Karl Rove Source in Plame Case - Page 2 - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

roachboy · 07-05-2005, 08:45 PM

in terms of the news coverage, i was thinking that maybe the fact is that karl rove is the luckiest man alive.
think about it--this story breaks on the day after sandra day o'connor resigned. and then there's live8 and then there's a patriotic holiday.

if you or i had luck like his, any of us could be running the bush administration.
that is the type of good fortune that would make many of us begin to think being on a mission from god or something.

but apparently it happens: there are alot of people--lots of parameters, lots of trajectories, the law of averages, etc..overwhelming luck has to be possible, and because it really is distributed by chance, why could karl rove not simply be the beneficiary of some cycle or another?

but even still, this turn of events for rove is extraordinary.
as of the evening of 5 july, 2005, he is the luckiest man alive.

kutulu · 07-06-2005, 12:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seaver

Let it go to court. If found guilty those his ass in jail for as long as law allows.

Some may be surprised at my stance, but this is treason. Intolerable whichever their stance is politically. However... let it go to court.

That's how I feel. Everyone deserves their fair trial.

roachboy · 07-06-2005, 12:53 PM

i dont think anyone is arguing the contrary, folks.
that particular logic--that it is ok to hold people without trial indefinitely for example--is bushlogic. ethical beings do not apply that logic.

Elphaba · 07-06-2005, 01:44 PM

Miller has chosen not to reveal her source. Cooper has been given permission by his source to cooperate. Wouldn't that indicate two different sources?

Reporter Jailed for Refusal to Name Leak Source
The Associated Press

Wednesday 06 July 2005

Times' Miller disobeyed order to testify on disclosure of CIA agent’s name.
Washington - A US judge ordered New York Times reporter Judith Miller to jail Wednesday for refusing to divulge her source in the investigation of the leak of an undercover CIA officer's name.

"There is still a realistic possibility that confinement might cause her to testify," US District Judge Thomas Hogan said. Miller stood up, hugged her lawyer and was escorted from the courtroom.

Earlier, Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper, in an about-face, told Hogan that he would now cooperate with a federal prosecutor's investigation into the leak of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame because his source gave him specific authority to discuss their conversation. "I am prepared to testify. I will comply" with the court's order, Cooper said.

Cooper took the podium in the court and told the judge, "Last night I hugged my son goodbye and told him it might be a long time before I see him again."

"I went to bed ready to accept the sanctions" for not testifying, Cooper said. But he told the judge that not long before his early afternoon appearance, he had received "in somewhat dramatic fashion" a direct personal communication from his source freeing him from his commitment to keep the source's identity secret.

Floyd Abrams, a prominent First Amendment lawyer, told reporters after Miller's jailing, "Judy is an honorable woman, adhering to the highest tradition of her profession and the highest tradition of humanity." He called Miller's decision a choice "to take the personal burden of being in jail" rather than breaking her promise of confidentiality to her source.

Time Inc. previously surrendered e-mails and other documents in the probe.

The prosecutor, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, opposed a request that Cooper and Miller to be granted home detention - instead of jail - for remaining tight-lipped about their sources.

Fitzgerald said allowing them home confinement would make it easier for them to continue to defy the court order.

Last week, Time magazine said it was delivering the notes of reporter Matt Cooper to the special prosecutor investigating who in the Bush administration leaked the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame.

The case is among the most serious legal clashes between the media and the government since the Supreme Court in 1971 refused to stop the Times and The Washington Post from publishing a classified history of the Vietnam War known as the Pentagon Papers.

The US Supreme Court has refused to hear the reporters’ appeal and the grand jury investigating the leak expires in October. The reporters, if in jail, would be freed at that time.

Time: 'Chilling Effect' on Press Freedom

In a statement released last week, Time said it believes "the Supreme Court has limited press freedom in ways that will have a chilling effect on our work and that may damage the free flow of information that is so necessary in a democratic society."

But it also said that despite its concerns, it would turn over the records to the special counsel investigating the leak.

"The same Constitution that protects the freedom of the press requires obedience to final decisions of the courts and respect for their rulings and judgments. That Time Inc. strongly disagrees with the courts provides no immunity," the statement said.

Novak Says He 'Will Reveal All' Eventually

Fitzgerald, the US attorney in Chicago, has been investigating who in the Bush administration leaked Plame’s identity days after her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, publicly undercut the president’s rationale for invading Iraq.

Plame's name 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 or been subpoenaed.

Novak told CNN he "will reveal all" after the matter is resolved, adding that it is wrong for the government to jail journalists.

Cooper wrote a story subsequently about Plame. Miller did some reporting but did not write a story.

Time turned over Cooper's notes and other documents last week, four days after the Supreme Court refused to consider the case. Cooper's attorneys argued that producing the documents made it unnecessary for him to testify.

Reporters Could Go to Jail Wednesday

Miller and Cooper could be ordered to jail as early as Wednesday when US District Judge Thomas Hogan will hear arguments from Fitzgerald and lawyers for the reporters about whether they should testify.

Hogan has found the reporters in contempt of court for refusing to divulge their sources and he indicated last week that he is prepared to send them to jail if they do not cooperate.

In his court filings, Fitzgerald said it is essential for courts to enforce their contempt orders so that grand juries can get the evidence they need.

Fitzgerald said it would be up to the judge to decide whether to send Cooper to the District of Columbia jail or some other facility. On Friday, Cooper's lawyers argued against sending him to the D.C. jail, saying it is a "dangerous maximum security lockup already overcrowded with a mix of convicted offenders and other detainees awaiting criminal trials."

Miller's lawyers argue that there are no circumstances under which she will talk, but Fitzgerald disagreed.

"There is tension between Miller's claim that confinement will never coerce her to testify and her alternative position that this court should consider less restrictive forms of confinement," the prosecutor wrote.

Time magazine is part of the media company Time Warner Inc.

Thirty-one states and the District of Columbia have shield laws protecting reporters from having to identify their confidential sources. Legislation to establish such protection under federal law has been introduced in Congress.

Mephisto2 · 07-06-2005, 02:51 PM

Good for her.

Nice to see some people stand by their principles.

Mr Mephisto

Charlatan · 07-06-2005, 03:07 PM

I just heard on the news that Miller has a signed affidavit from her source granting her permission to reveal her source. She is standing her ground on principle.

(the was on the Jim Leher Report just a few minutes ago).

powerclown · 07-06-2005, 03:37 PM

It seems to me that The Prosecution just committed themselves to HAVING to find Rove guilty, because if they don't, how are they going to justify sending Miller to prison? And I'm glad I'm not the guy who squealed to go free, while his female colleague is sent off to prison for having a spine.

As far as I can see, there is only one possible motivation for this case going forward like it has: Somebody wants Rove's head delivered on a platter at any cost.

Mephisto2 · 07-06-2005, 03:40 PM

How can the "prosecution" find Rove guilty, when he's not on trial?

There's a gun there. Why don't you jump it?

With regards to the male squealing and the female sticking to her principles, I agree with you 100%. But according to a story I've seen, he's got written consent from his source to testify; ie, they waived their anonymity.

Mr Mephisto

shakran · 07-06-2005, 03:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

It seems to me that The Prosecution just committed themselves to HAVING to find Rove guilty, because if they don't, how are they going to justify sending Miller to prison? And I'm glad I'm not the guy who squealed to go free, while his female colleague is sent off to prison for having a spine.

He didn't "squeal" he had permission in writing from the source to disclose the source. Once the source says they don't care about anonymity any more, it's up to the journalist whether to reveal it.

The court has NO right to compel a journalist to give up anything that wasn't in the original story. To attempt to seize that right is #1 legislating from the bench and #2 a clear attempt to kill the 1st amendment.

Elphaba · 07-06-2005, 04:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

It seems to me that The Prosecution just committed themselves to HAVING to find Rove guilty, because if they don't, how are they going to justify sending Miller to prison? And I'm glad I'm not the guy who squealed to go free, while his female colleague is sent off to prison for having a spine.

As far as I can see, there is only one possible motivation for this case going forward like it has: Somebody wants Rove's head delivered on a platter at any cost.

PC, I read somewhere (CRS sucks) that Judith Miller's intentions may not be as honorable as it appears. I will try to find that article before saying anything more.

powerclown · 07-06-2005, 06:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr Mephisto

How can the "prosecution" find Rove guilty, when he's not on trial?

What pushed this case into the limelight was a supposed link to Rove, that HE either condoned someone else in the WH to out the CIA agent, or revealed her name himself. They are going after Rove, no?

Do you think this would be news if Rove were not involved?

shakran, you are right - he said he had permission to rat out his source. It looks like his employer (Time) put him in the position where he had no choice because they gave the court his notes (which contained his sources), so he was screwed from the word GO wasn't he? As for the court legislating from the bench, well, the judge ordered the journalists to reveal their sources. I'm not a lawyer (thankfully), but isn't it automatically 'contempt of court' if you don't follow the court's instructions?

Elphaba, I think all of us here would be very interested to hear about these alterior motives you speak of. I do wonder if she is ONLY standing on priniciple. Some have been known to voluntarily go to jail to escape something or someone. Do tell!

Elphaba · 07-06-2005, 07:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

Elphaba, I think all of us here would be very interested to hear about these alterior motives you speak of. I do wonder if she is ONLY standing on priniciple. Some have been known to voluntarily go to jail to escape something or someone. Do tell!

I'm searching, but going through my trash is not a pretty thing. I should have something by tomorrow.

Just call me the "Cookie Monster"

smooth · 07-07-2005, 03:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

Do you think this would be news if Rove were not involved?

I don't understand why you keep bringing this up.
The Plame leak was news long before anyone knew or seriously suspected Rove of being involved.

You seem to keep trying to reframe the issue questioning why this would be news...but I have to ask you: regardless of Rove's involvement, should it be news?
Do you take the hypothetical of whether this would be news and conclude that it should not be news?

powerclown · 07-07-2005, 07:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by smooth

Do you take the hypothetical of whether this would be news and conclude that it should not be news?

I'm not saying it shouldn't be news. Nothing should be covered up.

Why this is about Rove:

"At the end of the day, it's of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs. And trust me, when I use that name, I measure my words."

-Joe Wilson (Plame's husband, and former US ambassador to Baghdad)
source

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"In Washington, so-called leak investigations—formal inquiries by the Justice Department into the publication of classified information—are like endless replays of the movie “Casablanca”: the authorities round up the usual suspects, nothing much happens, and life goes on.

Without leaks, arguably, the U.S. government could not function. Trial balloons could not be floated, political scores could not be settled, wrongs would go unexposed, policy could not be made. It is against the law to reveal government secrets that might harm national security, but as a practical matter, journalists (protected by the First Amendment) are very rarely pressed to reveal their sources. Leak investigations are launched about every other week in Washington, but only occasionally is the leaker caught, and it has been two decades since anyone was criminally punished."

source

smooth · 07-07-2005, 12:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

Why this is about Rove:

"At the end of the day, it's of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs. And trust me, when I use that name, I measure my words."

-Joe Wilson (Plame's husband, and former US ambassador to Baghdad)
source

My impression of why it's about Rove is because the investigators found evidence of phone conversations between him and the journalist. Is that inaccurate?

Elphaba · 07-07-2005, 02:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by powerclown

Elphaba, I think all of us here would be very interested to hear about these alterior motives you speak of. I do wonder if she is ONLY standing on priniciple. Some have been known to voluntarily go to jail to escape something or someone. Do tell!

I gave up on searching my trash and googled for "Judith Miller WMD" and found numerous articles. The first article is far too long to post here, but here is a relevant snippet. (I can't get a good link for some reason).

______________________________________________________________

The Source of the Trouble
Pulitzer Prize winner Judith Miller’s series of exclusives about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq—courtesy of the now-notorious Ahmad Chalabi—helped the New York Times keep up with the competition and the Bush administration bolster the case for war. How the very same talents that caused her to get the story also caused her to get it wrong.

By Franklin Foer

:snip:

The phrase “among others” is a highly evocative one. Because that list of credulous Chalabi allies could include the New York Times’ own reporter, Judith Miller. During the winter of 2001 and throughout 2002, Miller produced a series of stunning stories about Saddam Hussein’s ambition and capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction, based largely on information provided by Chalabi and his allies—almost all of which have turned out to be stunningly inaccurate.

For the past year, the Times has done much to correct that coverage, publishing a series of stories calling Chalabi’s credibility into question. But never once in the course of its coverage—or in any public comments from its editors—did the Times acknowledge Chalabi’s central role in some of its biggest scoops, scoops that not only garnered attention but that the administration specifically cited to buttress its case for war.

The longer the Times remained silent on Chalabi’s importance to Judith Miller’s reporting, the louder critics howled. In February, in the New York Review of Books, Michael Massing held up Miller as evidence of the press’s “submissiveness” in covering the war. For more than a year, Slate’s Jack Shafer has demanded the paper come clean.

But finally, with Chalabi’s fall from grace so complete—the Pentagon has cut off his funding, troops smashed his portrait in raids of the INC office—the Times’ refusal to concede its own complicity became untenable. Last week, on page A10, the paper published a note on its coverage, drafted by executive editor Bill Keller himself. The paper singled out pieces that relied on “information from a circle of Iraqi informants, defectors, and exiles bent on ‘regime change.’ ” The note named Ahmad Chalabi as a central player in this group.

________________________________________________________________

The short of it is that Miller's reputation was seriously damaged. Marching into jail holding her head high may serve to burnish her reputation. Honorable? Perhaps. Cooper's source has released him. Considering the Miller claimed to have talked to sources, but never wrote anything about the Plame case strikes me as very odd.

My apologies if this has gone too far off from the original thread.

Salomon · 07-07-2005, 08:32 PM

Rove should pay for his crimes. He's as guilty as the day is long..

Mephisto2 · 07-07-2005, 08:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Salomon

Rove should pay for his crimes. He's as guilty as the day is long..

Don't you think we should wait for him to be accused of something by officers of the court?
And then maybe charged?
Perhaps tried?
Who know? Maybe even found guilty?

Mr Mephisto

Tophat665 · 07-08-2005, 03:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr Mephisto

Don't you think we should wait for him to be accused of something by officers of the court?
And then maybe charged?
Perhaps tried?
Who know? Maybe even found guilty?

Mr Mephisto

Mr. M. Of course you are right to a point. Before standing him up in front of the wall and releasing the starving pigs on him, he should really be found guilty in the formal sense, which is to say by a jury of his peers. (Picturing such a jury, I see a number of cockroaches, a paycheck casher, a personal injury lawyer, 2 hagfish, and a pint glass full of pond scum.) However, the fact remains that he is guilty as sin of many, many things. The push polling he did in Georgia to discredit Max Cleland and elect Saxby Chambliss, or the one in South Carolina to discredit McCain ought to earn him a savage beating with tire irons if there were any justice in the world.

Right or wrong, it has become taboo to compare Shrub with Hitler*, but comparing Rove to Goebbels is about dead on.

Bottom line: If he really thinks we're the devil, then let's send him to hell.

* Hitler was better-looking than Bush, he was a better dresser than Bush, he had better hair, he told funnier jokes, and he could dance the pants off of Bush!

powerclown · 07-08-2005, 06:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by smooth

My impression of why it's about Rove is because the investigators found evidence of phone conversations between him and the journalist. Is that inaccurate?

I wouldn't say it's inaccurate.
Which journalist are you referring to?
Was there a documented conversation between Rove and a journalist pertaining to this case?
Do you know what was said? Links?

Quote:

Considering the Miller claimed to have talked to sources, but never wrote anything about the Plame case strikes me as very odd.

Same here...sounds fishy. There is talk that Plame's name was leaked informally, at a party in DC, that Miller was attending. She might have got together with 'sources' there who told her about Plame.

roachboy · 07-08-2005, 08:49 AM

where's that last claim from, powerclown?
sounds like an extension of the frat boy prank line on torture--that is, limbaughesque.

here is a good overview of where things apprently stand at the moment in this case from today's washington post:

Quote:

Questions Remain on the Leaker and the Law
Rove's Talks With Time Writer May Be a Focus

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 8, 2005; A02

The jailing of New York Times reporter Judith Miller on Wednesday put the issue of press freedom and the confidentiality of sources on front pages across the country, but the heart of the case remains what it has been from the outset: whether senior Bush officials broke the law in the disclosure of a CIA covert operative's identity.

Special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has spent the better part of two years trying to answer that question, in a case that grew out of the angry debate over whether President Bush and his advisers hyped or falsified intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to justify going to war with Iraq in the spring of 2003. At issue is whether administration officials misused classified information to try to discredit one of their potentially most damaging critics.

Now, a fast-moving series of decisions over the past week involving Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper have brought a renewed public focus on what role White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove may have played in disclosing the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

A White House spokesman long ago asserted that Rove was "not involved" in disclosing Plame's identity. Rove, who has testified before a grand jury investigating the case, likewise has maintained that he did not break the law, saying in a television interview, "I didn't know her name, and I didn't leak her name."

But Fitzgerald still appears to want more answers about Rove's role. The prosecutor is apparently focused on Rove's conversations with Cooper.

The debate two summers ago over why the United States went to war engaged some of the most senior officials in the government and included an incendiary accusation by former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, who had challenged the administration over claims that Iraq was seeking nuclear material in Africa. Wilson based his claim on information gathered on a CIA-sponsored trip to Niger.

At the height of the fury over Wilson's charges, in a column published July 14, 2003, Robert D. Novak wrote that Wilson was married to Plame, and cited two senior administration officials saying she was behind the decision to send her husband on the trip. The outcry over the revelation eventually forced the administration to turn to Fitzgerald to investigate, with Bush saying he was eager to get to the bottom of the case. The president and a number of top administration officials have since been called to testify.

After Time turned over its documents late last week, Newsweek reported that e-mail records showed that Rove was one of Cooper's sources on Plame and Wilson. That article led Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, to say in an interview last weekend that his client had spoken to Cooper around the time Novak's column appeared in July 2003. But he added that Rove had testified fully in the case and had been assured by Fitzgerald that he is not a target in the investigation.

More evidence points to Rove as the source Cooper was seeking to protect -- although what information was provided is not clear. Rove and Cooper spoke once before the Novak column was available, but the interview did not involve the Iraq controversy, according to a person close to the investigation who declined to be identified to be able to share more details about the case.

Cooper on Wednesday agreed to testify in the case, reversing his long-standing refusal after saying that he had been released from his pledge of confidentiality just hours before he expected to be sent to jail for contempt of court. In an interview with The Washington Post on Wednesday, Luskin denied that Cooper had received a call from Rove releasing him from his confidentiality pledge. Yesterday, however, Luskin declined to comment on a New York Times report that the release came as a result of negotiations involving Rove's and Cooper's attorneys, nor would he speculate that Cooper was released from his pledge in some other fashion than a direct conversation with Rove. "I'm not going to comment any further," Luskin said.

The admission that Rove had spoken to Cooper appeared at odds with previous White House statements. In retrospect, however, these statements -- which some interpreted as emphatic denials -- were in fact carefully worded.

On Oct. 10, 2003, White House press secretary Scott McClellan was asked whether Rove; Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby; or National Security Council official Elliott Abrams had told any reporter that Plame was a covert CIA agent.

"I spoke with those individuals, as I pointed out, and those individuals assured me they were not involved in this," McClellan said. "And that's where it stands." Reporters pressed McClellan to clarify that statement but he held to the words in his first answer until one reporter asked, "They were not involved in what?" To which he replied, "The leaking of classified information."

That left open the other question that comes into play in this episode, which is the degree to which White House officials were engaged two summers ago in a vigorous effort to discredit Wilson's accusations by discrediting Wilson himself. That in itself may not be a crime, nor would such tactics be unique to the Bush White House, given the accepted rules of political combat employed by participants in both major political parties.

Rove told MSNBC's Chris Matthews that Wilson's wife was "fair game," according to an October 2003 report in Newsweek. At a minimum Fitzgerald could turn up embarrassing information that may yet become public about how the Bush White House operates.

Although the president has encouraged full cooperation with the special prosecutor, administration officials have not appeared eager to explain fully their roles in the Wilson matter. A number of them have signed waivers of confidentiality freeing reporters with whom they have spoken from maintaining confidentiality, although Cooper and others have said they did not regard that waiver as specific enough. In other cases, administration officials have given reporters specific waivers.

But in some of those cases, officials have given the green light for reporters to testify to the grand jury in exchange for a pledge from the reporter not to reveal publicly the identity of the source or the details of the conversations.

Fitzgerald long has made a distinction in his investigation between conversations held before Novak's column was publicly available (it was moved to his newspaper clients on July 11, 2003) and after, on the assumption that once Plame's name was in the public domain, there was no criminal liability for administration officials to discuss it. Which may be one reason it could be difficult to obtain indictments. After almost two years, Fitzgerald finds only one person in jail as a result of his inquiry -- a reporter who never wrote an article about the leak.

The White House is preparing for a potential battle with the Democrats over a Supreme Court nominee, a conflict with great consequences and in which advocates on both sides appear ready to employ all means available to promote or discredit a nominee.

White House officials make no secret that they think Democrats went beyond the boundaries to discredit the reputations of some of their nominees to the appellate courts. Now into that maelstrom could come discomforting revelations about what top White House officials may have done to discredit Wilson by questioning his motives, his wife's role in the trip to Niger and his veracity.

stevo · 07-08-2005, 10:59 AM

roach, if rove is in fact the guilty party, why wasn't it made public during the 2004 elections? Some bush-hater, somewhere would have known and shared it with the world.

roachboy · 07-08-2005, 11:08 AM

i don't have an answer to that one, stevo.
the question is playing out now. so it is relevant now.

Rekna · 07-08-2005, 05:29 PM

I don't think the first amendment should protect these reporters. A reporters job is to report the news not aid and abet a crime. These reporters by taking (even though it was given) confidential information commited a crime. By publishing it they furthered that crime. The first ammendment does not give a reporter the right to participate in a crime and not get in trouble.

Elphaba · 07-08-2005, 07:09 PM

This is exactly what the Supreme court decided. A very narrow decision that refuted the first amendment right when a potential crime has been committed.

host · 07-10-2005, 08:45 AM

Rove, architect of Bush's career for the last 32 years, will employ every excuse that he and his lawyers can think of, primarily that he did not "know" that Plame was a covert agent. Has he met his match in prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald? Have the "terrorist" bombings in the London tubes distracted the attention of the public to the extent that Isikoff's new newsweek story will not stay in the headlines?

Quote:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0031010-6.html
NEAR THE TOP OF THE WEB PAGE:

Q What can you tell us about how the investigation into the CIA leak are proceeding? Are White House officials being interviewed today, for instance?

MR. McCLELLAN: On that question, specifically, I think it's important to keep in mind that this is an ongoing investigation. The Department of Justice, the career officials of the Department of Justice are working to get to the bottom of this. And the White House is committed -- at the direction of the President, the White House is committed to cooperating fully and doing everything we can to assist the career officials get to the bottom of this. It is a very serious matter..........

......MR. McCLELLAN: Again, I think that's best to address to the Department of Justice, because it is an ongoing investigation.............

NEAR THE BOTTOM OF THE WEB PAGE:

.........Q Scott, earlier this week you told us that neither Karl Rove, Elliot Abrams nor Lewis Libby disclosed any classified information with regard to the leak. I wondered if you could tell us more specifically whether any of them told any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA?

MR. McCLELLAN: Those individuals -- I talked -- I spoke with those individuals, as I pointed out, and those individuals assured me they were not involved in this. And that's where it stands.

Q So none of them told any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA?

MR. McCLELLAN: They assured me that they were not involved in this.

Q Can I follow up on that?

Q They were not involved in what?

MR. McCLELLAN: The leaking of classified information.

Q Did you undertake that on your own volition, or were you instructed to go to these --

MR. McCLELLAN: I spoke to those individuals myself. ..........

It is apparant from Scottie's carefully worded answer to a reporter during the WH October 10, 2003 press briefing, that Rove's defense hinges on maintaining the talking point that he did not "knowingly" leak "classified information". It will most likely come down to prosecution of Rove, if there is one, on a perjury charge if his attorney, Robert Luskin was correct when he claimed that Rove did not discuss the matter of Joe Wilson's wife with news reporters before Novak's July 13 column. If Isikoff's report is accurate, Rove did dicuss "Wilson's wife" with at least one reporter before Novak published.

Link to Novak's July 14, 2003 "Mission to Niger" http://www.townhall.com/columnists/r...20030714.shtml

Quote:

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8525978/site/newsweek/
By Michael Isikoff
Newsweek

July 18 issue - It was 11:07 on a Friday morning, July 11, 2003, and Time magazine correspondent Matt Cooper was tapping out an e-mail to his bureau chief, Michael Duffy. "Subject: Rove/P&C," (for personal and confidential), Cooper began. "Spoke to Rove on double super secret background for about two mins before he went on vacation ..." Cooper proceeded to spell out some guidance on a story that was beginning to roil Washington. He finished, "please don't source this to rove or even WH [White House]" and suggested another reporter check with the CIA.

Last week, after Time turned over that e-mail, among other notes and e-mails, Cooper agreed to testify before a grand jury in the Valerie Plame case. Explaining that he had obtained last-minute "personal consent" from his source, Cooper was able to avoid a jail sentence for contempt of court. Another reporter, Judith Miller of The New York Times, refused to identify her source and chose to go to jail instead.

For two years, a federal prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, has been investigating the leak of Plame's identity as an undercover CIA agent. The leak was first reported by columnist Robert Novak on July 14, 2003. Novak apparently made some arrangement with the prosecutor, but Fitzgerald continued to press other reporters for their sources, possibly to show a pattern (to prove intent) or to make a perjury case. (It is illegal to knowingly identify an undercover CIA officer.) Rove's words on the Plame case have always been carefully chosen. "I didn't know her name. I didn't leak her name," Rove told CNN last year when asked if he had anything to do with the Plame leak. Rove has never publicly acknowledged talking to any reporter about former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife. But last week, his lawyer, Robert Luskin, confirmed to NEWSWEEK that Rove did—and that Rove was the secret source who, at the request of both Cooper's lawyer and the prosecutor, gave Cooper permission to testify.

The controversy arose when Wilson wrote an op-ed column in The New York Times saying that he had been sent by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate charges that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from the African country of Niger. Wilson said he had found no evidence to support the claim. Wilson's column was an early attack on the evidence used by the Bush administration to justify going to war in Iraq. The White House wished to discredit Wilson and his attacks. The question for the prosecutor is whether someone in the administration, in an effort to undermine Wilson's credibility, intentionally revealed the covert identity of his wife.

In a brief conversation with Rove, Cooper asked what to make of the flap over Wilson's criticisms. NEWSWEEK obtained a copy of the e-mail that Cooper sent his bureau chief after speaking to Rove. (The e-mail was authenticated by a source intimately familiar with Time's editorial handling of the Wilson story, but who has asked not to be identified because of the magazine's corporate decision not to disclose its contents.) Cooper wrote that Rove offered him a "big warning" not to "get too far out on Wilson." Rove told Cooper that Wilson's trip had not been authorized by "DCIA"—CIA Director George Tenet—or Vice President Dick Cheney. Rather, "it was, KR said, wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip." Wilson's wife is Plame, then an undercover agent working as an analyst in the CIA's Directorate of Operations counterproliferation division. (Cooper later included the essence of what Rove told him in an online story.) The e-mail characterizing the conversation continues: "not only the genesis of the trip is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report. he [Rove] implied strongly there's still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger ... "

Nothing in the Cooper e-mail suggests that Rove used Plame's name or knew she was a covert operative. Nonetheless, it is significant that Rove was speaking to Cooper before Novak's column appeared; in other words, before Plame's identity had been published. Fitzgerald has been looking for evidence that Rove spoke to other reporters as well. "Karl Rove has shared with Fitzgerald all the information he has about any potentially relevant contacts he has had with any reporters, including Matt Cooper," Luskin told NEWSWEEK.

A source close to Rove, who declined to be identified because he did not wish to run afoul of the prosecutor or government investigators, added that there was "absolutely no inconsistency" between Cooper's e-mail and what Rove has testified to during his three grand-jury appearances in the case. "A fair reading of the e-mail makes clear that the information conveyed was not part of an organized effort to disclose Plame's identity, but was an effort to discourage Time from publishing things that turned out to be false," the source said, referring to claims in circulation at the time that Cheney and high-level CIA officials arranged for Wilson's trip to Africa.

Fitzgerald is known as a tenacious, thorough prosecutor. He refused to comment, and it is not clear whether he is pursuing evidence that will result in indictments, or just tying up loose ends in a messy case. But the Cooper e-mail offers one new clue to the mystery of what Fitzgerald is probing—and provides a glimpse of what was unfolding at the highest levels as the administration defended a part of its case for going to war in Iraq.

Quote:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la...home-headlines
THE NATION
A Prosecutor Who Didn't Back Down
Patrick J. Fitzgerald pushed for the jailing of two reporters who refused to testify. Legal observers disagree on whether he was right.
By Stephen Braun
Times Staff Writer

July 8, 2005

WASHINGTON — Special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald lived up to his billing as a hard-nosed U.S. attorney when he pressed for the jailing of a reporter who refused to testify in his investigation into the leak of a CIA agent's name. But his action just as likely was spurred by the unique fact-finding mission given special prosecutors, legal observers and those who have worked with Fitzgerald in the past said Thursday.

The imprisonment Wednesday of New York Times reporter Judith Miller for failing to testify before a grand jury served to aid Fitzgerald's probe, several lawyers said.

It showed the targets of his inquiry that he meant business. A second reporter, Time magazine's Matthew Cooper, agreed to testify after also being threatened with jail. Cooper said he had been prepared to go to jail but that his source called him at the last minute to release him from his confidentiality pledge.

Even if Fitzgerald's investigation fails to produce any indictments, said Andrew C. McCarthy, a former prosecutor who is a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Fitzgerald, he said, "has to show he investigated the case in a fair and comprehensive manner." So Fitzgerald's move against Miller and Cooper allows him to show that he took all available measures to get at the truth.

While McCarthy and other lawyers insisted Fitzgerald had done the right thing in trying to compel testimony, not all former special prosecutors agreed.

Lawrence E. Walsh, independent counsel in the Iran-Contra probe of Reagan administration officials between 1986 and 1993, said that he never considered taking action against reporters and could not imagine a justification for it.

"I felt it was up to me and my associates to conduct our own investigation and not force a reporter to do it for us," Walsh, a former federal judge, said in a telephone interview from Oklahoma City. "Maybe there's a need in this particular case, but I don't see it."

Fitzgerald, 44, aggressively prosecuted terrorism cases in New York before being appointed by President Bush in 2001 as U.S. attorney in Chicago.

In his current role as special prosecutor, he pressed for months to compel Miller, Cooper and several other reporters to testify in an effort to learn more about the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame. Her identity as an undercover agent was exposed in July 2003 by conservative syndicated columnist Robert Novak, who cited "two senior administration officials" as his sources.

Plame's husband, former U.S. envoy Joseph C. Wilson IV, charged that her name had been leaked by White House officials in retaliation for his public accusation that the Bush administration had used faulty intelligence in deciding to wage war in Iraq.

In response, the Justice Department opened an investigation into whether White House officials had violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, which prohibits a government officer from knowingly revealing the identity of undercover intelligence agents. In December 2003, then-Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft recused himself from the case and a Justice deputy appointed Fitzgerald as special prosecutor to ensure an independent inquiry.

As Fitzgerald's probe nears a conclusion, said Paul Rosenzweig — a legal analyst with the conservative Heritage Foundation who worked on the investigation of President Clinton under then-special prosecutor Kenneth W. Starr — there are three apparent options:

Fitzgerald could indict someone for leaking Plame's name in violation of the 1982 identity protection law.

He could indict anyone found to have committed perjury in the course of the investigation.

Or, failing to win indictments, Rosenzweig said, Fitzgerald could issue a detailed report containing his findings and explaining the obstacles that prevented him from filing charges.

"Special prosecutors have to explore every option. It comes with the territory," Rosenzweig said. "They know any decision they make will be challenged. If you take a moderate course, you're accused of pulling your punches. If you go harder, you're called unfair."

But the 93-year-old Walsh — who won indictments of 11 Reagan administration aides, including former Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, national security advisor John M. Poindexter and his aide, Lt. Col. Oliver L. North — said that as special prosecutor, he had abided by a cautionary message he was given in 1938 by legendary New York prosecutor Thomas Dewey.

Soon after Walsh was hired as a young assistant, he said, Dewey "called us in on a New Year's Day and laid down one rule: No one was to subpoena a reporter without his permission. It was a point of respect for another profession and his belief that we had to do our job ourselves."

Since 1970, internal Justice Department guidelines have instructed prosecutors to press for reporters' notes and testimony only as a last resort. Those guidelines are not binding, Rosenzweig said, but they have also applied to all special prosecutors.

"The difference between main Justice and a special prosecutor is that regular prosecutors have to consider the timing and strains on resources it takes to go after a reporter and all the appeals and bad publicity that come with it," Rosenzweig said. "But special prosecutors have their own budgets and have more control over their timing.

"They already work with the understanding that their case is unique and important. That's why they've been appointed," Rosenzweig added. "If Fitzgerald feels he's exhausted every avenue and has no choice but to go after a reporter's testimony, he's not going to have second thoughts about it."

Fitzgerald earned his reputation as a tough prosecutor when he was assigned to oversee terrorism-related cases in the U.S. attorney's office in New York. He led the first major federal probe of Al Qaeda and won convictions of five terrorists accused of plotting the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in east Africa.

Admired by counter-terrorism agents for his courtroom aggressiveness and photographic recall of facts, Fitzgerald also has been criticized by defense lawyers for harsh tactics.

Lawyers representing a former pilot for Osama bin Laden complained when Fitzgerald pressed for a lengthy prison term after the man refused to testify to a federal grand jury in New York.

And in 2003, Fitzgerald won a guilty plea on a fraud charge from the head of an Islamic charity in Chicago — but only after agreeing to dismiss the original terrorism charges.

The Sept. 11 commission that investigated U.S. intelligence failures following the terrorist attacks later concluded that the government's treatment of two Islamic charities had raised "substantial civil liberty concerns."

In taking on the Plame case, Fitzgerald had to understand that "someone's nose would be out of joint no matter what he did," McCarthy said.

shakran · 07-10-2005, 09:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rekna

I don't think the first amendment should protect these reporters. A reporters job is to report the news not aid and abet a crime. These reporters by taking (even though it was given) confidential information commited a crime. By publishing it they furthered that crime. The first ammendment does not give a reporter the right to participate in a crime and not get in trouble.

Your understanding of the law is flawed.

They committed no crime. If you have a government secret and you come and blab it to me, it is YOU who are the criminal. I'm not responsible for what YOU say.

Furthermore, once a reporter (or anyone else for that matter) has information, the government CANNOT stop them from publishing it. That's called prior restraint and it's illegal as hell.

And by refusing to give up her source, she's protecting the ability of journalists across the country to get the news out.

But I will say that it's rather frightening that so many people think as you do, that receiving information and passing it on is a crime. An ignorance of such a basic tennet of our democracy indicates the very real possibility that such freedoms WILL be removed some day and the people will allow to happen.

roachboy · 07-10-2005, 10:08 AM

an edito on all this from this morning's new york times.

Quote:

We're Not in Watergate Anymore
By FRANK RICH

WHEN John Dean published his book "Worse Than Watergate" in the spring of 2004, it seemed rank hyperbole: an election-year screed and yet another attempt by a Nixon alumnus to downgrade Watergate crimes by unearthing worse "gates" thereafter. But it's hard to be dismissive now that my colleague Judy Miller has been taken away in shackles for refusing to name the source for a story she never wrote. No reporter went to jail during Watergate. No news organization buckled like Time. No one instigated a war on phony premises. This is worse than Watergate.

To start to see why, forget all the legalistic chatter about shield laws and turn instead to "The Secret Man," Bob Woodward's new memoir about life with Deep Throat. The book arrived in stores just as Judy Miller was jailed, as if by divine intervention to help illuminate her case.

Should a journalist protect a sleazy, possibly even criminal, source? Yes, sometimes, if the public is to get news of wrongdoing. Mark Felt was a turncoat with alternately impenetrable and self-interested motives who betrayed the F.B.I. and, in Mr. Woodward's words, "lied to his colleagues, friends and even his family." (Mr. Felt even lied in his own 1979 memoir.) Should a journalist break a promise of confidentiality after, let alone before, the story is over? "It is critical that confidential sources feel they would be protected for life," Mr. Woodward writes. "There needed to be a model out there where people could come forward or speak when contacted, knowing they would be protected. It was a matter of my work, a matter of honor."

That honorable model, which has now been demolished at Time, was a given in what seems like the halcyon Watergate era of "The Secret Man." Mr. Woodward and Carl Bernstein had confidence that The Washington Post's publisher, Katharine Graham, and editor, Ben Bradlee, would back them to the hilt, even though the Nixon White House demonized their reporting as inaccurate (as did some journalistic competitors) and threatened the licenses of television stations owned by the Post Company.

At Time, Norman Pearlstine - a member of the board of the Committee to Protect Journalists, no less - described his decision to turn over Matt Cooper's files to the feds as his own, made on the merits and without consulting any higher-ups at Time Warner. That's no doubt the truth, but a corporate mentality needn't be imposed by direct fiat; it's a virus that metastasizes in the bureaucratic bloodstream. I doubt anyone at Time Warner ever orders an editor to promote a schlocky Warner Brothers movie either. (Entertainment Weekly did two covers in one month on "The Matrix Reloaded.")

Time Warner seems to have far too much money on the table in Washington to exercise absolute editorial freedom when covering the government; at this moment it's awaiting an F.C.C. review of its joint acquisition (with Comcast) of the bankrupt cable company Adelphia. "Is this a journalistic company or an entertainment company?" David Halberstam asked after the Pearlstine decision. We have the answer now. What high-level source would risk talking to Time about governmental corruption after this cave-in? What top investigative reporter would choose to work there?

But the most important difference between the Bush and Nixon eras has less to do with the press than with the grave origins of the particular case that has sent Judy Miller to jail. This scandal didn't begin, as Watergate did, simply with dirty tricks and spying on the political opposition. It began with the sending of American men and women to war in Iraq.

Specifically, it began with the former ambassador Joseph Wilson's July 6, 2003, account on the Times Op-Ed page (and in concurrent broadcast appearances) of his 2002 C.I.A. mission to Africa to determine whether Saddam Hussein had struck a deal in Niger for uranium that might be used in nuclear weapons. Mr. Wilson concluded that there was no such deal, as my colleague Nicholas Kristof reported, without divulging Mr. Wilson's name, that spring. But the envoy's dramatic Op-Ed piece got everyone's attention: a government insider with firsthand knowledge had stepped out of the shadows of anonymity to expose the administration's game authoritatively on the record. He had made palpable what Bush critics increasingly suspected, writing that "some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

Up until that point, the White House had consistently stuck by the 16 incendiary words in President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." The administration had ignored all reports, not just Mr. Wilson's, that this information might well be bogus. But it still didn't retract Mr. Bush's fiction some five weeks after the State of the Union, when Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, announced that the uranium claim was based on fake documents. Instead, we marched on to war in Iraq days later. It was not until Mr. Wilson's public recounting of his African mission more than five months after the State of the Union that George Tenet at long last released a hasty statement (on a Friday evening, just after the Wilson Op-Ed piece) conceding that "these 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president."

The Niger uranium was hardly the only dubious evidence testifying to Saddam's supposed nuclear threat in the run-up to war. Judy Miller herself was one of two reporters responsible for a notoriously credulous front-page Times story about aluminum tubes that enabled the administration's propaganda campaign to trump up Saddam's W.M.D. arsenal. But red-hot uranium was sexy, and it was Mr. Wilson's flat refutation of it that drove administration officials to seek their revenge: they told the columnist Robert Novak that Mr. Wilson had secured his (nonpaying) African mission through the nepotistic intervention of his wife, a covert C.I.A. officer whom they outed by name. The pettiness of this retribution shows just how successfully Mr. Wilson hit the administration's jugular: his revelation threatened the legitimacy of the war on which both the president's reputation and re-election campaign had been staked.

This was another variation on a Watergate theme. Charles Colson's hit men broke into the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, seeking information to smear Mr. Ellsberg after he leaked the Pentagon Papers, the classified history of the Vietnam War, to The Times. But there was even greater incentive to smear Mr. Wilson than Mr. Ellsberg. Nixon compounded the Vietnam War but didn't start it. The war in Iraq, by contrast, is Mr. Bush's invention.

Again following the Watergate template, the Bush administration at first tried to bury the whole Wilson affair by investigating itself. Even when The Washington Post reported two months after Mr. Wilson's Op-Ed that "two top White House officials" had called at least six reporters, not just Mr. Novak, to destroy Mr. Wilson and his wife, the inquiry was kept safely within the John Ashcroft Justice Department, with the attorney general, according to a Times report, being briefed regularly on details of the investigation. If that rings a Watergate bell now, that's because on Thursday you may have read the obituary of L. Patrick Gray, Mark Felt's F.B.I. boss, who, in a similarly cozy conflict of interest, kept the Nixon White House abreast of the supposedly independent Watergate inquiry in its early going.

Political pressure didn't force Mr. Ashcroft to relinquish control of the Wilson investigation to a special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, until Dec. 30, 2003, more than five months after Mr. Novak's column ran. Now 18 more months have passed, and no one knows what crime Mr. Fitzgerald is investigating. Is it the tricky-to-prosecute outing of Mr. Wilson's wife, the story Judy Miller never even wrote about? Or has Mr. Fitzgerald moved on to perjury and obstruction of justice possibly committed by those who tried to hide their roles in that outing? If so, it would mean the Bush administration was too arrogant to heed the most basic lesson of Watergate: the cover-up is worse than the crime.

"Mr. Fitzgerald made his bones prosecuting the mob," intoned the pro-Bush editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, "and doesn't seem to realize that this case isn't about organized crime." But that may be exactly what it is about to an ambitious prosecutor with his own career on the line. That the Bush administration would risk breaking the law with an act as self-destructive to American interests as revealing a C.I.A. officer's identity smacks of desperation. It makes you wonder just what else might have been done to suppress embarrassing election-season questions about the war that has mired us in Iraq even as the true perpetrators of 9/11 resurface in Madrid, London and who knows where else.

IN his original Op-Ed piece in The Times, published two years to the day before Judy Miller went to jail, Mr. Wilson noted that "more than 200 American soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq already," before concluding that "we have a duty to ensure that their sacrifice came for the right reasons." As that death toll surges past 1,700, that sacred duty cannot be abandoned by a free press now.

source: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/10/op...10rich.html?hp

to echo shakran, above:

as much i would like to see rove brought down--few people in memory are more deserving of it--i still find time magazine's capitulation to be foul.

i dont think conservatives in general want an other-than-free press...they just prefer one that helps them feel more themselves when they watch it--no dissonance to manage, no opposing viewpoints to get in the way of the indentificatory circuit that thier politics are really about (who am i? i am america. who am i? i am america). it is a tightly controlled press that talks alot about how free it is, as if what organizes information is a kind of spontaneity and not a centralized information apparatus. but the foxnews set can believe what it likes about their preferred televisual narcotic--whatever they think about it, i still find it odd to read arguments floating from the right in support of time's actions.

i do not understand what conservatives who applaud time's capitulation see as resulting from it--what good is served for them by the erasure of confidentialty, what conection they might see between the protection of confidential sources and an actual free press. i do not think the statements about the interpretation of law are really germaine here...what i wonder about is if the foxnews folk have been convinced that tightly controlled information **is** free information and that the entire system that would sometimes see the press working in opposition is somehow antithetical to it. if this confusion is floating around out there, then we find ourselves facing a new and improved dangerous scenario emanating from the intellectual ooze that is conservative ideology--a new and improved mode of self-immolation--a centrally controlled press that cheerleads the dominant order is a free press.

i wonder if any who think time did the right thing could explain what the motivations are for their thinking so. because frankly, i do not see how other motivations can explain this position.

smooth · 07-10-2005, 11:56 AM

shakran,

I wouldn't argue that the reporters did anything illegal. But I do wonder whether you think they did something unethical by placing someone's life in danger...

That's my take on it--that they didn't do anything legally wrong but the way in which they went about it, how they chose to report her name and etc. was morally wrong. I think the three of us, shakran, roachboy, and myself are aware of ways to tell about someone without specifically identifying that someone. I think the protection of innocent people (or subjects, participants, sources, whathaveyou) should be of primary importance to journalists and social researchers alike...

shakran · 07-10-2005, 12:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by smooth

shakran,

I wouldn't argue that the reporters did anything illegal. But I do wonder whether you think they did something unethical by placing someone's life in danger...

There was a breach of ethics, but not by those two reporters. It was actually conservative columnist Robert Novak who first wrote about this story. Once the other reporters hopped on board, the story was already out.

In other words, it wouldn't be unethical of me today to say that Plame is a CIA spook because it's already common knowledge. I can't hurt her by saying that anymore. When the two reporters in question wrote their story, the secret had already been told by Novak.

smooth · 07-10-2005, 12:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by shakran

There was a breach of ethics, but not by those two reporters. It was actually conservative columnist Robert Novak who first wrote about this story. Once the other reporters hopped on board, the story was already out.

In other words, it wouldn't be unethical of me today to say that Plame is a CIA spook because it's already common knowledge. I can't hurt her by saying that anymore. When the two reporters in question wrote their story, the secret had already been told by Novak.

shakran, I agree with your statements.
It's been a while since I followed the story in all its detail, I'm actually not sure what role the reporters had in this incident anymore. Rather than flub names and etc., I didn't draw a distinction between the columnist and the reporters in my mind or post...my bad on not being specific.

I was using this specific example to move to a broader case--that the free press is certainly allowed to report anything it wants in my opinion, but it isn't always prudent do so in the ways in which it chooses (I'm trying to carefully word this because to just say that it isn't always prudent to do so would leave the door open to self-censorship).

Elphaba · 07-10-2005, 02:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

i wonder if any who think time did the right thing could explain what the motivations are for their thinking so. because frankly, i do not see how other motivations can explain this position.

I'm comfortable with Time's position in that once the Supreme Court ruled that the notes must be turned over, there could be no further appeal. To not do so would be difficult to support because the source arguably committed a crime.

This article adds some light on why Cooper and Miller may have been drawn in on this:

What Karl Rove Told Matt Cooper
By Michael Isikoff
Newsweek

18 July issue

July 18 issue - It was 11:07 on a Friday morning, July 11, 2003, and Time magazine correspondent Matt Cooper was tapping out an e-mail to his bureau chief, Michael Duffy. "Subject: Rove/P&C," (for personal and confidential), Cooper began. "Spoke to Rove on double super secret background for about two mins before he went on vacation..." Cooper proceeded to spell out some guidance on a story that was beginning to roil Washington. He finished, "please don't source this to rove or even WH [White House]" and suggested another reporter check with the CIA.

Last week, after Time turned over that e-mail, among other notes and e-mails, Cooper agreed to testify before a grand jury in the Valerie Plame case. Explaining that he had obtained last-minute "personal consent" from his source, Cooper was able to avoid a jail sentence for contempt of court. Another reporter, Judith Miller of The New York Times, refused to identify her source and chose to go to jail instead.

For two years, a federal prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, has been investigating the leak of Plame's identity as an undercover CIA agent. The leak was first reported by columnist Robert Novak on July 14, 2003. Novak apparently made some arrangement with the prosecutor, but Fitzgerald continued to press other reporters for their sources, possibly to show a pattern (to prove intent) or to make a perjury case. (It is illegal to knowingly identify an undercover CIA officer.) Rove's words on the Plame case have always been carefully chosen. "I didn't know her name. I didn't leak her name," Rove told CNN last year when asked if he had anything to do with the Plame leak. Rove has never publicly acknowledged talking to any reporter about former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife. But last week, his lawyer, Robert Luskin, confirmed to NEWSWEEK that Rove did - and that Rove was the secret source who, at the request of both Cooper's lawyer and the prosecutor, gave Cooper permission to testify.

The controversy arose when Wilson wrote an op-ed column in The New York Times saying that he had been sent by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate charges that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from the African country of Niger. Wilson said he had found no evidence to support the claim. Wilson's column was an early attack on the evidence used by the Bush administration to justify going to war in Iraq. The White House wished to discredit Wilson and his attacks. The question for the prosecutor is whether someone in the administration, in an effort to undermine Wilson's credibility, intentionally revealed the covert identity of his wife.

In a brief conversation with Rove, Cooper asked what to make of the flap over Wilson's criticisms. NEWSWEEK obtained a copy of the e-mail that Cooper sent his bureau chief after speaking to Rove. (The e-mail was authenticated by a source intimately familiar with Time's editorial handling of the Wilson story, but who has asked not to be identified because of the magazine's corporate decision not to disclose its contents.) Cooper wrote that Rove offered him a "big warning" not to "get too far out on Wilson." Rove told Cooper that Wilson's trip had not been authorized by "DCIA" - CIA Director George Tenet - or Vice President Dick Cheney. Rather, "it was, KR said, wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip." Wilson's wife is Plame, then an undercover agent working as an analyst in the CIA's Directorate of Operations counterproliferation division. (Cooper later included the essence of what Rove told him in an online story.) The e-mail characterizing the conversation continues: "not only the genesis of the trip is flawed and suspect but so is the report. he [Rove] implied strongly there's still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium from Niger... "

Nothing in the Cooper e-mail suggests that Rove used Plame's name or knew she was a covert operative. Nonetheless, it is significant that Rove was speaking to Cooper before Novak's column appeared; in other words, before Plame's identity had been published. Fitzgerald has been looking for evidence that Rove spoke to other reporters as well. "Karl Rove has shared with Fitzgerald all the information he has about any potentially relevant contacts he has had with any reporters, including Matt Cooper," Luskin told NEWSWEEK.

A source close to Rove, who declined to be identified because he did not wish to run afoul of the prosecutor or government investigators, added that there was "absolutely no inconsistency" between Cooper's e-mail and what Rove has testified to during his three grand-jury appearances in the case. "A fair reading of the e-mail makes clear that the information conveyed was not part of an organized effort to disclose Plame's identity, but was an effort to discourage Time from publishing things that turned out to be false," the source said, referring to claims in circulation at the time that Cheney and high-level CIA officials arranged for Wilson's trip to Africa.

Fitzgerald is known as a tenacious, thorough prosecutor. He refused to comment, and it is not clear whether he is pursuing evidence that will result in indictments, or just tying up loose ends in a messy case. But the Cooper e-mail offers one new clue to the mystery of what Fitzgerald is probing - and provides a glimpse of what was unfolding at the highest levels as the administration defended a part of its case for going to war in Iraq.

host · 07-10-2005, 02:37 PM

I guess that there is no harm in posting this article twice on the same page. I just started a new thread on the subject of the total news "blackout" on coverage of Bush's meeting last year with prosecutor Fitzgerald on this same matter and on Bush's retention of private criminal defense attorney Jim Sharp to represent him related to the interview of Bush in this matter.

Elphaba · 07-10-2005, 02:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

I guess that there is no harm in posting this article twice on the same page. I just started a new thread on the subject of the total news "blackout" on coverage of Bush's meeting last year with prosecutor Fitzgerald on this same matter and on Bush's retention of private criminal defense attorney Jim Sharp to represent him related to the interview of Bush in this matter.

Sheesh, how many times now have I done that Host? Missing something from another topic is one thing, but repeating the same article within one topic? Arrg.

Elphaba · 07-10-2005, 03:35 PM

Host has raised the issue of where is the "liberal" press. This article speaks to that.

Fearing Legal Battle, Ohio Newspaper Holds Stories
The Associated Press

Saturday 09 July 2005

Cleveland - The Plain Dealer, Ohio's largest newspaper, is holding two investigative stories based on leaked documents because they could result in the type of court showdown that led to a New York Times reporter being jailed, the paper's editor said Friday.

The Plain Dealer is trying to find a way to publish the stories without relying on the documents, editor Doug Clifton said.

"It was documentation that would have been illegal to share, so there wasn't any ambiguity about what we had," Clifton said.

On Wednesday, New York Times reporter Judith Miller was jailed for contempt of court after refusing to testify about a confidential source.

A prosecutor wants information from Miller as part of an investigation of how the name of an undercover CIA officer was leaked to a columnist.

Clifton said the Plain Dealer had decided several weeks ago - before Miller was imprisoned - to withhold the stories because the leaked documents could result in subpoenas and court sanctions, including jail. The stories deal with local and state government.

Clifton wrote a column June 30 explaining to readers the importance of protecting sources, and how the public would suffer if reporters' ability to gather news is compromised. He mentioned the potential consequences if the newspaper published the two investigative stories.

"I wanted the public to understand that this isn't an abstraction, that this is a real issue," he said Friday. "Things that are important for the public stand in jeopardy of not getting reported because of the state of the law."

He said he has never withheld a story because of such concerns.

"The climate has always been different," Clifton said. "Let's face it: During the Watergate years with 'Deep Throat,' it was never even thought of. It wasn't even a remote possibility that someone was going to get subpoenaed because of Deep Throat squealing. That has changed so dramatically in the last few years."

shakran · 07-10-2005, 03:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by smooth

I was using this specific example to move to a broader case--that the free press is certainly allowed to report anything it wants in my opinion, but it isn't always prudent do so in the ways in which it chooses (I'm trying to carefully word this because to just say that it isn't always prudent to do so would leave the door open to self-censorship).

I'll be the last person to argue that no mistakes have been made by journalists. But then you can say that about any profession. Pilots have shown up to fly their planes drunk, but we don't villify all pilots because of the mistakes of the few.

The far bigger problem with journalism today is twofold:

1) massive corporations owning media outlets. Let's say my station is owned by GE (and some are). And now a certain model of GE washing machines has a design flaw that causes it to go into its spin cycle when the lid's up. Several people have already been injured by the washing machines, and GE's trying to cover it up. Right there you have a major conflict of interest. A station general manager who breaks that story is NOT going to be looked upon kindly by the GE corporate brass. That doesn't even get into the fact that megacorporations are generally slanting toward the republican side of the political spectrum because republicans advocate policies which will help them make more money. That means a conflict of interest in any story that involves politics.

2) The public is so busy accusing journalists of bias that the journalists are bending over backward to try and prove that they're not. This means the journalists are no longer reporting facts, they're reporting soundbytes. If bush comes out and says "the sky is purple" you'll see that on the evening news. But you will NOT see a reporter saying "He said the sky is purple, but he's lost it because the sky is blue, here I'll prove it to you." Now in that case the journalist would NOT be displaying a bias. He'd be informing the public that Bush is not telling them the truth.
But if we tried that with a real world scenario - say, a journalist coming out after Colin Powell made his WMD speech to the UN and saying that his evidence didn't add up (which it did not), that journalist would be accused of bias, even though he'd only be reporting the truth.

The mission of journalism is to protect the innocent and hold the powerful accountable for their actions. Speaking personally, I really don't care which party is in power. If they screw up, it's my job to tell that story, and I will do that. But the public has to realize that sometimes that means I will say things which, while true, are things they don't like hearing. The proper reaction to that is to go after the person that did wrong. Shooting the messenger only makes the problem worse.

smooth · 07-10-2005, 04:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by shakran

If bush comes out and says "the sky is purple" you'll see that on the evening news. But you will NOT see a reporter saying "He said the sky is purple, but he's lost it because the sky is blue, here I'll prove it to you." Now in that case the journalist would NOT be displaying a bias. He'd be informing the public that Bush is not telling them the truth.

Can you try and not engage in bush bashing for just one thread!

J/K

lol, anyway, I'm divided on whether journalists should do this. I used to get upset when they didn't report that a contradiction between the claim and the reality existed, but then I came to realize that perhaps it's the reader's responsibility to come to a conclusion--even if it's wrong.

And I coupled that thought with the notion that objective truth (and reporting--see my sig) isn't what we'd like it to be; that is, rather than disputing whether it exists, I am at least comfortable acknowledging that one isn't likely to be accurately relaying objective Truth due to language, perspective, inclination, & etc.

So where does that leave me: I had to try and reconcile these thoughts with, and I share your view on this I think, what I considered to be irresponsible journalism. That they actually have an obligation to relay the facts as we know them. At least, they should remind the audience that such facts contradict such and such or whether there's a lack of evidence for the assertion. By relaying an inaccurate assertion as if it were truthful and accurate, the journalist gives credence to the statement and, in my mind, such complacency means they then share responsibility...

...so the example I came to think would work within these contraints would be, bush says the sky is purple. However, evidence points to the fact that it is actually blue, we've always held this to be the case, and we invite you to go look for yourself...[maybe even throw in a hearty "it's this reporters professional opinion that bush is lying" (or mistaken, as the case may be)].

shakran · 07-10-2005, 05:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by smooth

Can you try and not engage in bush bashing for just one thread!

J/K

OK, change it to Carter. I don't care

Quote:

lol, anyway, I'm divided on whether journalists should do this. I used to get upset when they didn't report that a contradiction between the claim and the reality existed, but then I came to realize that perhaps it's the reader's responsibility to come to a conclusion--even if it's wrong.

It's the reader's responsibility to draw conclusions yes, but he can't do that unless he's given accurate information. If the only source of information for someone is your newspaper, and your newspaper only reports "Bush says Iraq has WMD's" then it's not possible for the reader to draw a correct conclusion.

It's the press's responsibility to give the accurate facts to the reader.

It's the reader's responsibility to decide what to do about it.

When Bush was pushing the WMD issue, it was the press's responsibility to call bullshit on it. We didn't, and that was a grave error, because if we had, perhaps the people would have made a different decision, knowing the real facts.

Had the press said "wait a sec- he's saying there's WMD's but there's not a shred of evidence to support it and in fact if you look at the evidence he's showing you can see it's crap" they'd have been doing their job. Had the press then gone on to say "and we should vote the sonofabitch out of office for it!" then we'd have been displaying a bias.

Quote:

So where does that leave me: I had to try and reconcile these thoughts with, and I share your view on this I think, what I considered to be irresponsible journalism. That they actually have an obligation to relay the facts as we know them. At least, they should remind the audience that such facts contradict such and such or whether there's a lack of evidence for the assertion. By relaying an inaccurate assertion as if it were truthful and accurate, the journalist gives credence to the statement and, in my mind, such complacency means they then share responsibility...

Bingo!

Quote:

...so the example I came to think would work within these contraints would be, bush says the sky is purple. However, evidence points to the fact that it is actually blue, we've always held this to be the case, and we invite you to go look for yourself...[maybe even throw in a hearty "it's this reporters professional opinion that bush is lying" (or mistaken, as the case may be)].

That's exactly what the press should be doing, and it's exactly what they're not doing.

Mephisto2 · 07-11-2005, 07:36 AM

Turns out it was Rove after all.

Surprise surprise

Quote:

Bush's adviser Rove revealed as exposing CIA agent
By Mark Coultan Herald Correspondent in New York
July 12, 2005

The US President's closest political adviser has been revealed to be the source that Time magazine tried to keep secret from an inquiry into who revealed the identity of the CIA agent Valerie Plame.

Time's rival, Newsweek, has obtained the internal emails between the journalist who was threatened with prison last week and his bureau chief, Michael Duffy, that named Karl Rove as the source.

Matthew Cooper narrowly avoided imprisonment for refusing to reveal his source when Mr Rove released him from his promise of confidentiality hours before a court hearing. A reporter for The New York Times, Judith Miller, is serving up to four months in jail for refusing to reveal her source for the same story.

In his email, Cooper wrote: "Spoke to Rove on double super secret background for about two mins before he went on vacation."

Newsweek says Cooper asked Rove what to make of the controversy over an op-ed article by Ms Plame's husband, the former US ambassador Joseph Wilson, which revealed that the Administration had been warned that a crucial claim in the case for war with Iraq - that it had tried to buy uranium from Niger - was false.

In what appears to be a classic case of spinning the story, Mr Rove gave Mr Cooper a "big warning" not to "get too far out on Wilson".

Mr Rove alleged that Mr Wilson's investigative visit to Niger had not been authorised by the director of the CIA, George Tenet, or the Vice-President, Dick Cheney.

The email recounts: "it was, KR [Karl Rove] said, wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip". (sic)

The email is significant because it refers to a conversation before Ms Plame was publicly named by the conservative columnist Robert Novak a few days later.

Mr Rove's lawyer has already admitted that Mr Rove spoke to Cooper. He has also said that Mr Rove has revealed everything about his contacts with journalists about Ms Plame, but claimed that he was not the target of an investigation by the special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald.

Mr Rove is on the record as denying he named the CIA agent. "I didn't know her name. I didn't leak her name," he once told CNN.

In a case about journalistic sources, the Newsweek article adds another layer of intrigue. How did it get its rival's internal emails? The story says the email was authenticated by an unnamed source "intimately familiar with Time's editorial handling of the Wilson story, but who has asked not to be identified because of the magazine's corporate decision not to disclose its contents".

Against the wishes of its journalist, Time management turned over his notes and emails to the special prosecutor.

"A source close to Karl Rove" tried to spin the Newsweek story, claiming to the magazine that there was "absolutely no inconsistency" between Cooper's email and what Mr Rove has testified during his three grand-jury appearances in the case.

Newsweek quotes this source as saying: "A fair reading of the email makes clear that the information conveyed was not part of an organised effort to disclose Plame's identity, but was an effort to discourage Time from publishing things that turned out to be false." The falsehoods, the source says, were claims at the time that the Vice-President and high-level CIA officials arranged for Mr Wilson's trip to Africa.

Although Mr Rove has now been named as identifying Mr Wilson's wife as a CIA official, it is unclear if he faces prosecution. It is illegal for someone with a security clearance to knowingly reveal the identity of an undercover CIA agent.

The email, on its own, does not make it clear if Mr Rove knew she was an undercover agent or if he had the necessary security clearance.

The question now is, does anyone really care?

Personally I think this will blow over. I have a strong dislike for Rove, from my limited knowledge of his spin and political fixing, but I don't necessarily see this as negatively affecting his position within the curren administration.

Roll on the reactionary calls for his trial on "treason".

When will calmer minds prevail?

Mr Mephisto

roachboy · 07-11-2005, 07:59 AM

the right apparently thinks that if rove presents his case as directed at a legal process up front that it can skirt the political damage this case can and should do to it.

as an individual endowed with the same legal rights as anyone (albeit skewed in that all american way by power and money--so in fact someone like karl rove has more legal rights than someone like me or you, mr mephisto), rove should be tried and the trial would determine whether he is or is not guilty of a crime.

the political question is seperate. rove should resign. there should be political pressure brought to bear that would force him to resign. this matter can and to my mind should serve as a lightning rod, a space across which the bush administration is held to account for the politics of impunity that it has practiced since 9/12/2001.

07-05-2005, 08:45 PM	#41 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	in terms of the news coverage, i was thinking that maybe the fact is that karl rove is the luckiest man alive. think about it--this story breaks on the day after sandra day o'connor resigned. and then there's live8 and then there's a patriotic holiday. if you or i had luck like his, any of us could be running the bush administration. that is the type of good fortune that would make many of us begin to think being on a mission from god or something. but apparently it happens: there are alot of people--lots of parameters, lots of trajectories, the law of averages, etc..overwhelming luck has to be possible, and because it really is distributed by chance, why could karl rove not simply be the beneficiary of some cycle or another? but even still, this turn of events for rove is extraordinary. as of the evening of 5 july, 2005, he is the luckiest man alive. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

07-06-2005, 12:53 PM	#43 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	i dont think anyone is arguing the contrary, folks. that particular logic--that it is ok to hold people without trial indefinitely for example--is bushlogic. ethical beings do not apply that logic. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

07-06-2005, 03:07 PM	#46 (permalink)
Charlatan Getting it. Super Moderator Location: Lion City	I just heard on the news that Miller has a signed affidavit from her source granting her permission to reveal her source. She is standing her ground on principle. (the was on the Jim Leher Report just a few minutes ago). __________________ "My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars." - Old Man Luedecke

07-08-2005, 10:59 AM	#62 (permalink)
stevo Rail Baron Location: Tallyfla	roach, if rove is in fact the guilty party, why wasn't it made public during the 2004 elections? Some bush-hater, somewhere would have known and shared it with the world. __________________ "If I am such a genius why am I drunk, lost in the desert, with a bullet in my ass?" -Otto Mannkusser

07-08-2005, 11:08 AM	#63 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	i don't have an answer to that one, stevo. the question is playing out now. so it is relevant now. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

07-06-2005, 01:44 PM	#44 (permalink)
Elphaba Deja Moo Location: Olympic Peninsula, WA	Miller has chosen not to reveal her source. Cooper has been given permission by his source to cooperate. Wouldn't that indicate two different sources? Reporter Jailed for Refusal to Name Leak Source The Associated Press Wednesday 06 July 2005 Times' Miller disobeyed order to testify on disclosure of CIA agent’s name. Washington - A US judge ordered New York Times reporter Judith Miller to jail Wednesday for refusing to divulge her source in the investigation of the leak of an undercover CIA officer's name. "There is still a realistic possibility that confinement might cause her to testify," US District Judge Thomas Hogan said. Miller stood up, hugged her lawyer and was escorted from the courtroom. Earlier, Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper, in an about-face, told Hogan that he would now cooperate with a federal prosecutor's investigation into the leak of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame because his source gave him specific authority to discuss their conversation. "I am prepared to testify. I will comply" with the court's order, Cooper said. Cooper took the podium in the court and told the judge, "Last night I hugged my son goodbye and told him it might be a long time before I see him again." "I went to bed ready to accept the sanctions" for not testifying, Cooper said. But he told the judge that not long before his early afternoon appearance, he had received "in somewhat dramatic fashion" a direct personal communication from his source freeing him from his commitment to keep the source's identity secret. Floyd Abrams, a prominent First Amendment lawyer, told reporters after Miller's jailing, "Judy is an honorable woman, adhering to the highest tradition of her profession and the highest tradition of humanity." He called Miller's decision a choice "to take the personal burden of being in jail" rather than breaking her promise of confidentiality to her source. Time Inc. previously surrendered e-mails and other documents in the probe. The prosecutor, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, opposed a request that Cooper and Miller to be granted home detention - instead of jail - for remaining tight-lipped about their sources. Fitzgerald said allowing them home confinement would make it easier for them to continue to defy the court order. Last week, Time magazine said it was delivering the notes of reporter Matt Cooper to the special prosecutor investigating who in the Bush administration leaked the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame. The case is among the most serious legal clashes between the media and the government since the Supreme Court in 1971 refused to stop the Times and The Washington Post from publishing a classified history of the Vietnam War known as the Pentagon Papers. The US Supreme Court has refused to hear the reporters’ appeal and the grand jury investigating the leak expires in October. The reporters, if in jail, would be freed at that time. Time: 'Chilling Effect' on Press Freedom In a statement released last week, Time said it believes "the Supreme Court has limited press freedom in ways that will have a chilling effect on our work and that may damage the free flow of information that is so necessary in a democratic society." But it also said that despite its concerns, it would turn over the records to the special counsel investigating the leak. "The same Constitution that protects the freedom of the press requires obedience to final decisions of the courts and respect for their rulings and judgments. That Time Inc. strongly disagrees with the courts provides no immunity," the statement said. Novak Says He 'Will Reveal All' Eventually Fitzgerald, the US attorney in Chicago, has been investigating who in the Bush administration leaked Plame’s identity days after her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, publicly undercut the president’s rationale for invading Iraq. Plame's name 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 or been subpoenaed. Novak told CNN he "will reveal all" after the matter is resolved, adding that it is wrong for the government to jail journalists. Cooper wrote a story subsequently about Plame. Miller did some reporting but did not write a story. Time turned over Cooper's notes and other documents last week, four days after the Supreme Court refused to consider the case. Cooper's attorneys argued that producing the documents made it unnecessary for him to testify. Reporters Could Go to Jail Wednesday Miller and Cooper could be ordered to jail as early as Wednesday when US District Judge Thomas Hogan will hear arguments from Fitzgerald and lawyers for the reporters about whether they should testify. Hogan has found the reporters in contempt of court for refusing to divulge their sources and he indicated last week that he is prepared to send them to jail if they do not cooperate. In his court filings, Fitzgerald said it is essential for courts to enforce their contempt orders so that grand juries can get the evidence they need. Fitzgerald said it would be up to the judge to decide whether to send Cooper to the District of Columbia jail or some other facility. On Friday, Cooper's lawyers argued against sending him to the D.C. jail, saying it is a "dangerous maximum security lockup already overcrowded with a mix of convicted offenders and other detainees awaiting criminal trials." Miller's lawyers argue that there are no circumstances under which she will talk, but Fitzgerald disagreed. "There is tension between Miller's claim that confinement will never coerce her to testify and her alternative position that this court should consider less restrictive forms of confinement," the prosecutor wrote. Time magazine is part of the media company Time Warner Inc. Thirty-one states and the District of Columbia have shield laws protecting reporters from having to identify their confidential sources. Legislation to establish such protection under federal law has been introduced in Congress.

07-06-2005, 02:51 PM	#45 (permalink)
Mephisto2 Junkie	Good for her. Nice to see some people stand by their principles. Mr Mephisto

07-06-2005, 03:37 PM	#47 (permalink)
powerclown Junkie Location: Detroit, MI	It seems to me that The Prosecution just committed themselves to HAVING to find Rove guilty, because if they don't, how are they going to justify sending Miller to prison? And I'm glad I'm not the guy who squealed to go free, while his female colleague is sent off to prison for having a spine. As far as I can see, there is only one possible motivation for this case going forward like it has: Somebody wants Rove's head delivered on a platter at any cost.

07-06-2005, 03:40 PM	#48 (permalink)
Mephisto2 Junkie	How can the "prosecution" find Rove guilty, when he's not on trial? There's a gun there. Why don't you jump it? With regards to the male squealing and the female sticking to her principles, I agree with you 100%. But according to a story I've seen, he's got written consent from his source to testify; ie, they waived their anonymity. Mr Mephisto

07-07-2005, 08:32 PM	#57 (permalink)
Salomon Loser	Rove should pay for his crimes. He's as guilty as the day is long..

07-08-2005, 05:29 PM	#64 (permalink)
Rekna Junkie	I don't think the first amendment should protect these reporters. A reporters job is to report the news not aid and abet a crime. These reporters by taking (even though it was given) confidential information commited a crime. By publishing it they furthered that crime. The first ammendment does not give a reporter the right to participate in a crime and not get in trouble.

07-08-2005, 07:09 PM	#65 (permalink)
Elphaba Deja Moo Location: Olympic Peninsula, WA	This is exactly what the Supreme court decided. A very narrow decision that refuted the first amendment right when a potential crime has been committed.

07-10-2005, 11:56 AM	#69 (permalink)
smooth Junkie Location: Right here	shakran, I wouldn't argue that the reporters did anything illegal. But I do wonder whether you think they did something unethical by placing someone's life in danger... That's my take on it--that they didn't do anything legally wrong but the way in which they went about it, how they chose to report her name and etc. was morally wrong. I think the three of us, shakran, roachboy, and myself are aware of ways to tell about someone without specifically identifying that someone. I think the protection of innocent people (or subjects, participants, sources, whathaveyou) should be of primary importance to journalists and social researchers alike... __________________ "The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann "You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman

07-10-2005, 02:37 PM	#73 (permalink)
host Banned	I guess that there is no harm in posting this article twice on the same page. I just started a new thread on the subject of the total news "blackout" on coverage of Bush's meeting last year with prosecutor Fitzgerald on this same matter and on Bush's retention of private criminal defense attorney Jim Sharp to represent him related to the interview of Bush in this matter.

07-10-2005, 03:35 PM	#75 (permalink)
Elphaba Deja Moo Location: Olympic Peninsula, WA	Host has raised the issue of where is the "liberal" press. This article speaks to that. Fearing Legal Battle, Ohio Newspaper Holds Stories The Associated Press Saturday 09 July 2005 Cleveland - The Plain Dealer, Ohio's largest newspaper, is holding two investigative stories based on leaked documents because they could result in the type of court showdown that led to a New York Times reporter being jailed, the paper's editor said Friday. The Plain Dealer is trying to find a way to publish the stories without relying on the documents, editor Doug Clifton said. "It was documentation that would have been illegal to share, so there wasn't any ambiguity about what we had," Clifton said. On Wednesday, New York Times reporter Judith Miller was jailed for contempt of court after refusing to testify about a confidential source. A prosecutor wants information from Miller as part of an investigation of how the name of an undercover CIA officer was leaked to a columnist. Clifton said the Plain Dealer had decided several weeks ago - before Miller was imprisoned - to withhold the stories because the leaked documents could result in subpoenas and court sanctions, including jail. The stories deal with local and state government. Clifton wrote a column June 30 explaining to readers the importance of protecting sources, and how the public would suffer if reporters' ability to gather news is compromised. He mentioned the potential consequences if the newspaper published the two investigative stories. "I wanted the public to understand that this isn't an abstraction, that this is a real issue," he said Friday. "Things that are important for the public stand in jeopardy of not getting reported because of the state of the law." He said he has never withheld a story because of such concerns. "The climate has always been different," Clifton said. "Let's face it: During the Watergate years with 'Deep Throat,' it was never even thought of. It wasn't even a remote possibility that someone was going to get subpoenaed because of Deep Throat squealing. That has changed so dramatically in the last few years."

07-11-2005, 07:59 AM	#80 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	the right apparently thinks that if rove presents his case as directed at a legal process up front that it can skirt the political damage this case can and should do to it. as an individual endowed with the same legal rights as anyone (albeit skewed in that all american way by power and money--so in fact someone like karl rove has more legal rights than someone like me or you, mr mephisto), rove should be tried and the trial would determine whether he is or is not guilty of a crime. the political question is seperate. rove should resign. there should be political pressure brought to bear that would force him to resign. this matter can and to my mind should serve as a lightning rod, a space across which the bush administration is held to account for the politics of impunity that it has practiced since 9/12/2001. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite