Last Thursday, a federal district judge ordered a New York Times reporter, Judy Miller, sent to prison. Her crime was doing her job as the founders of this nation intended. Here's what happened and why it should concern you.
On July 6, 2003, Joseph C. Wilson IV - formerly a career foreign service officer, a chargé d'affaires in Baghdad and an ambassador - wrote an article published on this page under the headline, "What I Didn't Find in Africa." The article served to undercut the Bush administration's claims surrounding Saddam Hussein's nuclear capacity.
Eight days later, Robert Novak, a syndicated columnist, wrote an article in which he identified Ambassador Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as an "operative on weapons of mass destruction" for the C.I.A. "Two senior administration officials told me," Mr. Novak wrote, that it was Ms. Plame who "suggested sending Wilson" to investigate claims that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium ore from Niger. After Mr. Novak's report, several other journalists wrote stories in which they said they received similar information about Ms. Plame from confidential government sources, in what many have concluded was an effort to punish Mr. Wilson for speaking out against the administration by exposing his wife as a C.I.A. operative. The record is clear, however, that Judy Miller is not one of those journalists who reported this information.
Because the government officials who revealed Valerie Plame's status as a C.I.A. operative to the press might have committed a crime in doing so, the Justice Department opened a federal criminal investigation to find whoever was responsible.<snip>
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/opinion/10sulzberger.html