WASHINGTON, July 6: A judge here sent New York Times reporter Judith Miller to prison on Wednesday for refusing to divulge the name of a source to a grand jury probing the leak of the identity of a CIA agent.
Citing Judith Miller for contempt of court, Judge Thomas Hogan jailed the veteran reporter until she agrees to testify or until the grand jury’s mandate runs out in four months.
“If journalists cannot be trusted to guarantee confidentiality then journalists cannot function. There cannot be free press,” Miller told the judge.
“I am here today because I believe in the rule of law and your right to send me to prison for disobeying your ruling if you choose to do so,” she said.
In a surprise move, another journalist who had been facing possible prison time in connection with the case, Time magazine’s Matthew Cooper, told the judge that he had agreed to testify to the grand jury.
Mr Cooper said his source had given him a personal waiver allowing him to testify.
Ms Miller and Mr Cooper have been at the centre of a high-stakes case thick with political intrigue, enmeshing the White House, press freedom and the rationale for the Iraq invasion.
They had refused to name their sources to a federal prosecutor examining which Bush administration official leaked the name of CIA spy Valerie Plame during a fierce row over Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction program.
Ms Plame’s husband, former US ambassador Joseph Wilson, claimed her cover was blown in revenge for an article he penned in The New York Times criticizing Mr Bush’s justification for invading Iraq.
The case has prompted media watch-dog groups to warn constitutional press freedom guarantees were under assault.
Ms Plame’s name was first published in a column by veteran reporter Robert Novak in 2003, which cited senior administration officials.
Mr Wilson claimed his wife was outed as punishment for his contradiction of President George Bush’s assertion in the 2003 State of the Union address that Saddam Hussein sought yellowcake uranium from Africa. —AFP
