credible contemptibility

Reporter Held in Contempt in CIA Probe

By Curt Anderson
The Associated Press
Thursday, October 7, 2004; 4:00 PM

WASHINGTON -- A reporter for the New York Times was held in contempt Thursday by a federal judge and faces possible jail time for refusing to divulge confidential sources to prosecutors investigating the leak of an undercover CIA officer's identity.

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osama bin laden is walking around free, but our government is throwing american reporters in jail.

the reporter in this case, judith miller, is being threatened with jail for doing background research. research that says the bush administration ratted out a cia operative.

the facts in this case are not in dispute: last year former ambassador joseph wilson authored an op-ed piece in the new york times. in it wilson declared that the bush administration had grotesquely overstated iraqi pursuit of uranium—a claim that since has proven true.

wilson's wife, valerie plame, was working undercover for the cia at the time.
two weeks after wilson's piece was published, conservative mouthpiece robert novak revealed plame's identity in his nationally syndicated column.

we all know from our spy movies what happens when an agent's cover is blown: she ends up face down in a stream while her fellow officers wonder what happened. plame was lucky in that regard, but we know exactly what happened.

the administration that says, "you're either with us or you're with the terrorists" got their panties in a twist after being caught in another lie. they didn't care to have mr. wilson undermine their case against iraqi WMDs, so they sent him an unmistakable message: get crossways with us and people you care about will get hurt.

according to a new york times story, reporters who testified before a grand jury linked their administration sources on plames’ identity to vice president dick cheney’s office. try to imagine my surprise.

novak has offered no explanation, expressed no regret for his actions. the administration has offered no apology, nor admitted any mistakes in this or any other matter.

and yet now the same "senior administration officials" who used novak to double-cross plame are hiding behind a journalist's code of ethics—betting their survival on judith miller’s integrity.

if she talks, somebody or somebodies in the bush white house could (and should) go to jail. if she doesn’t talk, administration criminals get off scot-free, and miller spends time in the hole.

my feeling is that miller won’t betray her sources—though perhaps in this case she should. the people she’s covering for don’t deserve her protection. they deserve to twist in the wind the way plame and wilson did.

it’s ironic that george w. bush, the self-proclaimed devout christian, is point man for this administration’s craven lack of ethics, character, or responsibility. given his actions the past four years, adding ‘hypocrite’ to his list of failings is no revelation.

thousands of americans have been killed during four years of the bush/cheney watch. by that standard, judith miller is getting off easy. she’s only facing jail time…the price of doing her job, apparently.

just another american paying for bush administration duplicity, while real criminals go free.