Questions Remain on the Leaker and the Law

[cal04]

The jailing of New York Times reporter Judith Miller on Wednesday put the issue of press freedom and the confidentiality of sources on front pages across the country, but the heart of the case remains what it has been from the outset: whether senior Bush officials broke the law in the disclosure of a CIA covert operative's identity.

Special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has spent the better part of two years trying to answer that question, in a case that grew out of the angry debate over whether President Bush and his advisers hyped or falsified intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to justify going to war with Iraq in the spring of 2003. At issue is whether administration officials misused classified information to try to discredit one of their potentially most damaging critics.

Now, a fast-moving series of decisions over the past week involving Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper have brought a renewed public focus on what role White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove may have played in disclosing the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame. A White House spokesman long ago asserted that Rove was "not involved" in disclosing Plame's identity. Rove, who has testified before a grand jury investigating the case, likewise has maintained that he did not break the law, saying in a television interview, "I didn't know her name, and I didn't leak her name."

But Fitzgerald still appears to want more answers about Rove's role. The prosecutor is apparently focused on Rove's conversations with Cooper.The debate two summers ago over why the United States went to war engaged some of the most senior officials in the government and included an incendiary accusation by former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, who had challenged the administration over claims that Iraq was seeking nuclear material in Africa. Wilson based his claim on information gathered on a CIA-sponsored trip to Niger.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/07/AR2005070702215.html

[jsamuel]

1. I KNEW IT!!! Everyone is concentrating on the "Knowingly", but its "name"

It's the "name", stupid!

[tuvor]

2. Recommended. n/t

[Catch22Dem]

3. Why is Judith Miller portrayed as a victim

Look, if your source committed a crime in leaking information to you, he's not a wistleblower, he's a fucking criminal. Just like a priest or a psychiatrist can't keep the confession of a crime confidential, neither can a journalist.

[WhiteTara]

4. kick

[Pirate Smile]

5. WP: Questions Remain on the Leaker and the Law (Rove's Talks With Cooper)

Questions Remain on the Leaker and the Law
Rove's Talks With Time Writer May Be a Focus

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 8, 2005; Page A02

The jailing of New York Times reporter Judith Miller on Wednesday put the issue of press freedom and the confidentiality of sources on front pages across the country, but the heart of the case remains what it has been from the outset: whether senior Bush officials broke the law in the disclosure of a CIA covert operative's identity.

Special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has spent the better part of two years trying to answer that question, in a case that grew out of the angry debate over whether President Bush and his advisers hyped or falsified intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to justify going to war with Iraq in the spring of 2003. At issue is whether administration officials misused classified information to try to discredit one of their potentially most damaging critics.

Now, a fast-moving series of decisions over the past week involving Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper have brought a renewed public focus on what role White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove may have played in disclosing the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

A White House spokesman long ago asserted that Rove was "not involved" in disclosing Plame's identity. Rove, who has testified before a grand jury investigating the case, likewise has maintained that he did not break the law, saying in a television interview, "I didn't know her name, and I didn't leak her name."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/07/AR2005070702215.html



edit to add: In case you missed it, here are a few details from Lawrence O'Donnell's blog which show how serious Special Counsel Fitzgerald's case seems to be -

The One Very Good Reason Karl Rove Might Be Indicted

-snip-
In February, Circuit Judge David Tatel joined his colleagues’ order to Cooper and Miller despite his own, very lonely finding that indeed there is a federal privilege for reporters that can shield them from being compelled to testify to grand juries and give up sources. He based his finding on Rule 501 of the Federal Rules of Evidence, which authorizes federal courts to develop new privileges “in the light of reason and experience.” Tatel actually found that reason and experience “support recognition of a privilege for reporters’ confidential sources.” But Tatel still ordered Cooper and Miller to testify because he found that the privilege had to give way to “the gravity of the suspected crime.”

Judge Tatel’s opinion has eight blank pages in the middle of it where he discusses the secret information the prosecutor has supplied only to the judges to convince them that the testimony he is demanding is worth sending reporters to jail to get. The gravity of the suspected crime is presumably very well developed in those redacted pages. Later, Tatel refers to “aving carefully scrutinized voluminous classified filings.”

Some of us have theorized that the prosecutor may have given up the leak case in favor of a perjury case, but Tatel still refers to it simply as a case “which involves the alleged exposure of a covert agent.” Tatel wrote a 41-page opinion in which he seemed eager to make new law -- a federal reporters’ shield law -- but in the end, he couldn’t bring himself to do it in this particular case. In his final paragraph, he says he “might have” let Cooper and Miller off the hook “ere the leak at issue in this case less harmful to national security.”

Tatel’s colleagues are at least as impressed with the prosecutor’s secret filings as he is. One simply said “Special Counsel’s showing decides the case.”

All the judges who have seen the prosecutor’s secret evidence firmly believe he is pursuing a very serious crime, and they have done everything they can to help him get an indictment."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/lawrence-odonnell/the-one-very-good-reason-_3769.html

[Katherine2]

6. That "I didn't know

her name and I didn't leak her name" quote from Rove sounds a little like "it depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is".

[BattyDem]

7. "I didn't know her name, and I didn't leak her name."

So what? The name is irrelevant. If he leaked the fact that Joe Wilson's wife was a CIA agent, that's the crime. Any decent reporter could have easily found out her name.

[jody]

8. "I didn't know her name" only her SSN. n/t

[sattahipdeep]

9. Questions Remain (Dr David Kelly)

In an email to American author Judy Miller, sent just before he
left his home for the last time, he referred to "many dark
actors playing games".

But, according to Miller, Dr Kelly gave no indication he was
depressed or planning to take his own life.
He told her he would wait "until the end of the week" before
deciding his next move following his traumatic appearance
before a House of Commons select committee...

http://nuttymango.dailykos.com/story/2005/7/3/17138/30618