Media Review Conduct After Leak:will Novak become skapegoat

washingtonpost.com
Media Review Conduct After Leak
CIA Inquiry Leads to Questions About What Should Be Published

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 29, 2003; Page A04

When syndicated columnist Robert Novak reported on July 14 that "two senior administration officials" had told him that the wife of a prominent White House critic did undercover work for the CIA, it barely caused a ripple.

Former U.S. ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV talked about the leak in interviews and at the National Press Club soon after, telling Newsday the message was "that if you talk, we'll take your family and drag them through the mud." Nation writer David Corn called the leak a "thuggish act," and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman called it a "criminal act." After Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) called for an investigation, the New York Times, Washington Post and Buffalo News ran inside-the-paper stories.

But it was not until this weekend's reports that the CIA has asked the Justice Department to examine the matter that the story hit the front page of The Washington Post and the Sunday talk shows, sparking questions not just about White House motives but about media conduct.

Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, said Novak was in "dangerous territory. . . . Journalists should apply a civil disobedience test: Does the public good outweigh the wrong that you're doing? In a case where you are risking someone's life, potentially, or putting someone in danger, you have to decide what is the public good you are accomplishing. Because you have the freedom to publish doesn't mean it's necessarily the right thing to do."

Novak, a veteran conservative whose column appears in more than 300 papers, is well connected in the administration, although he opposed the war in Iraq. He declined yesterday to discuss the issue in detail, saying: "I made the judgment it was newsworthy. I think the story has to stand for itself. It's 100 percent accurate. I'm not going to get into why I wrote something."

Fred Hiatt, editorial page editor of The Washington Post, one of the papers that published the July 14 column, said that "in retrospect, I wish I had asked more questions. If I had, given that his column appears in a lot of places, I'm not sure I would have done anything differently. But I wish we had thought about it harder. Alarm bells didn't go off. . . . We have a policy of trying not to publish anything that would endanger anybody."

But Steve Huntley, editorial page editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, Novak's home paper, said: "I trust his judgment and accuracy unquestionably, and his ethics as well. . . . This is the sort of thing you're always faced with when a source tells you something a source should not be telling you. Do you become a second gatekeeper? Our business is to report news, not to slam the door on it."

News organizations often face the dilemma of whether to publish a politically juicy story that might jeopardize someone in a sensitive government position. These judgment calls often involve national security secrets -- troop movements, terrorism investigations, classified military documents -- or police matters, as during the Washington sniper investigation. Journalists sometimes withhold or delay publishing such information at the request of authorities.

It is a violation of law for officials to intentionally disclose the identity of a covert operative. The column by Novak came eight days after Wilson wrote a July 6 New York Times op-ed piece challenging President Bush's claim that Iraq had tried to buy "yellowcake" uranium from Niger. Also on July 6, Wilson, who had gone to Niger to investigate at the CIA's request, was quoted by The Washington Post as saying the administration was "misrepresenting the facts on an issue that was a fundamental justification for going to war." Bush has since backed off the uranium claim.

A senior administration official told The Post on Saturday that two top government officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame. Wilson said yesterday that journalists for the three major broadcast networks told him they had been contacted by someone in the White House. He named only one, Andrea Mitchell, NBC's chief foreign affairs correspondent, who interviewed Wilson and reported on July 22 that he said the administration was "leaking his wife's covert job at the CIA to reporters." Mitchell could not be reached for comment yesterday.

NBC's Washington bureau chief, Tim Russert, and ABC's bureau chief, Robin Sproul, said yesterday they could not discuss any matter involving confidential sources. But John Roberts, a CBS White House correspondent, said that to his knowledge, no administration official had contacted anyone at the network about Wilson.

If anyone had called him, Roberts said, "I'd immediately have to wonder what the ulterior motive was. We'd probably end up doing a story about somebody breaching national security by leaking the name of a CIA operative."

The Wilson case has parallels in Britain, where Prime Minister Tony Blair has plummeted in popularity after his aides leaked the name of a BBC source, government scientist David Kelley, who had questioned Blair's evidence on Iraqi weapons. Kelley committed suicide after his name was made public.

If recent history is any guide, federal investigators are unlikely to discover who the leakers are. In 1999, a federal appeals court ruled that independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr and his staff did not have to face contempt proceedings for allegedly leaking damaging information about President Bill Clinton because no grand jury secrets were disclosed. The next year, a former Starr spokesman, Charles G. Bakaly III, was acquitted of making false statements about his role in providing information to the New York Times.

In 1992, Senate investigators said they could not determine who leaked confidential information to National Public Radio and Newsday about Anita Hill's sexual harassment allegations against Clarence Thomas during his Supreme Court confirmation. In 1989, then-Attorney General Richard Thornburgh launched an unsuccessful $224,000 investigation of a leak to CBS of an inquiry into then-Rep. William H. Gray III (D-Pa.).