FIRST THING, LET'S LOCK UP ALL THE REPORTERS

 by Charles Carreon

5:20 pm, July 12, 2005

Well, there's one thing suspicious about this Valerie Plame imbroglio — Karl Rove “remained mum yesterday” according to the Wall Street Journal's 7/11/05 article entitled Democrats Step Up Attacks on Rove After Time Email. With Rove not talking, the fat is definitively in the fire as of now.

"WSJ“

The amplified Democratic attacks suggest that the White House and Mr. Rove will face turbulence in the days ahead whatever the outcome of Mr. Fitzgerald's criminal probe. Under a 1982 law, it is illegal to knowingly expose an active-duty CIA covert agent, and federal prosecutors have been investigating. It isn't clear whether or not Ms. Plame was an active-duty CIA operative at the time her identity was reported in Mr. Novak's column and in Time magazine.

Deflecting attention from Rove's impending emergence in the role of post-9/11 Benedict Arnold, all the self-serving media handwringing is about how the Supreme Court turned its back on ”freedom of the press."

"WSJ“

That discomfort continues to ripple through the news media as well. One journalist who reported but didn't write a story on the matter, Judith Miller of the New York Times, has gone to jail rather than disclose her sources, while Time magazine and Mr. Cooper ultimately decided to cooperate. Facing a federal judge's deadline to testify, Time turned over Mr. Cooper's notes. The reporter himself then agreed to testify after saying his source had released him to do so. Mr. Luskin has said Mr. Rove was the source in question.

Time Inc. Editor in Chief Norman Pearlstine sought to assuage dissatisfaction about the magazine's actions at Time's Washington bureau yesterday. A roomful of editors and reporters expressed anger and concern for two hours, according to people who attended the meeting.

Mr. Pearlstine told the staff that he had made an error in emphasizing that Time was ”not above the law,“ and thus had turned over Mr. Cooper's notes to the grand jury, a person at the meeting said. Mr. Pearlstine explained that under a different set of circumstances, the magazine might not have complied with the court order but that the circumstances in this case warranted that approach, the person said. Jim Kelly, managing editor of Time magazine, also was at the meeting and confirmed the account.

Having coughed up the emails, rather than pay a per-day contempt fine, Pearlstein is now backpedalling from his original act of contrition. ”Not above the law“ was wrong. Okay, thanks for letting us know you have no sense of citizenship. The media is a kingdom apart, the place where opinions are made, free from scrutiny.

This purported freedom of the press is simply the right to feed people garbage, even criminal garbage — information that the public insists it has no right to know — the identity of a Secret CIA Agent Specializing in Weapons of Mass Destruction. Exposure of Valerie Plame resulted in execution of many of her sources, according to sources you can find easily on the Net. This freedom to keep sources secret, even when the source is the propaganda minister, on an official propaganda errand, is bunk. Freedom of the press is the right to print any goddamn thing you want, not the freedom to destroy a woman's career, bring death and torture to her sources, and conceal the identity of a criminal wrongdoer. Obviously, the fact that Rove is the criminal complicates the matter. Will they appoint a Special Prosecutor?

How do we cut this gordian knot? Simple. Change a variable and solve the problem using that variable. Assume that Rove disclosed the information not to a reporter but directly to an agent of a foreign nation, say Pakistan. Say Rove called Musharraf directly and told him, ”Just so you know, my friend, Ms. Plame is with The Company." Now that would be a crime, and Musharraf couldn't claim the right to keep the identity secret if he were served with a Grand Jury Subpoena signed by Alberto Gonzales while in Washington D.C. So why should telling it to a reporter, who will then tell not only Musharraf, but also the entire gang of nuclear proliferators, make any difference?

Rove has earned himself a place in the Hall of Infamy. But don't wait on his pal Al to figure it out. He's already there.

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