Not Above the Law
Much has been written and reported in recent days regarding Judith Miller, the New York Times reporter who sits in jail on contempt of court charges. She will more than likely spend about four months behind bars for her crime — in this case, refusing to identify a confidential source.
Naturally, this has touched a nerve with journalists all around the country and, as seen in the “Foreign Media Reaction” portion of this editorial page, the world, too. (And it looks pretty grim when journalists in Nicaragua are taking up the fight for American press rights.) The bottom line is, a journalist’s pledge to keep a source confidential is perhaps the most powerful tool in our arsenal. It eliminates red tape, and it can blow the whistle on important matters that would have otherwise been kept out of public view.
While I support Ms. Miller’s principled stand and understand why she is choosing to do so, I may be the only journalist in the world who thinks that the decision to incarcerate her is legal and may even be just.
Let’s look at the Plame saga and try and put it into some perspective.
In a nutshell, here’s what happened (for those who haven’t paid attention or wondered just what the heck is going on): The United States made, as part of its case to go to war with Iraq, a big deal over CIA intelligence reports that linked a sale of uranium in Nigeria to Iraq. Days after the claim was made in the president’s state of the union, Joseph Wilson published an editorial in the New York Times refuting the claims made in the address, saying he was commissioned by the CIA and he never found such claims to be true.
Days after the editorial, a column written by Robert Novak fingered Valerie Plame, Wilson’s wife, as a CIA operative. In fact, Plame was an undercover agent for the CIA, and it is a federal crime to blow an undercover agent’s cover in this country. The question then became, who outed her? Who would know? And why would she be outed?
The answer, according to Time reporter Michael Cooper, is Karl Rove, the president’s deputy chief of staff, and she was outed to discredit Wilson. The story goes that Wilson wasn’t sent to Nigeria by CIA head George Tenet; he was sent by his wife. For some reason, this was supposed to discredit Wilson’s claim.
Supposedly, six other journalists were told — “shopped” — this information, as well. One of them was Miller. Democrats succeeded at having an independent counsel named on the matter, and the hunt for Rove or whoever leaked the identity was on.
There are various political arguments to be made from this point, all of which I will not comment on here. What I will comment on, however, is Miller’s principled stand.
Miller refused to identify her source, a person many people believe to be Rove, one of the most powerful men in the world. As a White House correspondent, it’s easy to figure out why. The White House is the worst beat in all of journalism. Nothing really happens there that the government doesn’t want you to know. It is a watchdog job to be sure, but a rather fruitless one.
But people are wrongly castigating the White House for attempting to “gag the press.” Actually, just the opposite has occurred. The judicial branch is punishing Miller because she refuses to remove her own self-imposed gag.
The argument is posited that if Miller, and other journalists like her, are hauled into court every day and forced to give up sources, there will be no more stories to write. Sources will forever dry up. A media shield law is being drawn up as we speak.
But protecting the source here is not protecting the reader, at least not directly. We are a nation at war. Intelligence is of the utmost importance right now. We lost an agent, one that was presumably sold out by a high-ranking government official, whomever it may be. That’s a federal crime, and a pretty serious threat to national security. Shouldn’t the public have the right to know that, too? The government of the people, for the people, by the people, wants to know who sold out Valerie Plame, and Miller made the career decision not to do so.
That’s what journalists do. We go to jail to protect sources sometimes. My heart goes out to Miller and her health in prison. I support her decision professionally, but I don’t support the notion that she — or any other journalist — should be above the law on this matter.
The fourth estate will march on in this country, despite all rumors to the contrary, and always will report on proceedings of government and matters of importance. Some will do it better than others, and there always will be sacrifices made.