Jewish World Review July 8, 2005 / 1 Taamuz, 5765

Memo to the truly ‘objective’: Leakers are people with an agenda. At best, they tell just part of the story

By Jack Kelly

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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Judith Miller of the New York Times is in jail, for running afoul of the law of unintended consequences. What began two years ago as an effort to smear President Bush has backfired, big time.

Miller is in jail because she won't tell Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald who told her that Valerie Plame, wife of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, worked for the CIA.

Wilson gained his 15 minutes of fame in 2003 when he claimed in an op-ed in the New York Times that President Bush had lied in his State of the Union address that year when Bush claimed Saddam Hussein had sought to buy uranium in Africa.

The CIA had sent Wilson to Niger in February, 2002 to determine whether that country had sold "yellowcake" ore to Iraq. After an eight day investigation which he described as sitting around the hotel pool, "drinking sweet mint tea, meeting with dozens of people," Wilson concluded that Niger had not.

Or so he said in his op-ed.

Once the story broke, columnist Bob Novak asked two officials why the CIA had selected Wilson — who has no intelligence background and strong anti-administration sentiments — for this mission. One told him Wilson's wife was in the CIA. Novak published her name.

It's against the law deliberately to disclose the identity of a covert agent. Demands were made for a special prosecutor to track down the leaker. Journalists lost interest in the case last July when the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded it was Wilson who was lying. Wilson had said in his report to the CIA that Iraqis had indeed approached Nigerien officials about buying yellowcake.

But the special prosecutor had been appointed by then. Fitzgerald demanded that Miller and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine tell the grand jury what they knew about the leaker. They refused.

Many wonder why Fitzgerald is pursuing the case so zealously, since it will be difficult to prove a crime was committed. The identities protection act was passed in 1982 after rogue CIA officer Philip Agee published a list of CIA officers operating under cover overseas, and one of them was assassinated.

Fitzgerald first has to prove the leaker intended to out Plame. If the disclosure were inadvertent, the law does not apply.

It also isn't clear that Plame is a "covert agent" under the statute. She was holding down a staff job at CIA headquarters at the time Novak published her name.

Finally, the leaker is off the hook if it were known beforehand that Plame was a CIA officer. "Sources close to the investigation say there is evidence in some instances that some reporters may have told government officials — not the other way around — that Wilson was married to Plame," Carol Leonnig reported in the Washington Post Wednesday.

Cooper isn't in jail because his source gave Cooper explicit permission to name him. Miller is because hers didn't, which suggests more than one government official named Plame.

Liberals salivated when Lawrence O'Donnell, MSNBC's unhinged political analyst, declared that Cooper's source was Bush political guru Karl Rove.

But Cooper's notes indicate only that he talked to Rove (among other people). Rove's lawyer denied his client mentioned Plame to Cooper, and said Rove has signed an affidavit freeing journalists from any promises of confidentiality. Rove's lawyer said also Fitzgerald has assured him Rove is not a target of the investigation.

Miller is behaving honorably. She made a promise to her source and is sticking by it, and suffering the consequences (which doubtless will be ameliorated by the book deal to come).

Jailing Miller could have a chilling effect on the use of anonymous sources, journalists warn. But that would be a good thing. Leakers are people with an agenda. At best, they tell just part of the story. Often, they lie.

Joe Wilson leaked his story to columnist Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times before "going public" in his op-ed.

Limiting anonymous sources would hurt the people's right to know, journalists say. But as law professor Glenn Reynolds noted in an article in USA Today, the journalists involved know who outed Valerie Plame. They just aren't telling us.

"Journalists aren't claiming the right to tell us things we want to know," Reynolds said. "They're claiming the right to not tell things they'd rather we didn't know."