Wall Street Journal REVIEW & OUTLOOK No Crime, No Foul March 28, 2005 The latest turn in the Valerie Plame "leak" investigation is that the very same press corps that cheered on the appointment of a special prosecutor to harass the Bush Administration and conservative columnist Robert Novak now doubts whether any crime was ever committed.
That's the notable argument in a friend of the court brief filed last week by 36 leading news organizations (including this one) with the intent of keeping New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Time Magazine's Matthew Cooper out of jail: "There exists ample evidence on public record to cast serious doubt as to whether a crime has even been committed under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. ... If in fact no crime under the Act has been committed, then any need to compel Miller and Cooper to reveal their confidential sources should evaporate." (The two are currently free pending appeal of a contempt citation.) Some of us have argued from the start that a showing of criminality under the statute would require that Ms. Plame have been a covert agent whose identity the CIA was taking active steps to conceal; and that the leaker revealed her identity maliciously and with the intent of damaging U.S. national security. Whoever revealed Ms. Plame's identity to Mr. Novak almost certainly doesn't fit that profile, and it's a shame that the largely anti-Bush press corps couldn't see it that way until now -- when the 2004 election is over and its own interests are at stake. URL for this article: http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111196788213490504,00.html
