Judy’s Turn to Cry
by Marie
Wonder what odds Vegas is giving for Judy and Cooper to stand on their principles behind prison bars? 1,000 to one still wouldn’t entice me to take that bet.
This case has always seemed so simple and straightforward to this layperson that I was both surprised and perplexed by the amount of support Miller and Cooper got from the left. If a journalist talked to a person who disclosed that he or she had assisted McVeigh in the OKC bombing should that journalist not be compelled to testify as to what she or he knows? What if she or he met with OBL in that secret cave? It’s not difficult to see the difference between protecting a whistleblower and a criminal suspect. Both whistleblowers and the investigative journalists that they confide in should appreciate that a crime may be committed in the whistle blowing process and that time may come with the crime. That’s why Daniel Ellsberg stands out as the true patriot of the Nixon years -- he shared with the country what he knew and we didn’t and needed to know about the Vietnam War without regard to the personal price he might have to pay. Felt demonstrated how much our democracy depends on whistleblowers, but Ellsberg demonstrated how a real man does it.
The facts that we have known for two years are that an administration official disclosed the identity of a CIA covert operative to the press. That’s a criminal act. It puts both the agent and the sources used by the agent at risk. This act should tell us that the Bush administration will stop at nothing to get back at those who dare to oppose them, and it likely put a chill through the ranks of civil servants in sensitive positions.
One frequent excuse the Judy and Matt apologists use is, “What about Novak?” Maybe Novak spilled the beans, but without corroboration the case is too weak. Maybe Novak took the fifth. Maybe Novak is a suspect. Maybe Novak received the information second-hand and doesn’t know the identity of the person that outed Plame. Novak is such a slime ball and self-promoter that it’s not difficult for me to imagine that he purposely let readers assume that he had the inside track with the administration. Maybe Matt and Judy were his sources. Too many possibilities to consider.
The Bush administration is very good at using the media. Journalists have become really bad at evaluating sources and the information they supply. So bad that they have become patsies for Cheney and Rove. Nothing leaks out of the Bush WH that isn’t planned. Those administration sources that journalists think they have developed access to are worthless because they are agents of the administration. Sy Hersh knows that quality sources are rare and relationships with them don’t materialize overnight. Sy would never have fallen for a con-man like Chalabi. The conservative media machine came of age in the 1990’s. Like a hydra, it spread throughout almost all news organizations and learned how to compromise them. Wen Ho Lee* and Troopergate demonstrated that the NYT is not only not mighty but also useful. They chase phantom stories and ignore real ones. Dangle a war in front of their noses and journalists began salivating at the opportunity to make a name for themselves. So much so that they became war cheerleaders for Bush. Getting individual journalists to have a vested and unacknowledged interest in the same policy that an administration desires is the highest form of media manipulation.
Miller and Cooper are no Woodward and Bernstein circa 1972. They would have been a dream come true for Nixon because they would happily have shoveled WH spin and disinformation. They would have been part of the cover-up and have claimed journalistic privilege not to identify their sources. We can’t legislate ethics, integrity and competence in journalism, but they are not above the law. Like all of us, they can choose prison instead of testifying against another person. And anyone with strong principles and courage knows when to speak and when to bite one’s tongue.
*(Wen Ho Lee update – he is suing the people who trashed him. Reporters from AP, CNN, NYT and LAT have been subpoenaed to testify about their sources. They are fighting this and yesterday lost their appeal. This could be even more important information for those who want to preserve democracy in America than the Plame case. Plame only centers on one, two or very few individuals in the WH and with luck that individual(s) will be brought to justice. In the Lee case, we are either looking at people in the Clinton administration or career civil servants who remain in place. If the latter, they are either incompetent or form part of some permanent Republican government in the executive branch, a cabal ready to spring back into action to discredit the next Democratic POTUS. We must know who these people are to stop them from future acts like this. If we get lucky, we might even find out why they did it. And I hope Lee wins a lot of money.)