Gene Lyons

Journalists are citizens, too

Gene Lyons
Posted on Wednesday, July 13, 2005

In an age of celebrity journalists, it's hardly unusual to see our esteemed national press corps display upsidedown priorities. Like the Hollywood luminaries they resemble, some turn into big crybabies whenever their prerogatives are questioned. Even so, the recent caterwauling on behalf of jailed New York Times reporter Judith Miller has risen to new heights of absurdity. To hear the high panjandrums of the New York/Washington media tell it, we are not a nation of laws but of editors. Supposedly, the sky will fall should Miller, who wrote or co-wrote virtually every one of the Times' stories on Iraq's imaginary weapons of mass destruction, testify about the White House "outing" of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame in an effort to discredit her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson. After Wilson's July 6, 2003, op-ed article in the Times, the White House admitted that one of President Bush's key propaganda claims about Saddam Hussein's non-existent nukes that Saddam recently had sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa was doubted by the White House when he made it. Although certain of Wilson's claims proved less than 100 percent accurate, the crudely forged documents the White House relied upon weren't exposed as such until after Wilson had made his own report to the CIA. It's worth remembering that Bush's statements proved to be highly dubious.

Back when the scandal broke, the president vowed to get to the bottom of it. "If there is a leak out of my administration," Bush said, "I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of."

Asked pointedly if Karl Rove, the White House aide long famous for gutter tactics, still had his confidence, Bush reiterated that he expected anybody in his administration with knowledge of classified leaks to come clean.

That didn't happen. Instead, Rove, now known to be a source of journalists who have given evidence in special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation, hid in plain sight for two years while Time magazine and The New York Times litigated the question of their reporters' obligation to testify all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, said rumors of Rove's involvement were "totally ridiculous." Rove himself denied knowing Plame's name, a cute equivocation that's completely beside the point. It's like trying to beat a DWI charge by saying you didn't know gin contained alcohol.

Courtesy of e-mails written by Time's Matt Cooper, according to a report in the current issue of Newsweek, Rove outed Plame on "double super secret background." Obtained by Newsweek, Cooper's notes read, "It was, KR said, Wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues," who authorized Wilson's mission to Africa. Rove also "implied strongly there's still plenty to implicate Iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro [m] Niger."

Only the claim about Plame's job turned out to be accurate. Rove's lawyer says his client didn't know it was classified information. If so, Rove's defense against a potential treason charge would be incompetence.

Back at the beginning, the Times was breathing smoke and fire, calling the White House leak "an egregious abuse of power" and demanding an investigation. Now that several courts have deemed Judith Miller to be an essential witness, the newspaper compares her civil disobedience to everybody from the Boston Tea Party patriots to Martin Luther King Jr.

In a haughty tone familiar to anybody who's ever caught the newspaper with its metaphorical pants down, the editors remind the prosecutor that they're The New York Times and he's not: "Mr. Fitzgerald's attempts to interfere with the rights of a free press while refusing to disclose his reasons for doing so, when he can't even say whether a crime has been committed, have exhibited neither reverence nor cautious circumspection."

What rubbish. Reverence, indeed. (To be fair, it's an allusion to James Madison, not a demand to be worshipped.) In making its argument, the Times states that it wouldn't print information that "would endanger lives and national security." So here's my question: In a post-9/11 world, what information could possibly be more sensitive than the identity of a covert agent charged with preventing nuclear proliferation? Answer: None. Let's put aside the fact that Miller has long been a passionately outspoken ally of Bush administration neo-conservatives who pushed for war with Iraq. She gave paid public speeches urging Saddam's overthrow. Many journalists have asked why such a partisan was given the Iraqi WMD assignment to begin with. The answer? Access, access and access. What everybody's ignoring here is that Fitzgerald already knows Miller's sources. That's not what he wants to ask her. His prosecution brief urging her incarceration stipulates that "her putative source has been identified and has waived confidentiality." Even Times editor Bill Keller has conceded that there's no imaginable journalist's shield law that would protect her. It's Miller's patriotic duty to talk.

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Free-lance columnist Gene Lyons is a Little Rock author and recipient of the National Magazine Award.