By PETE YOST, Associated Press
New York Times reporter Judith Miller was jailed
Wednesday for refusing to divulge a confidential source to
a grand jury investigating the Bush administration's leak
of an undercover CIA operative's name. Another reporter,
Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, agreed to talk and
avoided jail.
Cooper agreed to cooperate with prosecutors after
disclosing that his source had given him permission to do
so hours earlier. The about-face came after nearly two
years of refusals to disclose the information.
The developments added further intrigue to what already
was one of the most closely watched press freedom cases in
recent history.
"I do not view myself as above the law,"
Miller told U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan. "You
are right to send me to prison."
But she said she had an obligation to protect a
confidential source: "I do not make confidentiality
pledges lightly, but when I do I must honor them."
Hogan was adamant that Miller comply with the court's
order to testify.
"If she was given a pass on this, the next person
who comes up" might refuse to cooperate as well,
Hogan said. "There is still a realistic possibility
that confinement might cause her to testify."
Cooper said his source had given him a waiver just
before the court session, enabling the journalist to
cooperate with the probe into who leaked the name of CIA
officer Valerie Plame. Cooper said that he had been
prepared to go to jail and that on Tuesday night, "I
hugged my son goodbye and told him it might be a long time
before I see him again."
Hogan held the reporters in civil contempt of court in
October, rejecting their argument that the First Amendment
shielded them from revealing their sources. Last month the
Supreme Court refused to intervene.
The use of anonymous sources has long been debated.
News organizations say they seek to balance a need to
promise confidentiality — to elicit key information —
against a desire to be open about their sources to
readers, viewers and listeners.
The Miller-Cooper case has been seen as a test of press
freedom, and numerous media groups have lined up behind
the reporters. Thirty-one states and the District of
Columbia have shield laws protecting reporters from having
to identify their confidential sources, though there is no
federal protection. Congress is considering a bill,
however, and Cooper and others involved in the case have
urged passage.
Unless she decides to talk, Miller will be jailed until
the grand jury ends its work in October. Hogan speculated
Miller's confinement might cause her source to give her a
more specific waiver of confidentiality, as Cooper's
source had.
The judge did not say where she would be incarcerated,
but she was seen entering the Alexandria Detention Center.
The Virginia facility's best-known resident is convicted
terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui.
Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is investigating the
question of who leaked the identity of CIA officer Plame.
Disclosure of an undercover intelligence officer's
identity can be a federal crime if prosecutors can show
the leak was intentional and the person who released that
information knew of the officer's secret status.
Plame's name was disclosed in a column by Robert Novak
days after her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson,
questioned part of President Bush's justification for
invading Iraq.
Wilson was sent to Africa by the Bush administration to
investigate an intelligence claim that Saddam Hussein may
have purchased yellowcake uranium from Niger in the late
1990s for use in nuclear weapons. Wilson said he could not
verify the claim and accused the administration for
manipulating the intelligence to "exaggerate the
Iraqi threat."
Novak, whose column cited as sources two unidentified
senior Bush administration officials, has refused to say
whether he has testified before the grand jury or has been
subpoenaed. Cooper's story mentioning Plame's name
appeared after Novak's column. Miller did some reporting,
but never wrote a story.
Among the witnesses Fitzgerald's investigators have
questioned are Bush; Vice President Dick Cheney; Bush
political adviser Karl Rove; Cheney's chief of staff,
Lewis Libby, and former White House counsel Alberto
Gonzales, who is now the attorney general. Fitzgerald has
said his probe is finished except for hearing from Miller
and Cooper.
"If somebody broke the law to get back at Mr.
Wilson, every eyewitness should come forward to
testify," Fitzgerald told Hogan. "The grand jury
wants to know the truth. We are having the whole thing
derailed by one person."
Pointing to broader implications, Fitzgerald said that
"we can't have 50,000 journalists" making their
own decisions about whether to reveal sources.
After Hogan passed judgment, Miller stood up, hugged
her lawyers and was escorted from the courtroom, touching
Cooper on the hand as she passed by.
The executive editor of the Times, Bill Keller, said
outside the courthouse that Miller's decision was a
"brave and principled choice." He called the
jailing "a chilling conclusion to an utterly
confounding case."
Asked why prosecutors sought Miller's testimony when
she never wrote a story about Plame, Times attorney Floyd
Abrams said, "We don't know, but most likely somebody
testified to the grand jury that he or she had spoken to
Judy."
Keller said he did not know why Miller never wrote a
story, adding, "I guess she didn't feel she had
enough to go with at the time."
