Los Angeles Times
August 13, 2004
There is a law, as there should be, against revealing the name of a covert CIA
agent. It looks as if people in the Bush administration probably broke this law
last summer. Annoyed beyond endurance at Joseph C. Wilson IV — who was
sent to find evidence that Saddam Hussein tried to buy uranium and who came back
saying there wasn't any — somebody in the administration told journalists
that Wilson's wife had helped him get the job and, by the way, she was an
undercover CIA agent. This revelation was supposed to be damaging to Wilson in
some way that is not clear.
The press, including this newspaper, did not
approve. Time magazine, for example, noted dismissively that "some Bush
partisans" were saying that the leak was "no big deal. But the facts speak
otherwise." There were calls for a special counsel. One was duly appointed and
soon began issuing subpoenas to journalists. If your job is to find out who
leaked secret information to journalists, this must seem like a logical thing to
do. But th e press, including this newspaper, does not approve of that either.
Leaks are not only the vital fuel of investigative journalism, they are an
essential mechanism for holding powerful institutions accountable.
Unlike many states, the federal government has no "shield" law allowing
journalists to protect their sources. On Tuesday, Matt Cooper of Time magazine
was ordered to jail for refusing to respond to a subpoena. (He is free pending
appeal.)
Here we have an uncomfortable contradiction. You can believe
that people who reveal the names of CIA agents deserve exposure, vilification
and punishment. You can believe that people who leak secret information to
journalists deserve confidentiality, praise and protection from punishment. But
you cannot easily believe both these things in this case because the good and
the bad people are the same people. The purpose of allowing journalists to
protect the identity of leakers is to protect and encourage leaks. But there
are leaks and there are leaks. It makes no sense for the government to
encourage leaks that it rightly outlaws.
Journalists would prefer not to
make this kind of distinction. A clear and simple principle that you never
reveal a source would encourage leaks more effectively than a policy with a lot
of provisos. Of course, any journalist is free to promise anonymity to a
source, with or without a "get out of jail free" card. But the belief that a
journalist is willing to go to jail to protect a source's identity will never be
as reassuring to potential sources as certainty that he or she won't have
to.
In the haze of self-righteousness about protecting sources, though,
it is easy to lose sight of the cost. The cost of giving absolute legal
protection to journalists' secrets is to make the government's secrets
impossible to protect.
Maybe it's time for journalists and
judges to stop staging these 1st Amendment melodramas. Journalists — who
are citizens too — could help by being less promiscuous with o ffers of
anonymity in the first place. If it is information you believe should not be
out there — because it endangers lives (of a covert agent's contacts, for
instance) or because it is wrong or deeply misleading — why should you
even consider going to jail to protect the source?