New York Times reporter sent to jail in leak case

By James Vicini

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A New York Times reporter was jailed
on Wednesday after she said she could not break her promise and
reveal her confidential source to a grand jury investigating
who in the Bush administration leaked a covert CIA operative’s
name to the media.

Chief U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan ordered
correspondent Judith Miller to jail immediately and said she
must stay there until she agreed to testify or for the rest of
the grand jury’s term, which lasts through October.

Another case involving Time magazine reporter Matthew
Cooper was resolved when he told the judge he had just received
the “express personal consent” of his source to reveal his
identity. “Consequently I am prepared to testify,” he said.

The dispute has become an important case involving freedom
of the press. It has pitted the news media’s traditional use of
anonymous sources against the efforts of a federal government
prosecutor to investigate a possible crime.

Miller told the judge she did not want to go to jail but
had no choice but to protect the identity of her source as a
matter of personal conscience and to stand up for a vigorous,
independent press.

“If journalists cannot be trusted to keep confidences, then
journalists cannot function and there cannot be a free press,”
she said in a clear, firm voice in the packed courtroom that
included her husband and the newspaper’s top editor.

The grand jury investigation by special counsel Patrick
Fitzgerald, a Justice Department prosecutor, seeks to determine
who in the Bush administration leaked the name of covert CIA
operative Valerie Plame to the media in 2003 and whether any
laws were violated.

Plame’s name was leaked, her diplomat husband said, because
of his criticism of the Bush administration’s handling of the
Iraq war.

Journalists say using anonymous sources is crucial to their
reporting, including exposing government wrongdoing in cases
like the Watergate scandal that toppled Richard Nixon’s
presidency and the printing of the Pentagon Papers on the
Vietnam War.

When Hogan ordered Miller to jail, she showed no emotion,
and one of her lawyers put his arm around her shoulder. The
judge said confinement at a jail in the Washington, D.C., area
might convince her to change her mind and testify.

CONFIDENTIAL PLEDGES

Earlier in the hearing, Miller was firm that she would not
testify. “I do not make confidential pledges lightly, but when
I do, I must honor them. If I do not, how can I expect people
to accept my assurances,” she said.

“Your honor, in this case I cannot break my word just to
stay out of jail,” Miller told the judge.

“My motive here is straightforward; a promise of
confidentiality once made must be respected or the journalist
will lose all credibility and the public will, in the end,
suffer.”

Miller, an investigative reporter who covers national
security and foreign policy issues, said she did not consider
herself to be above the law.

She said she had thought long and hard over the July 4
Independence Day holiday about her decision.

After Cooper entered the courtroom, he went over to Miller
and they briefly hugged. Before the hearing began, perhaps
anticipating that she would have to go to jail immediately,
Miller handed her necklace to her husband.

Her attorney, Robert Bennett, told the judge she had not
committed any crimes and that she never even wrote an article
about the Plame matter.

“After 40 years in this business, I have the nagging
feeling that Judy Miller may be the only person to go to jail
in this case,” Bennett said. No one has been charged as part of
the grand jury investigation which began in January 2004.

Hogan said Miller had no choice but to cooperate under the
law. He said she was defying the law by not testifying and “may
be obstructing justice.”

In a statement, Arthur Sulzberger, publisher of The New
York Times, said: “There are times when the greater good of our
democracy demands an act of conscience. Judy has chosen such an
act in honoring her promise of confidentiality.”

Cooper said that as of last night he had planned to tell
the judge that he would not cooperate. But that changed “a
short time ago” when he received word from his source that
Cooper was no longer bound by his pledge of confidentiality.

After an unsuccessful appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court,
Time magazine last week handed over the subpoenaed records.
Cooper said those documents included notes containing the
identity of his source and their conversations.

(Additional reporting by Patricia Wilson)