Posted on 07/06/2005 2:17:26 AM PDT by Liz
GETTING TO THE SOURCE: Judith Miller.....and Matt Cooper are facing jail time.
Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald yesterday urged a federal judge to send a Time magazine reporter and a NY Times reporter to jail if they continue to refuse to reveal their ources. "Journalists are not entitled to promise complete confidentiality — no one in America is," Fitzgerald wrote..... Fitzgerald said that allowing home confinement would make it easier for them to continue to defy a court order to testify before the grand jury.
He said special treatment for journalists may "negate the coercive effect contemplated by federal law."
Fitzgerald also said Cooper still must testify before a grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA officer's identity, even though Time has surrendered ..... documents sought in the probe.
The prosecutor is investigating who in the Bush administration leaked the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame.
Plame's name was leaked days after her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, publicly disparaged the president's case for invading Iraq.
Disclosure.....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.
US District Judge Thomas Hogan held the reporters in contempt in October, rejecting their argument that the First Amendment shielded them from revealing their sources.
He could sentence them to jail as soon as today.
Fitzgerald responded that Cooper failed "to meet his burden to show that there is no reasonable possibility that confinement will coerce him to testify."
The identity of Wilson's wife as a CIA officer was first published in a 2003 column by Robert Novak, who cited two unidentified senior Bush administration officials as his sources. Novak has refused to say whether he has testified before the grand jury or been subpoenaed.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
For starters, when the source is anonymous, we do not truly know the source exists.
Always wondered about anonymous sources...could it possibly be the author sitting at a keyboard writing story to fit her/his agenda? Believe it happens about 90% of the time...
No one is above the law period...jail time seems appropriate in this case.
Using anonymous sources...press mantra...getting real old!!!
Rush had a pretty good take on it yesterday. The source, if it exists, can't be Karl Rove, because the MSM would be trumpeting the news all over the place.
Which means an ethically challenged jurno could print just about anything with complete impunity...........as in NYT fraud Jayson Blair.
Be funny if it turns out the both of them cribbed Novak's collumn and ginned it up some, wouldn't it?
I thought that going to jail to protect your sources was a badge of honor for journalists. Just another war story to talk about over a few drinks w/ your buddies
Heheh....guess they'll never tell.
No American above the law--except for certain judges when they don't like the law.
If we have learned anything in the last ten years, we have learned that a growing segment of the population is indeed above the law.
Guess this reporter just doesn't happen to have made the grade.
It was settled in Paula Jones vs. Willim Clinton that not even a sitting President could hold himself above the law and refuse to testify.
Why should some reporters think they have a special dispensation that is above any other citizen?
WHo will start a pool? Bets to include admin source, dem party source, etc?
Not only that, just TRY to imagine Miller and/or Cooper going to jail to protect their source, Karl Rove! FOTFL!
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