Well, I’ve been hoping for a year that someone would go to jail over the Plame Game scandal, I just didn’t expect it to be Matt Cooper.
A federal judge has held a Time magazine reporter in contempt of court for refusing to testify in an investigation of the leak of a CIA officer’s identity, rejecting requests from two media organizations to quash federal grand jury subpoenas seeking information from the media.
U.S. District Chief Judge Thomas F. Hogan ruled that the First Amendment does not insulate reporters from Time and NBC News from a requirement to testify before a criminal grand jury that is conducting the investigation into the possible illegal disclosure of classified information. He unsealed an order that demands the “confinement” of Time reporter Matthew Cooper, who has refused to testify in the probe, but stayed it pending an appeal.
Reportedly, the information Cooper refuses to share is pretty significant.
“The information requested,” Judge Hogan wrote, “is very limited, all available means of obtaining the information have been exhausted, the testimony sought is necessary for completion of the investigation, and the testimony sought is expected to constitute direct evidence of innocence or guilt.”
Obviously, this is the political story of the day (and perhaps the free press controversy of the decade), and there are plenty of online analyses available for your reading pleasure. Josh Marshall thinks Cooper is doing the right thing; Michael Kinsley makes the opposite case; Tapped wonders just how much Cooper can share even if he does testify, Paul Waldman explains the legal foundations of “journalists’ privilege”; Amy Sullivan wants to know how Cooper could end up behind bars while Robert Novak is a free man; and Kevin Drum details which reporters have testified and under what conditions.
But the point I wanted to talk about is the fact that federal investigators really seem to be focusing on I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby.
For several months, Libby, Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, has appeared to be the prime suspect responsible for leaking Valerie Plame’s name to political reporters in DC. Patrick Fitzgerald, for example, asked Libby earlier this year to sign a waiver saying he agrees to release reporters he’s talked to from keeping confidential any disclosures about Plame.
In fact, everything that’s come out has suggested that Fitzgerald has been focusing attention squarely on Libby from nearly the beginning. When Dick Cheney secretly sat down to speak with investigators about this crime, the VP was reportedly asked about conversations he’s had with Libby about the matter. Joseph Wilson, Plame’s husband, specifically describes Libby in his book as “quite possibly the person who exposed my wife’s identity.” Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst and counter-terrorism official at the State Department, explained that he knew the identity of at least one of the Novak Two. When pressed in an MSNBC interview, Johnson said, “I think if I’m the FBI, I start by having a discussion with Mr. Libby.”
And yesterday, the unsealed court order that identified Matt Cooper’s legal troubles hinted that Libby remains the center of Fitzgerald’s attention.
Specifically, Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper and NBC Washington Bureau Chief Tim Russert were asked to appear before the grand jury to testify regarding alleged conversations they had with a specified Executive Branch official.
On May 21, 2004, grand jury subpoenas were issued to Mr. Cooper and Mr. Russert. Subsequent discussions between each reporter’s respective attorneys and Special Counsel revealed that Mr. Fitzgerald intended to question each journalist about alleged discussions they had with a specified Executive Branch official. The specific subject matter Special Counsel will address before the grand jury is quite circumscribed, but it does delve into alleged conversations each reporter had with a confidential source.
So, who’s the confidential source? The judge doesn’t say, but as Dan Froomkin noticed, when Russert agreed to an interview with Fitzgerald a few days ago, “the questioning focused on what Russert said when Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, phoned him last summer.”
Demagogue’s Arnold P. California, himself an attorney, does a great job of reading between the lines and spelling it out for us.
“Direct evidence of innocence or guilt” means, I believe, that the prosecutor thinks Libby’s conversations with Cooper and Russert constituted crimes. In other words, it isn’t that what Libby told the reporters is information that will help the grand jury investigate whether someone committed a crime; it is that Libby himself committed a crime by telling the reporters what the prosecutor thinks he told them. All of which means that we could be nearing the endgame — if these two reporters have testified or soon will testify as the prosecutor expects, the grand jury will have enough information for an immediate indictment of Scooter Libby. The indictment might not be forthcoming right away, if the prosecutor thinks he can show that others were also culpable (remember that Novak’s column said two senior officials told him that Plame recommended Wilson for the mission, and the grand jury might be interested in whether Libby was acting on someone else’s orders when he blabbed), but we’ve reached at least the beginning of the end.
I guess Fitzgerald’s reputation as a no-nonsense prosecutor is richly deserved.