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Thu 16 Jun, 2005 05:21 am
Quote:During the summer of 2004, several journalists were subpoenaed about their roles in revealing the identity of Valerie Plame, an analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency. Plame's identity as a CIA analyst was allegedly leaked to the press by administration officials after her husband, diplomat Joseph Wilson, wrote an article critical of the Bush administration's policy towards Iraq's weapons program.
Under U.S. law, it is illegal to reveal the name of an intelligence operative or analyst, and the special prosecutor appointed to investigate the case demanded the notes of several reporters who were at best tangentially involved in the story.
When the reporters declined to provide the information, a federal judge found them in contempt of court and ordered them to jail. At year's end the reporters were at liberty pending the appeals process.
In a similar case, a federal judge ordered a television reporter from Providence, Rhode Island, to serve a six months sentence of house arrest
for refusing to reveal who gave him a federal surveillance tape.
http://www.freedomhouse.org/research/pressurvey/pfs2005.pdf
This issue has long intrigued me. It was raised by Wolf O'Donnell in the PBS thread and this quote is from the site he posted there.
Why were the reporters who were only tangentially involved found in contempt of court but Bob Novak, who actually was the one who outed Ms Plame hasn't even been questioned?
Or have I gotten my facts mixed up here?
Grand jury proceedings are supposed to be closed, so it's quite possible that Novak received a subpoena, testified, and ratted everybody out while squirming in a puddle of his own flop sweat. Or maybe not. We don't know, and Novak isn't saying (not that anyone in the press is asking him -- that would be rude).
One speculation is that Novak took the fifth and was waived prosecution for his testimony. Why they're going after the reporters who refused to print the story is beyond me, but it's possible that the prosecuters wants them as additional witnesses. At any rate it the whole process seems to be taking an inordinately long time. Maybe they're waiting for Bush's term to expire.
Talking about an inordinately long time, nobody's been prosecuted for Enron yet, but they sure prosecuted Martha Graham in a hurry.
coluber2001 wrote:Talking about an inordinately long time, nobody's been prosecuted for Enron yet, but they sure prosecuted Martha Graham in a hurry.
I think you might mean Martha Stewart.
Anyway, they just nailed Kozlowski and his cohorts from Tyco. So maybe Enron comes up next.
Is the Valerie Plame investigation still alive?
I haven't heard anything from it in a year or so.
If people aren't even concerned that there really were no Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq-which at this point they don't seem to be-it is hard to imagine them getting worked up over Valerie Plame.
It's like Bush & Co have put the whole country on traquilizers. Maybe we should be checking the water supply.
I think John Stewart had it right when he said that Bob Novak was one of the largest douche bags of our time... nothing against douche bags mind you.
TF
Except after they're used, the do smell bad. Novak's apperances on TV have become scarcer and I, for one, would not like to have to sit across from the sputtering Mr. Novak who, even when he smiles, looks like a snake.
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