Free Republic

In a major setback for proponents of the legal rights of journalists, the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday declined to hear the case of two reporters who have refused to cooperate with a grand-jury investigation.... Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper and New York Times correspondent Judith Miller now face as much as 18 months in prison for civil contempt unless they comply with a lower-court order that they cooperate with a government investigation into the leak.... The Supreme Court's decision not to address the case has far-reaching implications for the rights of journalists in protecting unnamed sources from federal investigations. Reporters...

Walter Pincus, a 71-year-old Washington Post reporter who has earned the respect and envy of his colleagues for the government contacts he has cultivated in more than 30 years at the paper, walked into a conference room at a Washington law firm two weeks ago and read a statement. "As someone who covers national security and intelligence, I depend on confidential sources more than most reporters," he told Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor appointed to investigate the disclosure to journalists of the identity of a covert C.I.A. agent, Valerie Plame. "My sources take a chance when they trust me...

A federal district judge in Washington has ordered a reporter for The New York Times to testify before a grand jury investigating the disclosure of the identity of a covert C.I.A. officer. In a decision dated Sept. 9 and released yesterday, the judge, Thomas F. Hogan, said the reporter, Judith Miller, must describe any conversations she had with "a specified executive branch official." The judge said Ms. Miller had received subpoenas issued by a special prosecutor investigating "the potentially illegal disclosure of the identity of C.I.A. official Valerie Plame." George Freeman, assistant general counsel of The New York Times Company,...

A federal judge in Washington yesterday lifted a contempt order and the threat of jail against a Time magazine reporter after he submitted to questioning by a special prosecutor who is investigating the disclosure of a covert C.I.A. officer's identity to the columnist Robert Novak and other journalists. The reporter, Matthew Cooper, was questioned in a two-hour deposition about his contacts with I. Lewis Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, but only after Mr. Libby's lawyer assured Mr. Cooper's lawyer that Mr. Libby had waived a confidentiality agreement with the reporter. The deposition was given on Monday...