A Jar of Red Herrings today's NY Times Editorial)

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: GLIGOR1 () aol com
Date: July 19, 2005 10:26:03 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: For IP, if you wish (today's NY Times Editorial)
Ju
ly 19, 2005
A Jar of Red Herrings
It is getting hard to keep track of all the issues stirred up by the  
leaking of a C.I.A. operative's name to a conservative columnist two  
years ago. Our colleague Judith Miller has been in jail for nearly  
two weeks for refusing to identify her confidential sources to a  
grand jury investigating that leak. Her position - that reporters  
cannot do their jobs if they cannot guarantee some sources anonymity  
- is very clear, as is her willingness to accept the legal  
consequences of her principled stand. But the case itself is  
complicated, and it's been made more so by a raft of distracting issues.

Let's talk about a few of those issues:

Protection for sources Not all confidential sources are Deep Throat,  
or heroic corporate whistle-blowers. Sometimes they are government  
officials who are hoping to spread information that will embarrass  
their political opponents or promote a particular agenda. In the leak  
case, Matthew Cooper of Time magazine has said that Karl Rove, the  
president's top political adviser, was the one who told him that a  
former ambassador, Joseph Wilson IV, who had written an Op-Ed article  
that upset the Bush administration, was married to someone who worked  
for the C.I.A. Mr. Cooper said he'd also discussed the matter with  
Lewis Libby, the chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney. Bob  
Novak, the columnist who actually identified Mr. Wilson's wife - by  
her maiden name, Valerie Plame - has said only that his sources were  
in the government.

Ms. Miller never wrote an article mentioning Ms. Wilson, and she has  
obviously not identified the person she talked to about the matter.  
But the hard truth is that no reporter can choose the circumstances  
for upholding a principle. It doesn't matter whether we think a  
source is a good person or has good motivations. A reporter promises  
confidentiality, and the paper backs up the journalist because  
otherwise the public will not learn what it needs to know. It's up to  
the reporter and editor to determine whether information given under  
a promise of confidentiality is reliable. But reporters cannot apply  
ideology when protecting their sources, any more than civil liberties  
lawyers can defend the First Amendment rights of only the people they  
agree with.

The waivers The prosecutor produced what he claimed were waivers of  
confidentiality signed by White House officials, and his supporters  
have asked how Ms. Miller or any other journalists could remain  
silent if the presumed sources say they are free to talk. In fact,  
these documents were extracted by coercion, so they are meaningless.  
Employees who are told they are required to sign waivers to keep  
their jobs are not sincerely freeing reporters from promises to keep  
their identities secret. Mr. Cooper said he had gotten a "specific  
waiver" of confidentiality from Mr. Rove. Ms. Miller says she has not  
received any such thing from her sources.

In a situation like this, it's not possible for politicians,  
prosecutors, judges or other journalists to parse a confidentiality  
agreement from the outside. The reporter, and the editors who are the  
writer's immediate supervisors, are the only ones who truly  
understand the nuances of the case. More broadly, it is up to the  
source, not the reporter, to speak out. If Mr. Rove or any other  
officials involved were really concerned about getting out the truth,  
all they would need to do would be to stand up in public and tell it.

Joseph Wilson's report This is one of the biggest red herrings in  
this case - that administration officials were simply attempting to  
wave reporters off an erroneous story about this report.

In July 2003, Mr. Wilson wrote an Op-Ed article in The Times that  
described how he had been sent by the C.I.A. to investigate a report  
that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger. He said he had found  
no evidence to support the claim of a uranium purchase, or even a  
serious attempt to negotiate one, and that he had reported this to  
Washington. That is entirely accurate. Mr. Rove knew it when he spoke  
to Mr. Cooper, and he tried to give the impression that Mr. Wilson  
was an unreliable person who had been sent to Niger only because of  
his wife's influence. In fact, Mr. Wilson had excellent credentials  
for the mission, and the entire Niger story had already been pretty  
thoroughly debunked by the time Mr. Cooper and Mr. Rove spoke.

What really bothered Mr. Rove was Mr. Wilson's view that the  
administration had deliberately twisted the intelligence on Iraq and  
that Mr. Bush had misled Americans about the need for war. We don't  
know whether top officials heard about Mr. Wilson's findings and  
ignored them, or whether the findings never reached the upper levels  
- at the time, dissenting views on Iraq were not getting much of an  
airing in the administration. There's a lot we don't know about this  
case. But these things are clear:

• Journalists should not tailor their principles to the politics of  
the moment.

• Coerced waivers of confidentiality are meaningless.

• Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.


Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company


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