Nbadan
05-13-2005, 03:47 AM
A Leak's Wider Ripples
By David Ignatius
Friday, May 13, 2005; Page A23
It's hard to fathom the continuing legal squeeze on Time magazine's Matthew Cooper and the New York Times's Judith Miller to reveal their sources in a White House leak investigation. Unless, that is, the real concern of special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald isn't just the leak but possible perjury by a senior Bush administration official.
If Fitzgerald's investigation has now expanded to include perjury, as some close followers of the case suspect, that sharpens the dilemma for the journalists involved. It's one thing to protect the identity of a confidential source, even if that person may have violated the law by disclosing the identity of a covert intelligence agent. But it is arguably quite a different matter if the reporter has reason to believe a source lied to a grand jury. Does a reporter's confidentiality agreement extend to protecting a cover-up?
Though the perjury issue hasn't surfaced in most discussions of the case, it's buried between the lines of the hundreds of pages of memos, briefs and other legal documents. Unless perjury is one of Fitzgerald's concerns, his tireless pursuit of Cooper and Miller is difficult to understand. As was said of Melville's "Moby-Dick," this is more than a story about a fish.
snip
For journalists, the case raises agonizing issues: Where is the dividing line between journalistic ethics, which demand that reporters protect their sources, and ordinary ethics, which say people should cooperate with law enforcement if they know about possible criminal activity? Do journalists have a special status that exempts them, in certain cases, from the normal responsibilities of citizenship? But this case should worry most of all any White House insider who may have talked with reporters about Valerie Plame and then lied about it under oath.
Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/12/AR2005051201556.html)
Novak, of all parties in the press, ought to be in hot seat on this one. As much as I dislike Judith Miller for her outright distortion of the evidence leading up to and beyond the war, she is not the principal in this--Novak is. If Novak provided perjured testimony to protect a source for political purposes, he should be the one taking the heat, not journalists who did not break the story.
That said, if Judith Miller and Cooper are refusing to testify to protect Novak because they fear him and the administration, they all should have a few weeks of prison food to give them some perspective on freedom of the press.
By David Ignatius
Friday, May 13, 2005; Page A23
It's hard to fathom the continuing legal squeeze on Time magazine's Matthew Cooper and the New York Times's Judith Miller to reveal their sources in a White House leak investigation. Unless, that is, the real concern of special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald isn't just the leak but possible perjury by a senior Bush administration official.
If Fitzgerald's investigation has now expanded to include perjury, as some close followers of the case suspect, that sharpens the dilemma for the journalists involved. It's one thing to protect the identity of a confidential source, even if that person may have violated the law by disclosing the identity of a covert intelligence agent. But it is arguably quite a different matter if the reporter has reason to believe a source lied to a grand jury. Does a reporter's confidentiality agreement extend to protecting a cover-up?
Though the perjury issue hasn't surfaced in most discussions of the case, it's buried between the lines of the hundreds of pages of memos, briefs and other legal documents. Unless perjury is one of Fitzgerald's concerns, his tireless pursuit of Cooper and Miller is difficult to understand. As was said of Melville's "Moby-Dick," this is more than a story about a fish.
snip
For journalists, the case raises agonizing issues: Where is the dividing line between journalistic ethics, which demand that reporters protect their sources, and ordinary ethics, which say people should cooperate with law enforcement if they know about possible criminal activity? Do journalists have a special status that exempts them, in certain cases, from the normal responsibilities of citizenship? But this case should worry most of all any White House insider who may have talked with reporters about Valerie Plame and then lied about it under oath.
Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/12/AR2005051201556.html)
Novak, of all parties in the press, ought to be in hot seat on this one. As much as I dislike Judith Miller for her outright distortion of the evidence leading up to and beyond the war, she is not the principal in this--Novak is. If Novak provided perjured testimony to protect a source for political purposes, he should be the one taking the heat, not journalists who did not break the story.
That said, if Judith Miller and Cooper are refusing to testify to protect Novak because they fear him and the administration, they all should have a few weeks of prison food to give them some perspective on freedom of the press.