source IS THE EVIDENCE in a serious federal crime. If there is no other way to identify the source, a judge can make them talk. This is one case when the need to know outweighs the right to privacy. It would be the same if a reporter was an eyewitness to a murder.
So if the judge is trying to squeeze both, would not each of them try o hold out until the other blabs first?
I believe they have a son
The plot just thickens and thickens! Smells like scadenfreude soup!
I found a very interesting article about journalistic privilege at http://www.cjr.org/issues/2004/4/bowden-shields.asp.
...snip...
I think, in retrospect, I should have promptly answered all the prosecutors’ questions and showed them my notes. The newspaper would have been better off. The Inquirer appealed my case (Bowden v. Pa.) all the way to the state Supreme Court and lost. It now stands as a permanent setback for the Pennsylvania shield law, and a further erosion of the sweeping interpretation in Taylor. And for what? I had nothing to protect. Instead of contesting every subpoena that arrives, newspapers should do a better job of picking their fights. In the Plame case, it isn’t clear yet why the special grand jury wants to question Russert and Cooper. But unless they have made promises of confidentiality to someone, it is their duty to cooperate. In my case, simply agreeing to answer prosecutors’ questions would not have compromised any journalistic principles, it would have cost the newspaper next to nothing (I doubt I would have been summoned to the trial), and there would now be no Bowden v. Pa. to sway future rulings on the subject.
I would have lost my chance to play hero for a day, but I would have done my duty as a citizen, and that would have been that.
...snip...
A very refreshing article, from the Columbia Journalism Review.
Pete Williams with NBC (pretty reliable, IMO) reported it on the first day or two of the Berger story breaking.
Indeed it does...
She looks like the typical female Clintoon shill with that huge hangar door mouth.
Typical Compost spin, "A reporter is being held in contempt of court and faces possible jail time, and another was earlier threatened by a federal judge with the same fate, after they refused to answer questions from a special prosecutor investigating whether administration officials illegally disclosed the name of a covert CIA officer last year.'"
Peter King nailed this last year when he said that Joe Wilson was guilty of secrecy violations, not some unnamed administrative person.
The Compost is still trying to spin this as an administration leak. It wasn't.
It sounds like - but I can't be sure - that the journalists or their attorneys claimed that requiring them to divulge their sources constituted "harrassment." Is it reasonable to assume that they would make this claim only if revealing their sources would be a source of professional embarrassment? And is it therefore possible that - as far as they were concerned - the source was not someone one the administration, but perhaps one of the administration's enemies? (It still seems that the Novak leak DID come from the Bush administration, but was not the act of malice that Bush's enemies claim it was.)
And I have a big fat grin on my face .. because this is not going the way the Dems had planned
"You know, it so easy to figure out that the investigation is way beyond who said what to Novak. Is it laziness behind this constant misreporting?"
The Compost is showing what a terrible irresponsible rag it is by still pushing the administration leaked bs.
The guy whose balls are on the line is Wilson, next is his wife, her boss, Foley, who suddenly retired last summer, and some of the top rat mediots in on this attempted electronic hanging of GW last year.
I think you're onto something - Russert was his biggest propagandist!
Or maybe someone who did work for the Bush Admin .. but now is an adviser to a dem canidate .. who also worked with Wilson??
Nope - based on the time underway & what the Senate Intelligence committee revealed, it's Obstruction of Justice & Perjury time for the RATs ... IMO
We need to remember that last summer Joe Wilson was publicly bragging that he wanted to go down in history as the man who brought down the Bush administration. So he - and anyone involved with arranging his trip to Niger - may have been deliberately setting up the administration for this "scandal" to happen. Hence, they might be the original source of some or all of the leaks.
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