Posted on 09/28/2004 10:09:46 PM PDT by neverdem
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The fundamental right of Americans, through our free press, to penetrate and criticize the workings of our government is under attack as never before.
Three decades ago, not long after I left the Nixon administration to join The New York Times, I criticized the posturing of the special prosecutor Leon Jaworski - then the darling of the press corps. Al Haig, the White House chief of staff at the time, collared me at a party to pass along a message about Jaworski's triggering a grand-jury subpoena: "Leon says to tell you to get off his back or else."
I passed back a message, an imperative since used semipublicly by Dick Cheney, then wrote in this space about the improper threat. The most feared man in Washington backed off.
A decade later, I learned of another example of investigative overreaching, this time involving confidential sources. President Reagan's national security adviser, Bud McFarlane, had flunked an F.B.I. polygraph test about who had leaked a story to The Times. In the presence of the president, McFarlane called our publisher, then the intrepid Punch Sulzberger, to plead for confirmation that he was not our source (which he was not).
Punch and the editors reluctantly agreed - permitting no questions about others - to absolve the threatened national security adviser. In today's climate of prosecutorial intimidation, that would be a mistake.
Which brings us to the runaway Chicago prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and his campaign to undermine the tradition of protecting the confidentiality of a journalist's sources, without which officials could conceal ineptitude, nepotism, corruption and worse.
Somebody blew the whistle on the persuasion by Valerie Plame, a C.I.A. employee in Washington, to get her husband, Joseph Wilson IV, assigned to check out reports of Saddam's attempt to buy uranium ore from Niger. (His later book-promoting charges of lying by the president have since been doubly discredited.)
To disclose the identity of a C.I.A. agent while knowing that the employee is operating "undercover" is against the law. Wilson complained that the motive for the embarrassing exposure of the spousal sponsor of his assignment was to punish him, which transformed him into an anti-Bush poster boy. That led to an investigation, still consuming the time of dozens of G-men, to discover who provided the nepotism charge to the columnist Robert Novak. (Apparently unaware that Plame in D.C. was still officially "undercover," he had every right to report it.)
After questioning possible government sources right up to the president, the frustrated Fitzgerald went after the press with a vengeance and a blunderbuss. He demanded testimony in breach of confidentiality from Time magazine's Matthew Cooper, The Washington Post's Walter Pincus and Glenn Kessler, NBC's Tim Russert, and presumably Novak, who has been ethically tight-lipped.
Most of the reporters and their corporate counsel, unfortunately, have fallen for the prosecutor's trick. (I'd hate to be counseled by a weak-kneed Time Inc. lawyer.) Fitzgerald has coerced potential government sources into signing waivers of confidentiality, backed up by dutiful "nothing to hide" statements. He tells the journalists: See? You have been released from your pledge - now you have no reason not to tell us who talked to you on deep background.
But that is no legitimate "release" at all. Such a source-burning subterfuge sneaks around the First Amendment, which ensures free speech. The potential source has been told: Sign here or get fired or, worse, become more suspect for not signing and get prosecuted. That pressure undermines the Fifth Amendment, which is against self-incrimination.
Feeling his oats, confident of his power to threaten reporters with jail for contempt, Fitzgerald is harassing The Times's intrepid Judith Miller with a subpoena, reportedly in an unrelated case about her investigation of an Islamic charity aiding terrorists. Unlike most of the other reporters, this principled journalist is risking her freedom and defending us all by fighting the subversive subpoena. The Times has retained Floyd Abrams, no pushover, to argue for her right to protect her sources.
I have not discussed these cases with anybody mentioned herein, many of whom I know well, and am not clearing this with any lawyers. Editorialists everywhere fretting about the appearance of self-interest should awake to the urgency of reminding readers and judges of this generation's gravest threat to our ability to ferret out the news.
Bullcrap.
The leftist MSM and Dems spent months attacking Bush over this Plame nonsense, implying that it was the Bush White House who did the leaking.
As it turns out, all the senior WH officials who had been fingered signed confidentiality waivers. Yet, the source has yet to be revealed.
Cornered, the MSM is now stonewalling.
We deserve to know who is behind this conspiracy against the President BEFORE the election.
The elites in NY that have run this country's culture, politicians, government, medical care and education, are complaining?
Since when do they "ferret" out the news?
They destroy with impunity, they have more constitutional protections than the ones they zero in on.
They destroy lives, reputations, and incomes with a blink of an eye.
And then proceed to their Manhatten salons, before their next award show to give one another a pat on the back.
I hope they are all reduced to rubble, and a new generation springs up in their place.
Term limits for "journalists" should be the one and only goal on FR.
Safire is usually on our side. He's about the only one at the Times writing about UN Oil for Food scandal.
Thank You, you cleared that circle speak up for me with just one word, which was floating around the edges of my mind. BULLCRAP!
I remember an NRO writer mentioned that Plame's employment was well known among the DC press corp. As such, I'm hardly shocked to see reporters now the being considered the likely "suspects".
The more important issue though, is getting to the bottom of who sent Joe Wilson to Niger in the first place, and *prosecuting* them.
At the very least, sending anti-war activist and Saudi employee Wilson on such a mission is criminal negligence.
He fights like a girl, as most of the old guard does, he should have resigned from that yellow journalism paper years ago.
Safire in this instance is falling for the "I work for the Times so the rules don't apply to me" syndrome. On this one issue, Safire has gone native -- native of 43rd Street, hiding under the skirts of the Grey Lady.
Congressman Billybob
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Great post, rose!
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