Posted on 07/06/2005 10:28:19 AM PDT by YaYa123
Wednesday, July 6, 2005; 1:07 PM
WASHINGTON -- In a high-stakes battle over press freedom, two reporters face jail, possibly as early as Wednesday, for refusing to divulge their sources to a prosecutor investigating the Bush administration's leak of a CIA officer's identity.
"Journalists are not entitled to promise complete confidentiality _ no one in America is," Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald told a judge.
In court papers, Fitzgerald said the source of Matthew Cooper of Time magazine and Judith Miller of The New York Times has waived confidentiality, giving the reporters permission to reveal where they got their information.
The prosecutor did not identify the reporters' source, nor did he specify whether the source of each reporter was the same person.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I like the idea of whistleblowers inside the government. If their anonymity cannot be guaranteed, then we as citizens will know a lot less of what is going on. I disagree with the ruling.
Tick tock...
BTW, did you hear that Cooper and Miller asked to be able to serve their time under house arrest or IN A PRISON OF THEIR CHOICE?
Naw, they don't think they're special, do they?
The problem though is that a lot of these "whistleblowers" are really just irresponsible rumormongers and axe-grinders.
Confidentiality should definitely apply to the former, but the latter are completely underserving of the protections granted to legitimate whistleblowers. And when the press goes out of their way to protect the latter, they undermine their own credibility.
We the people lose when journalists can't protect their sources. I am surprised that most on this forum agree with the ruling. I guess it's because they are short sighted and can't envision a time when Fox News might need a government source to expose the corruption of a Democrat administration.
Whistle blowers yes, partisan liars and security leakers no. That's what's really at stake here. The prosecutor has said that the information that he is seeking from the reporters has nothing to do with the Plame issue. Maybe it has to do with this:
Judith Miller, TWA 800 and the Death of Press Freedom ^
Posted by johnny7 to Eva
On News/Activism ^ 07/06/2005 8:01:20 AM PDT · 21 of 24 ^
Found this.
The Justice Department has charged that a veteran New York Times foreign correspondent warned an alleged terror-funding Islamic charity that the FBI was about to raid its office — potentially endangering the lives of federal agents. The stunning accusation was disclosed yesterday in legal papers related to a lawsuit the Times filed in Manhattan federal court.
The suit seeks to block subpoenas from the Justice Department for phone records of two of its Middle Eastern reporters — Philip Shenon and Judith Miller — as part of a probe to track down the leak. The Times last night flatly denied the allegation.
U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald of Chicago charged in court papers that Shenon blew the cover on the Dec. 14, 2001, raid of the Global Relief Foundation — the first charges of their kind under broad new investigatory powers given to the feds under the Patriot Act. "It has been conclusively established that Global Relief Foundation learned of the search from reporter Philip Shenon of The New York Times," Fitzgerald said in an Aug. 7, 2002, letter to the Times' legal department. He said he understood journalists' concerns about protecting the identities of their sources, but national security and preventing leaks that thwart probes into "terrorist fund-raising" trump such confidentiality. "I would posit that the circumstances here — the decision by the reporter to provide a tip to the subject of a terrorist fund-raising inquiry which seriously compromised the integrity of the investigation and potentially endangered the safety of federal law-enforcement personnel — warrant such cooperation in full," Fitzgerald said.
Times lawyer George Freeman told The Post that Fitzgerald "wrongly" suggested that Shenon alerted the Islamic charity to the raid. "We deny he tipped anyone off," Freeman said. He added that Global Relief would have anticipated the raid in any case because the feds had already hit the office of another suspected terror-funding Islamic charity, the Holy Land Foundation, and the government had frozen the assets of several other charities.
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Freedom of speech doesn't include the right to shout fire in a crowded theater, and it also shouldn't include the right to destroy someone's life on the basis of rumor and innuendo. That isn't my idea of how a free press is supposed to function.
Reporters have no more "rights" than you or I. To suggest otherwise is to make them a "protected" class ABOVE the rest of "us". That dog don't hunt!
Reporters have no more "rights" than you or I. To suggest otherwise is to make them a "protected" class ABOVE the rest of "us". That dog don't hunt!
yeah, Miller want to be confined to Manhattan to serve her sentence. she never leaves Manhattan anyway!
On another thread, you posited that this was more than just Plame. Hence, I ping you to reply #8 above...
oooooops...
Actually, Novak testified to the GJ and the consensus is that he revealed his source. The US Attorney knows who the leaker is as well. This thing has got some tentacles and will be interesting to see where it ends up...
Send 'em to Gitmo.
The reporter on Fox stated that the prosecutor said that the information that he was seeking from Cooper and Miller consecerned the substance of the conversations that Miller and Cooper had with a source on subjects other than Plame.
As I recall, right after the Rathergate mess blew up Dan Rather claimed that CBS had received the document from an "unimpeachable source". but he would not reveal the identity of the confidential source. Later it came out that the "unimpeachable source" was a Democratic operative with an ax to grind with President Bush and the National Guard. The "unimpeachable source" related a completely unbelievable story of how he got the documents including comments about a strange, dark lady who slipped him an envelope while he was standing around some livestock pens.
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