US reporter jailed for refusing to reveal source
A US judge has sent a journalist to prison for refusing to divulge her source in the investigation of the leak of an undercover CIA officer’s name.
New York Times reporter Judith Miller’s high-profile case was seen as a key test of press freedom in the US. It evolved from questions about whether President George Bush’s government misrepresented pre-war intelligence on Iraq’s weapons capabilities.
Before Miller was sentenced yesterday, Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper, in an about-face, told US District Judge Thomas Hogan in Washington that he would now cooperate with a federal prosecutor’s investigation into the leak of the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame because his source gave him specific authority to discuss their conversation.
“I am prepared to testify. I will comply” with the court’s order, Cooper said.
Sentencing Miller, Judge Hogan said: “There is still a realistic possibility that confinement might cause her to testify.”
Miller stood up, hugged her lawyer and was escorted from the courtroom.
Unless she decides to talk, Miller will be held until the grand jury investigating the leak ends its work in October. The judge speculated that Miller’s confinement might cause her source to give her a more specific waiver of confidentiality, as did Cooper’s.
The prosecutor, US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, is investigating who in the Bush administration leaked Ms Plame’s identity. Her name was disclosed in a column by Robert Novak days after her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, impugned part of Mr Bush’s justification for invading Iraq.
Mr Wilson was sent to Africa by the Bush administration to investigate an intelligence claim that Saddam Hussein may have purchased yellowcake uranium from Niger in the late 1990s for use in nuclear weapons. Mr Wilson said he could not verify the claim and criticised the administration for manipulating the intelligence to “exaggerate the Iraqi threat”.
Novak, whose column cited as sources two unidentified senior Bush administration officials, has refused to say whether he has testified before the grand jury or been subpoenaed.
Disclosure of an undercover intelligence officer’s identity can be a federal crime if prosecutors can show the leak was intentional and the person who released that information knew of the officer’s secret status.
Cooper spoke to White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove after Mr Wilson’s public criticism of Mr Bush and before Novak’s column ran, according to Mr Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskin, who denies that his client leaked Ms Plame’s identity to anyone. Cooper’s story mentioning Ms Plame’s name appeared after Novak’s column. Miller did some reporting, but never wrote a story.
Last week, Time provided Mr Fitzgerald with records, notes and email traffic involving Cooper, who had argued that it was therefore no longer necessary for him to testify. Time also had been found in contempt and officials there said after losing appeals it had no choice but to turn over the information.
When Cooper took the podium in the court. he told the judge, “Last night I hugged my son goodbye and told him it might be a long time before I see him again.”
“I went to bed ready to accept the sanctions” for not testifying, Cooper said. But he told the judge that not long before his early afternoon appearance, he had received ”in somewhat dramatic fashion” a direct personal communication from his source freeing him from his commitment to keep the source’s identity secret.
Talking to reporters after the hearing, Cooper said it is ”a sad time”.
“My heart goes out to Judy. I told her as she left the court to stay strong,” he added.
New York Times executive editor Bill Keller told reporters that “Judy Miller made a commitment to her source and she’s standing by it”.
Prior to the hearing, Miller argued that it is imperative for reporters to honour their commitments to provide cover to sources who will only reveal important information if they are assured anonymity. Forcing reporters to renege on the pledge undercuts their ability to do their job, she said.
Mr Fitzgerald had responded in court to Miller’s refusal to name her source by saying “we can’t have 50,000 journalists” each making their own decision about whether to reveal sources.
“We cannot tolerate that,” he said. “We are trying to get to the bottom of whether a crime was committed and by whom.”
