Susan Estrich
Thursday, June 30, 2005

Story Continues Below

  The rat or rats insisted on anonymity, and the reporters granted it. Fair enough. But outing a covert CIA operative – which could cost that person her life and, in any event, ends her career – is a felony, not a political hit.

A special prosecutor was appointed. The two reporters were called to testify before the grand jury, refused to identify the rat or rats and, after losing their final appeal yesterday to the United States Supreme Court, are now facing prison.

That stinks.

What makes this tale particularly tawdry is that the columnist who actually revealed the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame was conservative Robert Novak, who hasn't said whether he testified before the grand jury or revealed his source, but isn't facing a term in jail.

To his credit, the vice president's chief of staff, one of those rumored as a possible source, publicly released anyone he had talked to (possibly Novak) from any obligation to protect him. Miller and Cooper's sources have done them no such favor.

Matt Cooper and Judith Miller are two of the best and hardest-working reporters around. I have known them both for years. For them, this is a matter of principle. Judy never even wrote a story about Plame, she just did research; Matt wrote his story only after Novak did his.

After the furor at Newsweek about the Koran story (which, as it turns out, wasn't entirely wrong after all), news organizations all over the country have been making lots of noises about limiting their use of anonymous sources. Ed Klein's recent book on Hillary Clinton leaves no doubt about the kind of trash you can get from anonymous sources.

Patrick Grey's troubled reaction to the disclosure that his No. 2 man at the FBI was "Deep Throat" leaves no doubt that there are circumstances where the Constitution may itself depend on the ability of honorable reporters and editors to rely on trustworthy anonymous sources.

But even drawing lines doesn't necessarily save Matt and Judy from their jail terms. A line based on whether the underlying act constitutes a crime finds them on the wrong side. In this case, it was – and the motivation, political revenge, only makes it worse. A reporter is not a lawyer. You can tell your lawyer you've committed a crime and expect confidentiality, but not a reporter in the hopes they will then tar your target.

There was no great public interest in knowing Plame's identity. At best, it was part of a long explanation as to why her husband had been chosen for an assignment that, in the eyes of the Bush administration, ended poorly. This is not the Pentagon Papers, not even by a stretch.

The reason Judith and Matt aren't talking is not because of national security or anything like that, but because they are among the most professional reporters in the business, and they don't want to be the ones to set the precedent and put themselves in the business of drawing lines, when self-interest would inevitably be seen as coloring their judgment.

Judith has already taken far more heat than she personally deserves for stories about WMDs in which the whole newspaper clearly played a role in accepting the administration's accounts – just what she doesn't need is another hit.

But the very idea that these two are facing prison while the rat is eating lunch in the White House mess should anger any decent person, starting with the rat's boss, George W. Bush. It's up to the president now to demand that the rat(s) come clean, and that they release the reporters from the pledge of anonymity and remove the threat of jail from their heads.

After all, why does the president want rats like these working for him in the first place?

You'd think he'd be happy to get rid of them – unless, that is, they've got a whole colony of them in the West Wing.

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