Disgraceful persecution of US reporters over Plame

This past Tuesday, a full federal appeals court in Washington Tuesday continues to perpetuate a travesty of both justice and the U.S. Justice Department against two American reporters over a case that no one in Washington seems to want to address.
The court rejected a request from the two journalists who had asked the court to reconsider a decision by a three-judge panel.
Matthew Cooper of Time magazine and Judith Miller of The New York Times had refused to disclose their sources to the prosecutor investigating another reporter’s leak of the name of an undercover Central Intelligence Agency operative – the now-infamous Valerie Plame case.
Cooper and Miller still face up to 18 months in jail for failing to reveal their confidential sources to a federal grand jury.
The case may not move to the Supreme Court and with THAT group, all bets are off.
Here’s the background (notably coming from CNN reports): Justice Department special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has been investigating the source of a leak of the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame to news reporters. Her identity was revealed in a July 2003 newspaper column by Robert Novak of the Chicago Sun-Times (and a noted extreme conservative CNN commentator), who, in his column, cited two senior Bush administration officials as HIS sources.
In a 2003 op-ed piece in The New York Times, Plame’s husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, sharply criticized President Bush’s claim in his 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium in Niger.
The CIA had sent Wilson to Niger in 2002 to investigate and he had reported back that Baghdad hadn’t purchased uranium yellowcake, which can be used to develop enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. Wilson accused the White House of using discredited intelligence to justify the invasion in Iraq and said the leak about his wife was in retaliation for his criticism.
Now it gets interesting. Cooper wrote an article in Time about Novak’s disclosure of Plame’s identity; while Miller “researched” the topic but did not write about it. Read that again. One reporter wrote about ANOTHER reporter’s story and the other reporter RESEARCHED the topic.
Meanwhile, these two people face jail for refusal to disclose sources and Novak, nicknamed “The Prince of Darkness” for his extreme views, continues to rant and rave on CNN and in print without fear of anything. You have to wonder what HE has on these investigators and people in Washington.
Fitzgerald said in court papers his work was done except for resolving the issue of the two reporters’ testimony. New Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has left the matter to Fitzgerald to resolve and is playing Pontius Pilate on the entire matter.
So far, no one in the Bush Administration, State Department or any branch of government is being held accountable for the illegal disclosure of the name of an active CIA operative. The only serious threats have been made against one reporter who wrote a story about another reporter’s work and another reporter who conducted unpublished research.
Such actions are worthy of third-world dictatorships, not a nation that supposedly prides itself on freedom of the press.
It is disgraceful and should not be allowed to stand. But there is NO guarantee that the Supreme Court will side with the First Amendment.