[Mb-civic] Judge Upholds Media Subpoenas in CIA Leak Case

[Michael Butler]

    Go to Original 

    Judge Upholds Media Subpoenas in CIA Leak Case
    By James Vicini
    Reuters

     Monday 09 August 2004

     Washington - A federal judge on Monday upheld subpoenas to compel
testimony of journalists at NBC News and Time magazine in a special
prosecutor's probe into whether Bush administration officials illegally
leaked a covert CIA officer's name to the news media.

     U.S. District Chief Judge Thomas Hogan rejected requests to quash
subpoenas issued to Tim Russert of NBC's "Meet the Press" and Matthew Cooper
of Time magazine on the grounds they violate the reporters' privilege under
the Constitution's First Amendment.

     The subpoenas were issued by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and
seek to require Russert and Cooper to appear before a federal grand jury to
testify about conversations they had with an unidentified government
official.

     "To be clear, this court holds that Cooper and Russert have no
privilege, qualified or otherwise, excusing them from testifying before the
grand jury in this matter," Hogan ruled in the 11-page opinion.

     "There have been no allegations whatsoever that this grand jury is
acting in bad faith or with the purpose of harassing these two journalists,"
the judge wrote.

     A number of top administration officials have been questioned in the
leak investigation, including President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and
Secretary of State Colin Powell.

     The grand jury has been hearing testimony from administration and
government officials in an attempt to establish who leaked the name of CIA
operative Valerie Plame to the media last year.

     Plame is the wife of Joe Wilson, a former ambassador who was asked by
the CIA to travel to Niger in February 2002 to check reports that Iraq had
tried to buy enriched uranium from the African country.

     A newspaper columnist disclosed Plame's identity in July last year and
Wilson accused the Bush administration of having leaked the information to
pay him back for having publicly taken issue with the president's uranium
claim.

     The White House subsequently said Bush should not have cited the claim
in his 2003 State of the Union address.

     Disclosing the identity of a clandestine intelligence officer is a
federal crime as is leaking classified information to the media.

     Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney in Chicago, was appointed by the Justice
Department late last year as special prosecutor, an announcement made at the
same time that Attorney General John Ashcroft stepped aside from the
politically charged probe.

  

  -------

   Jump to TO Features for Tuesday August 10, 2004   


 © Copyright 2004 by TruthOut.org