Thursday, June 30, 2005

My two cents on Journalist/Source Privilege

I support journalistic privilege in maintaining the confidentiality of sources up to a point. In the case of someone wanting to get some info out to the press about crimes, corruption, malfeasance in office, or corporate shenannigans, Hell, yes, their identity should not be disclosed. I think one reason that D.C. does not have a shield law is to protect politicians by dissuading folks from talking about government and Congress' fuck-ups by threatening possible jail time for doing so.

However, in the Plame case, there are unusual factors that make me believe Cooper's and Miller's sources should not only be revealed to the court, but to the public as well. Here they are:

1.) The leak itself was a Federal crime, i.e. to disclose the name of a covert agent.

2.) The leak was a partisan political act in retribution for Mr. Wilson's calling the president a liar.

So what we basically have here is someone, probably in the White House itself, who committed a Federal crime involving National Security in order to get back at someone who exposed a presidential lie, and used Bob Novak, a Republican operative in the guise of a journalist, to do it. The damage they may have done to intelligence gathering throughout the world is incalculable

I think Novak is being protected at the highest level. He did their evil bidding, he's gold.

I think Mr. Cooper and Ms. Miller are honorable in refusing to name their source, but, in this particular case, misguided. The nation deserves to know their source so we can get to the bottom of who thought so little of selling out intelligence agents and their sources that they would pull a cheap trick like that for political revenge. I think his initials might be K.R., and no, it's not Knox Rover.

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