OCTOBER 15, 2004:
In the now-famous Valerie Plame case, many reporters have been threatened with jail time for not revealing their sources. The case involves a grand jury investigation into the leak of the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame, whose name was disclosed by a syndicated columnist on July 14, 2003. Disclosing the identity of a covert officer for the Central Intelligence Agency can be a crime. It has been suggested that the White House might have leaked Plame’s name as retribution for her husband’s criticism of the president.
The reporter who disclosed Plame’s identity was columnist Robert Novak. Novak cited “two senior administration officials” as his sources. He has not yet been subpoenaed.
Journalists who may have information about the leak have been threatened by the courts:
· Time reporter Matthew Cooper was the first to be subpoenaed in the Plame case. This past August, Cooper was ordered to name the government officials who disclosed Plame’s identity, and Cooper refused. Cooper was held in contempt and threatened with jail time until he named his source. Time Magazine was also fined $1,000 a day.
Although Cooper agreed to give private testimony to the special counsel investigating the leak when the source - Vice President Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff Lewis Libby - allowed it, he is still being threatened with a $1,000 fine and up to 18 months in jail. The judge issued a broader subpoena demanding everything in Cooper’s notebook. He refused on First Amendment grounds: “No reporter in the United States should have to go to jail for simply doing their job,” he stated.
He is currently filing an appeal.
· Walter Pincus of The Washington Post was also subpoenaed and likewise threatened. Much like Matthew Cooper, Pincus revealed his source only after the source’s written approval was obtained.
· Currently, New York Times Reporter Judith Miller is being held in contempt and faces up to 18 months in prison. She is currently free pending appeal, but the threat against her is very real. “It’s frankly frightening that just for doing my job and talking to government employees about public issues, I may be deprived of my freedom and family,” Miller said in a statement.
The New York Times backs Miller and the First Amendment. Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., publisher of the New York Times said, “the pending imprisonment of Judy Miller is an attack on the ability of all journalists to report on the actions of governments, corporations and others. The Times will continue to fight for the ability of journalists to provide the people of this nation with the essential information they need to evaluate issues affecting our country and the world.”
Miller has said she has no intention of naming her sources, and is aware she may be jailed for this.
This sort of coercion is quite disturbing. Journalists protecting their sources are threatened with jail time, and the sources feel pressured into coming forward and revealing themselves, however reluctantly. This process not only makes true confidential sources a thing of the past, but uses journalists as pawns. They are not the ones who exposed Valerie Plame, yet are the ones facing jail time and contempt charges. They are being punished for exercising their First Amendment rights.
Furthermore, the actions of judges in the Plame case has opened the door for this kind of intimidation of journalists in other cases:
This summer, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in San Francisco requested that San Francisco Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams voluntarily turn over transcripts of secret grand-jury testimony the office believes they received in relation to the BALCO steroids scandal.
A week after Matthew Cooper was held in contempt for the Plame case, a judge held five reporters in contempt for refusing to identify their sources about Wen Ho Lee, a former nuclear weapons scientist once suspected of espionage.
The judge imposed a fine of $500 a day to AP reporter H. Josef Hebert, New York Times reporters James Rizen and Jeff Gerth, Los Angeles Times reporter Robert Drogin, and ABC’s Pierre Thomas. The reporters and their lawyers argued that they provided all the relevant information they could without breaking their commitment to their sources, and still honor the First Amendment.
The government intends to get records of confidential communications between journalists Philip Shenon and Judith Miller and their sources. In response, The New York Times is suing Attorney General John Ashcroft, saying the government’s demand for telephone records meant the records would expose the identities of dozens of confidential sources used by the reporters for an array of articles about Sept. 11, the government’s handling of continued threats from Al-Quaida, and the war in Iraq.
This sort of disregard for journalists’ rights is appalling and of deep concern to PEN USA’s First Amendment Action Committee. This continued violation of the First Amendment by the courts means sources will be afraid to come forward, fewer investigative stories will come to light, and that Freedom of the Press is compromised and threatened.
