Posted on 09/27/2004 6:16:05 AM PDT by OESY
When the Justice Department opened an investigation a year ago into the question of how Robert Novak obtained the name of a covert Central Intelligence Agency operative for publication in his syndicated column, we expressed two basic concerns. The first was the need for an independent inquiry led by someone without Attorney General John Ashcroft's ultra-close ties to the White House. That was addressed belatedly with the naming of a special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, to pursue the accusations that unnamed Bush administration officials illegally leaked the woman's undercover role in an effort to stifle criticism of Iraq policy by her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson IV.
Unfortunately, our second, overriding fear has become a reality. The focus of the leak inquiry has lately shifted from the Bush White House, where it properly belongs, to an attempt to compel journalists to testify and reveal their sources. In an ominous development for freedom of the press and government accountability that hits particularly close to home, a federal judge in Washington has ordered a reporter for The New York Times, Judith Miller, to testify before a grand jury investigating the disclosure of the covert operative's identity and to describe any conversations she had with "a specified executive branch official."
The subpoena was upheld even though neither Ms. Miller nor this newspaper had any involvement in the matter at hand - the public naming of an undercover agent. Making matters worse, the newly released decision by Judge Thomas Hogan takes the absolutist position that there is no protection whatsoever for journalists who are called to appear before grand juries.
This chilling rejection of both First Amendment principles and evolving common law notions of a privilege protecting a reporter's confidential sources cries out for rejection on appeal, as does the undue secrecy surrounding the special prosecutor's filings in the case.
Mr. Novak has refused to say whether he received a subpoena. But other journalists have acknowledged getting subpoenas and some have testified about their contacts with I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. They say they did so based on his consent, but consent granted by government employees under a threat of dismissal hardly seems voluntary. Once again, none of these journalists were involved in the central issue: the initial public identification of Mr. Wilson's wife.
If an official at the White House intentionally triggered publication of the name of a C.I.A. operative to undermine Mr. Wilson's credibility and silence criticism of Iraq policy, it was a serious abuse of power. The legacy of the investigation should not be a perverse legal precedent that makes it easy for prosecutors to undo a reporter's pledge of confidentiality, thereby discouraging people with knowledge of real abuses to blow the whistle to the press.
I don't cling to the idea...but I don't discount it either. I'm waiting for the facts to be revealed...and waiting...and waiting...
I don't cling to the idea...but I don't discount it either. I'm waiting for the facts to be revealed...and waiting...and waiting...
Yes they could and they would still be SENIOR administration officials and therefore, ultimately, the responsibility of the President. His senior officials just can't go around outing CIA people because they're mad at a husband...if that's what they did.
But I've had a chance to think further about the CIA.
The idea that senior officials would out one of their own is so outrageous that I never even considered it. But now that I do it explains everything. These guys, if revealed, would go straight to jail. They couldn't claim they didn't know the rules, or didn't understand who Plame really was, or that they didn't understand the consequences of their actions. I think they would go to great lengths to try to protect their identities and keep their actions secret.
Who have you seen here on FR who's been trying to argue Novak shouldn't have to testify? How many as a percentage of posters following this story?
Just curious.
Telling someone about his trip over a plateful of Chinese food at a hole in the wall restaurant does not qualify as "a report."
No critic could sum this up better than Geneva Overholser did in her New York Times op-ed earlier this month calling for Mr. Novak to betray his sources. "Never burn a source," writes Ms. Overholser. "It's a cardinal rule of journalism: do not disclose the identity of someone who gives you information in confidence. As a staunch believer in this rule for decades, I have surprised myself lately by concluding that journalists' proud absolutism on this issue--particularly in a case involving the syndicated columnist Robert Novak--is neither as wise nor as ethical as it has seemed."
Now, some of us aren't as surprised by Ms. Overholser as she professes herself to be. A former "ombudsman" at the Washington Post, she is the same media ethicist who recently resigned from the board of the National Press Foundation because it had bestowed an award on Fox News anchor Brit Hume.
----Source: "The Novak Exception Journalists abandon their principles in the Plame kerfuffle.," WSJ.com, 2/20/04
Hmmm... could it be.... Ray McGovern? Ray's the guy who flat out said he "knows" Wilson's wife is a "deep cover operative" and is "running" covert agents on WMD- he went WAY farther than Novak did. Indeed, so did Newsday. Novak never said she was covert- that info came from the liberal press and with a 527 associated with John Kerry's campaign.
Incidently, Ray McGovern of "Veteran Intelligence Preofessionals for Sanity" is associated with the Kerry campaign. And with Joe Wilson obviously.
The New York Times read the instructions on the grenade: "Pull pin and throw it."
Still, the laws protecting the identities of various people, and the laws forbidding dissemination of classified documents, have some meaning. It's up to the courts to decide what that meaning is.
But whatever it is, it's clear that Novak stepped over some line. Otherwise the CIA wouldn't have asked him not to publish Plame's name.
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