When Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV wrote an Op-Ed column for the NY Times advising that Pres. Bush was mistaken, there was no atomic Yellowcake in Africa as the president had claimed, it looks like someone got ticked off, because a few days later, Valerie Plame, Wilson's wife, was burned when, allegedly, government officials leaked to a few journalists, who published the information, that she was a CIA 'operative,' a spy.
When a spy loses her cover she's not of much use any more as a spy. The information she generates ceases, the government is blinded in one eye, the people she was seeing while using her assumed identity are subject to being tortured and murdered, and the government investment in the operative, her network, and all of her effort, is rendered valueless.
Burning our spies is thus a serious offense against the operation of the United States of America and a federal felony.
The FBI has to find out whodunnit.
Wilson says it must be someone in the White House who didn't like the political damage the Op-ed piece did to Presidet Bush in the run-up to the November election.
Who leaked?
Karl Rove, the president's political adviser, sometimes seen as the Darth Vader of the Administration when the black costume isn't being worn by Vice President Dick Cheney? Some other highly placed White House source? Heaven forfend, the President Himself?
Prosecutors in charge of the investigation have subpenaed journalists to testify before the U.S. Grand Jury to force them to name their sources on pain of going to jail.
If you, as a journalist, refuse to honor a federal grand jury subpena, you are subject to being held in contempt and jailed for the duration of the term of the grand jury, up to eighteen months, with a renewable lease on your jail cell for a fresh eighteen months when the next grand jury is convened.
Judith Miller, a NY Times reporter, is looking at eighteen months in the Stony Lonesome for refusing to cough up the name of her source, the person who told her that Wilson's wife was a spy.
The New York Times, in a piece co-written by Publisher and Chairman Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr., and Chief Executive Officer Russell T. Lewis, says this is wrong.
Yes, we have three branches of government they say, but just as newspapers are human and make mistakes (they are not saying it was a mistake to collect and publish the spy information), so do governments, which are also human institutions.
As a result, the Founding Fathers amended the Constitution to include Freedom of the Press to protect publishers of information. It's really the Fourth Branch of government because it is our, the public's, eyes, ears and mouth. Our national government is a four-leaf clover, not just three leaves, Legislative, Executive, and Judicial. That's why they call the press the Fourth Estate!
The Prosecutor might respond: "We're not going after the publisher. We're not trying to punish the publisher for publishing anything. We know we can't do that. We're only going after the reporter who works for the publisher, or who sold her article, or information, TO the publisher, and that's different. That's not covered by Freedom of the Press. Spies are the Front Line Soldiers in the undercover war against terrorists, just as James Bond, whom we all know and love, and just as much as a soldier in flak-jacket and helmet in a Humvee in Iraq. This is how the nation protects the public from being slaughtered by Al Qaeda. The Nation, our government is our watchdog!"
The Publisher would respond,"But you must understand that without reporters who go out and find the information used to write articles, we'd have nothing to publish. Freedom of the Press would mean the freedom to publish empty white sheets of paper. There'd be nothing for the public to read. They'd be ignorant, and in the dark, surviving only on thin gruel spoon-fed to it by the government. Experience teaches not to trust the government that far."
And the Reporter would chime in to add: "Not only that, but the people who have the information we need often work for the government. If the government knew who tipped us off or leaked us the information needed to inform the American public, they'd be fired or prosecuted and sent to jail themselves. So we make them a solemn promise never to reveal our sources. And unfortunatey, we WILL accept the occasional jailing in order to continue doing this. But we shouldn't have to, given Freedom of the Press, which should mean Freedom to Collect News and Protect Sources From Government Subpenas, even if our sources work for the government."
A Member of the Public might say: "Yes, how are we supposed to know what our government is doing for and to us using our money? Are we supposed to believe everything the government puts out?
We've been down that road too many times before. We can't begin to tell you how many times government has tried to pull the wool down over our eyes, starting with President Tricky Dick "I am not a Crook" Nixon, who turned out to be a little crooked, and resigned from office in disgrace.
And then there was his Vice-President, Spiro Agnew, convicted of taking bribes and also resigning (bringing in a new VP, Gerald Ford, who assumed the presidency when Nixon bailed and then pardoned him for the good of the country).
And Nixon's Attorney-General John Mitchell, the Chief Law Enforcement officer of the land, who was sent to jail behind Watergate. And that's just in one administration. We don't think we want to rely one-hundred percent on what the government tells us.
After all, wasn't it the journalists Woodward and Bernstein for the Washington Post who kept after the Watergate story and turned what the president called a "second-rate burglary" into a regime change? Do you think "Deep Throat," one of their main sources, didn't work for the government?
And wasn't it the press who revealed that President Bush's main reason for invading Iraq, that Saddam Hussein was hoarding Weapons of Mass Destruction (more recently termed Weapons of Mass Deception) was not entirely true? In fact it seems hugely untrue, based on new government statements and reports including from Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and a Mr. Duerfel who checked it out for the White House.
We think we need the press to clue us in whenever the stakes are high. We like our press. We'd better protect their backsides. "
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Uh-oh. It looks like another one of those constitutional confrontations in the making, all boiling down to a value judgment:
Which is more important to a functioning democracy, (1) to allow a journalist to honor her promise to a source to keep her mouth shut as to the source's identity on freedom of the press grounds, or
(2) to allow the government to backtrack to the government-source of the leak in order to fire and prosecute the leaker, who, after all, burned the spy, blinded the government, and might do it again if not detected and removed?
Which is more important to you? Would you side with the government, which was established to work for the people? Or with the people who established the government and who need to keep an eye, by keeping informed, on their government to make sure it doesn't run out of control?
How do we best protect the public? By keeping it informed, which includes watching and blowing the whistle on its own government?
Or by keeping it in the dark and allowing the government to protect itself so that it can say it is protecting the people but may be lying or fudging the data and getting us into a war based on misleading information?
To whom will we give priority? The Watchdog, or the Watcher of the Watchdog.
How far are YOU willing to protect government, given what you know about how human beings operate when they have a motive to lie, such as in case of re-election?
If you were a Supreme Court justice, which way would YOU decide?
You can read the NYT editorial here.