Update [2005-7-6 15:16:4 by susanhu]: Judith Miller is in custody and will be confined to a jail somewhere “in the D.C. area.” The judge rejected all of Miller’s requests — including her request to surrender and to choose a prison.
Update [2005-7-6 14:37:10 by susanhu]: JUST IN, per Catnip and CNN: Matt Cooper will testify. I read elsewhere thsi morning that he’s been deeply conflicted about this and that Time told him they’d stand by whatever decision he makes. Cooper is very worried this will tarnish his reputation and hurt his reporting. I can’t blame him. It’s particularly cruel that he’s the one having to make such a difficult decision. Someone else should be in the dock.
Earlier: There’s nothing quite like having one’s idle conjecture be confirmed by the Washington Post. On July 3, BooTrib asked, “Was Judith Miller a Source?”
Lo, and verily, it came to pass that Atrios — in his post, “Judy, Judy, Judy” — plucked this quote from today’s WaPo:
To which Atrios adds a profound “Fuckin’ right.”
Mo’ mornin’ muck: “Should Karl Rove Be Put to Death?,” by BooMan, “Novak stonewalls press corps as Times reporter faces jail,” at Media Matters, and “COUNTDOWN TO THE POKEY” at Wonkette:
And, Democracy Now!‘s Amy Goodman interviews Newsweek‘s Michael Isikoff on Rove. (Listen/watch.)
More:
Huff Po’s O’Donnell: Three Questions For Rove’s Lawyer
Crooks & Liars has KO’s Interview with Craig Crawford.
Didn’t Novak report that he rcv’d the identity of Plame from two senior administration officials?
The spin is hard to follow since I’ve been away from the news the past couple of days. They’re now saying that Rove might get away with this (if he was one of the informants) by claiming that he didn’t know Plame’s status at the CIA ie. maybe she was undercover – maybe not (?). I need to catch up…
Yeah catnip. That’s the thing that keeps me going in circles too. Novak told the GJ that his information came from 2 senior whitehouse officials. So to have Miller and/or Cooper as the leakers that seems to mean that Miller leaked it to the Whitehouse who then leaked it to Novak? Doesn’t make any sense to me at all. Not saying that Miller isn’t most likely a Bushco patsy and up to her neck in all of it, but I just can’t buy that the press knows top secret identities of CIA agents but the whitehouse staff doesn’t. . .I can’t even bring that one in if I put on a tinfoil hat.
So did Novak lie to the GJ? (gosh it would be grand to catch him in such a lie if he did) Or is all this other BS just the spin to make our heads spin?
We should organize a boycott of the New York Times until Judy Miller testifies. She is a disgrace.
Excellent idea. I suggested this to a friend. And the fact that the NYTimes is using her refusal to reveal a criminal to rehabilitate her–she’s a martyr for the first amendment–chafes my ass. Maybe if people cancel subscriptions or write to say that they will no longer buy the NYTimes as long as Miller refuses to identify this criminal Sulzberger will finally realize just how discredited that rag has become. I stopped buying the Times a year and a half ago and I couldn’t be happier.
Amy just asked Isikoff about the letter that John Conyers is circulating about Rove’s resignation .. reported at Raw Story. Isikoff replied, “Well, it’s John Conyers … and he’s not exactly in the group that’s in power.” Which is true. But sad.
Good post Susan.
I think Fitzgerald may just have some ‘bite’ to him. This has been such a long time coming, time for some Frogmarching!
I made a similar post on Kos a little while ago, so I won’t re-post it here, but I included large parts of a piece from Editor & Publisher that are worth reading. They went into much greater detail on Fitzgerald’s brief:
Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald went after Judith Miller harshly Tuesday while arguing that the reporters at the center of the Valerie Plame/CIA case should not be allowed to serve their sentences for contempt as home detention. A federal judge is expected to decide Miller and Matthew Cooper’s fate on Wednesday.
Speaking of Miller, Fitzgerald wrote, “Certainly one who can handle the desert in wartime, is far better equipped than the average person jailed in a federal facility.” Miller, of course, covered (some say, mis-covered) the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq following the U.S. invasion.
Fitzgerald mocked Miller’s claim that being denied cell phone and e-mail privileges would be adequate punishment: “Forced vacation at a comfortable home is not a compelling form of coercion.”
Miller “could avoid even a minute of separation from her husband,” he wrote in another section, “if she would do no more than just follow the law like every other citizen in America is required to do.”
Even more troubling for Miller, Fitzgerald seemed to suggest that she could face criminal charges, in addition to her contempt citation.
“The court should advise Miller that if she persists in defying the court’s order that she will be committing a crime,” Fitzgerald wrote. “Miller and The New York Times appear to have confused Miller’s ability to commit contempt with a legal right to do so….
“Much of what appears to motivate Miller to commit contempt is the misguided reinforcement from others (specifically including her publisher) that placing herself above the law can be condoned.”
…Fitzgerald also quoted from various journalists to shoot down the reporter’s claims that she represents accepted journalistic standards. Among his sources: Bob Woodward, Anthony Lewis, Mark Bowden, Norman Pearlstine of Time, and Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune. Fitzgerald noted that these “journalists, First Amendment scholars and opinion leaders flatly disagree with the position Miller is taking at the behest of the New York Times.”
He zinged Miller again here: “Special Counsel appreciates that Miller is also someone who thinks deeply. She is an investigative journalist who has won a Pulitzer Prize and authored several books, including one titled ‘God Has Ninety Nine Names’ that contains a chapter singularly insightful as to the history and orientation of Egyptian terrorist groups. Neither Special Counsel, nor this Court, should lightly conclude that Miller will spend months in jail without thinking more deeply about the issues discussed above and, in particular, thinking about whether the interests of journalism at large and, even more broadly, the proper conduct of government, are truly served by her continued refusals to obey this Court’s order to testify in an investigation in which she is an eyewitness and her putative source has been identified and has waived confidentiality….
“Miller’s views may change over time, especially if what is viewed as her ‘irresponsible martyrdom’ obstructing an important grand jury investigation is seen to undercut, not enhance, the credibility of the press and, with it, any case to be made for a federal reporter’s shield law.”
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000973489
Cooper has agreed to testify.
If I understood CNN correctly — was on the phone — Judith Miller is before the judge at this moment? And she’s refusing to testify?
Between the hurricanes and Olympic coverage on CNN, it’s hard to tell what’s going on. Off to the online sources instead…
I’m sittin here in lower Alabama and we have had some rain and a little wind, and granted that is strange for a place that never has wind normally. It is calm and clear though right now! Supposed to rain tomorrow and tonight some more but that’s about it for the hurricane where I am. The kids here are swimming in their pools right now.
Matt Cooper’s source said it was ok to reveal him/her. That is why he changed his mind apparently.
According to AP breaking news:
Both reporters faced threats of jail time.
Cooper told U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan that he would now cooperate with a federal prosecutor’s investigation 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 told Hogan.
Cooper’s turnaround came at a hearing at which Hogan was to consider whether to jail Cooper and Miller for defying his order to testify about their confidential sources in the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame’s identity.
Cooper took the podium in the court and told the judge, “Last night I hugged my son good-bye 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.
…
Cooper said he had been told earlier that his source had signed a general waiver of confidentiality but that he did not trust such waivers because he thought they had been gained from executive branch employees under duress. He told the court that he needed not a general waiver but a specific waiver from his source, which he did not get until Wednesday.
“I received express personal consent” from the source, Cooper told the judge.
Hogan and Fitzgerald accepted Cooper’s offer.
“That would purge you of contempt,” Hogan said.
Now, I can’t see any way in hell that Rove would give Cooper consent, so this is all getting curiouser and curiouser…
But it has been reported that Rove did sign a wavier, so this does tie him in…but it seems that he may have something up his sleeve, if indeed it is him, that we don’t know about.
But it has been reported that Rove did sign a wavier
I didn’t hear that news. I’ve been out of the loop the past couple of days.
Editor & Publisher
That’s what I was thinking too. Is it possible that Rove instructed someone else to leak Plame’s identity, and that person has agreed to waive their confidentiality?
WaPO:
1st sentence:
Fitzgerald may learn more details from Cooper’s notes.
2nd sentence — SAME PARAGRAPH:
Sources close to the investigation say there is evidence in some instances that some reporters may have told government officials — not the other way around — that Wilson was married to Plame, a CIA employee.
THE INFERENCE I DRAW is that Cooper’s notes (and now his testimony) may reveal that Judith Miller TOLD government officials about Plame and those govt officials in turn told Cooper.
This is all very confusing. Even if Cooper testifies, it will be sealed until the investigation is over, right?
My question is: how the hell did Miller find out? From what Wilson’s said about the issue, this was a very closely-guarded secret. This sounds to me like more attempts by the Republicans to make this into “it was an open secret, everyone knew”.
…for the length of the grand jury investigation, according to CNN.
..immediately taken into custody it seems. She had requested a fed prison in Connecticut, but the judge has refused that request, and said she’ll be held in the DC area.
I started transcribing but got tired … here’s the first part of what the NYT exec editor said:
“chilling conclusion to a confounding case … what does the fed. prosecutor hope to accomplish in a Draconian act to punish an honorable journalist? “
Keller from the NYT made an interesting point: what if it’s finally determined that the leak wasn’t a crime and Miller is the only one jailed in this case?
John Dean, from Countdown last night:
It could be the fact, a theft of government property, a conversion of government property issue, which is a very broad statute.
But let me tell you the hooker, and the one that got everybody at Watergate, and that was the conspiracy to defraud the government, because you can defraud the government by not doing your job. And you wouldn’t be doing your job if you are using and revealing to the press inside information about CIA assets.
So there are lots of statutes that could well be used, and could create a problem for Mr. Rove.
Whoever it is, they’d better not get away with this.
Amen to that!
That’s a determination that probably can’t be made if journalists are held exempt from the law, either. As the prosecutor noted today, Miller is asking for protection even stronger than attorney-client privilege: attorneys are required to testify if their client informs them they they are going to commit a crime in the future. The attorney-client privilege only holds for past offenses.
The information Miller received wasn’t a description of a crime; being given the information was itself a crime. If Miller then passed that information to operatives at the White House, then a further crime was committed, though she does have 5th Amendment protections there.
Personally, I’ve come to take a dim view of journalistic privilege. Like every other privileged elite, journalists have ended up abusing their elite status — their shameful collaboration with the rush to war alone stands as stark evidence of this. Whistleblowers ought to receive protection under the law, not journalists. Journalists should have to play by the same rules as everyone else, and part of that basic set of rules is that, firstly, you do not protect criminals from prosecution, and secondly, you do not act as an accessory to criminal acts.
Judith Miller is not acting as a defender of journalism, and she is certainly not serving the public interest. The only thing she is shielding is a high-ranking traitor in the executive branch of the US government. She might also be acting to cover up her own role in aiding and abetting treason. These are not activities that deserve legal protection.
The idea that a free and open society will collapse if journalists are not above the law is utter nonsense. It’s precisely when people start to be above the law that free and open societies perish. That we have arrived at a situation in which a journalist can seriously insist that she be permitted to hinder an investigation into treason at the highest levels of US government and then, when denied by the courts, have the audacity to request a specific cushy federal prison, all suggests that its time to bring journalists back down to the level of mere mortals along with the rest of us proles.
I’d asked before, in another thread, why caregivers like psychologists and psychiatrists must notify authorities when they are informed of potential harm that may be perpetrated by a client. That doesn’t rise above privilege they’re granted either.
I don’t exactly hold Judith Miller up as a matryr for the cause here, but I think there are compelling arguments to be considered, especially since whistleblowers have used journalists in the past to get their stories out a la Watergate.
The vital difference is that during Watergate, the leakers were reporting a crime. The leaking itself was also in violation of the law, but you could make a case that the lesser violation of the law was necessary to prevent a much greater violation of the law from going unpunished. In the current case, both the leak and the publication of the leak were the crimes in and of themselves, and the purpose of the leak was vengeful intimidation. Protecting this particular leaker serves to discourage whistleblowers. The Plame leak didn’t reveal governmental wrongdoing; it was intended as a warning to other potential whistleblowers.
We already have laws to protect whistleblowers. It’s these, and not the so-called shield laws, that ought to be strengthened.
As I write, the lead picture at cnn.com shows “demonstrators” in support of Judith Miller. They’re all middle-aged office workers holding neatly pre-printed signs. The story itself doesn’t deal with the demonstrators at all, but I’d guess they’re NYT employees. Talk about astroturfing…
The ultimate irony will be if the GOP-controlled congress actually passes a federal shield law in order to protect Karl Rove. I wonder if so-called free press supporters will count it as a victory when the intent of the shield laws is turned on its head to foster greater government secrecy.
Check this out from Buzzflash:
Not The First Time: Rove and Novak
Rove Was Fired For Leaking A Damaging Story About GOP Fundraiser. Esquire’s Ron Suskind reported that, “Sources close to the former president [George H.W. Bush] say Rove was fired from the 1992 Bush presidential campaign after he planted a negative story with columnist Robert Novak about dissatisfaction with campaign fundraising chief and Bush loyalist Robert Mosbacher Jr. It was smoked out, and he was summarily ousted.” [White House Briefing, 9/29/03; Esquire, 1/2003 Issue]
Here’s the link to the Buzzflash article
sooo…
Who told Judy?
Also:
Has anyone wondered if maybe Miller was Cooper’s direct source?
Repeatedly saying “it’s sad day” and calling for a federal shield law for journalists…expressed his support to Miller as she left the courtroom…sourec agreed this morning to gve him a specific, personal and unambiguous waiver…agress with Miller that these gov’t coerced waivers are not legitimate…but the source gave him a personal and uncoerced waiver and then he felt free to speak to the grand jury…
For journalists who, presumably, aid members of the Republican party in secretly committing high crimes…
but if we are going to be doing that eye for an eye and a tooth for tooth thing like they all so desired spooling everybody up for war………I have no tooth to give to this toothless fucking media. Enjoy three hots and a cot, I’m going out to party my ass off while I still have an ass ya stupid fuckers!
Oh Yeah! You stupid fucks have spent the last 4+ years portraying them as the ‘American Axis of Evil’. ENJOY FUCKING JAIL!
Cooper won’t discuss the source outside of the Grand Jury….
The waiver only entitles him to speak to the grand jury about the source…
Q: wasn’t the source kind of coerced by Time’s actions?
A: many people said to me that once Time agreed to hand over all my notes and all my e-mails etc…I thought long and hard about that…but [I didn’t feel I had the waiver]…
Q: why did the source agree to the waiver?
A: I can’t say.
It seems very likely now that Rove was not Cooper’s source. He’d never sign a waiver. We can only hope that Cooper’s source will have something more to say about where he/she got the information, and that it leads to something significant.
Something, somewhere has got to give. How long can these scandals go on? There are so many of them now. How is it possible that the whole lot of them have not landed in jail yet?
Oh people, I feel a chill sometimes. How do we overcome this seeming inpenetrable monolith that is BushCo.
I’m beginning to think the whole thing about rumors that Rove is the source is nothing but a move in a larger strategy by Rove to deflect attention from something else or again make the dems look bad and silly. These people are evil!
Floyd Abrams, attorney, is saying on CNN that Cooper received that phone call this morning from the source which gave him the personal waiver but Miller didn’t. Hmm…what can we conclude from that?
Frank Sesno just called this a “beltline gotcha story” on CNN ie. it doesn’t measure up to the level of Watergate. Pardon?? Possible treason is a gotcha story? Holy crap, Sesno.
I received an email this morning asking me to sign a petition to protect the journalists right to keep sources confidential. I wrote back and told them I will sign that right when the media starts doing their GD job and quits spinning for Bushco. “Insetigative reporter” my ass. If they all weren’t so lazy they would be out there getting the real story. The real facts, the truth. THAT is their job, not spewing and getting paid to spew crap from the propagand machine in the White House. Tin foli hat comment ahead: How much did Rove pay Cooper to make someone else(Gannon?) the fall guy?
for journalism, cuz ya know? I owe those fuckers a whole lot these days. Yes, I’m so sad! I think this is a time for a Klondike Bar! After that, if I feel a little hungry cuz I don’t want to go off my feed or anything like that, maybe I’ll order a small prime rib or something……a little red meat usually cheers me up. Then maybe a Gran Mariner Dark Chocolate Mouse because chocolate is always a great way to begin to feel a little better. Then maybe out for a little social life and an amber ale, hell make three cuz ya know we are losing a little here in this whole equation and I’m sorrowful. After that just go ahead and start me out with a few shots of 1800 and let’s begin to move to the bodyshot, later I’ll throw my white satin thong on the antlers of something dead hanging on the wall because HELL YEAH, if we’re going to start flushing principles down the toilet along with the Koran then the least ya could do for me is pick a big damn fucking scumbag to flush while we’re flushing. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer BITCH FROM HELL! Oh the headache I’m going to have though and where in the hell is my white satin thong?
Not my white satin thong!!! That fucking antler thieven panty sniffin flushin the loose ends butt wipe!
I’m guessing she’s been sent to the Federal Detention Center in DC. First, they take everything: watch, rings, jewelry, purse, reading glasses, cellphone, every item that comprises her personal identity. Then, they take her fingerprints and photo for an ID tag to be worn around her neck. Then, she gets put in a holding cell with nowhere to sit comfortably. It’s cold and damp. There’s a toilet without a seat in the corner and it stinks. There is no food or water. Hours go by and she starts to whimper then cry real tears at the indignity and outrage of being treated this way.
Eventually, a female officer comes and takes her thru another series of barred gates. She is stripped and searched in every orifice — the officer puts on latex gloves and probes Judy’s mouth, vagina and anus, in that order. Judy is given a bar of lye soap and told to shower in cold water while the officer watches. She is given a scratchy towel to dry off, old-lady underwear and an orange jumpsuit to put on.
She is walked thru another set of barred gates and down a hall between open cells where the other residents call her names and suggest lewd acts they would like to perform on her. She is taken to a general cell, maybe, where other non-violent crime-types are housed. It is now 3am and everyone is sleeping. The only bed available is a top bunk without a blanket or pillow. And, it’s cold and damp. In the morning, some of the other detainees may recognize her and sing, “Har, har, har!”
Right now, as I write, it’s 7pm EDT so Judy is still in the holding cell, still defiant and outraged that she is being so mistreated. She is imagining how she will be lionized as a martyr by the neocons.
Next week, after a diet of hard boiled eggs, hard ham slivers, lima beans with roach bodies, and actual kool-aid for a beverage, she may feel differently. Or maybe not. But, eventually, her sense of self will erode and swirl away like toilet paper down a commode where everyone watches her do her personal ablutions.
And there is absolutely nothing to do except talk to the prostitutes that were picked up at interstate truck stops, the pitiful embezzlers of school funds, the tax evaders who thought taxes were unconstitutional and the pathetic fraudsters who listed their children as the applicants on bank loans. And Judy will slowly but surely go insane.
When she sees her lawyer next week she will scream, “GET ME OUT OF HERE!” And it won’t help, not one bit because she is IN-THE-SYSTEM now and getting out is a lot harder than getting in.