Richard Cohen, 12/6/04:
Outing an undercover agent...could be dangerous for the agent.Richard Cohen, 10/12/05:
It turns out, though, that it has been much more dangerous to the press....
As one who once was on the receiving end of a subpoena demanding that I reveal my sources, I can tell you what happens in these cases: Your phone goes dead. No one will talk to you. As for the public, it is deprived of information....
It's not clear why Cooper was subpoenaed. It's not clear why Miller was subpoenaed. It's not clear if Novak ever was or, if so, what he did about it. What is abundantly clear is that somehow a targeted investigation has gone wildly off track, with reporters apparently being asked to account for stories they have not even written....
Maybe if Fitzgerald were a politician, like Ashcroft, he would appreciate the value of a leak and how it has become an intrinsic part of our democracy. He might even feel compelled to explain himself to the public -- anonymously of course, to reporters he can trust.
My number's in the book, Pat.
As it is, all he has done so far is send Judith Miller of the New York Times to jail....Richard Cohen, 4/9/07:
I have no idea what Fitzgerald will do. My own diligent efforts to find out anything have come to naught....
Whatever the case, I pray Fitzgerald is not going to reach for an indictment or, after so much tumult, merely fold his tent, not telling us, among other things, whether Miller is the martyr to a free press that I and others believe she is....
This -- this creepy silence -- will be the consequence of dusting off rarely used statutes to still the tongues of leakers and intimidate the press in its pursuit of truth, fame and choice restaurant tables. Apres Miller comes moi.
In fact, the compulsively compulsive Patrick Fitzgerald not only knew early on who the leaker was but also that no law had been violated. No matter. Fitzgerald valiantly persisted, jailing Judith Miller of the New York Times for refusing to reveal her sources....Richard Cohen, 6/18/07:
The special counsel used the immense power of the government to jail Judith Miller and to compel other journalists, including Time's Matt Cooper, to suspend their various and sacred vows of silence just so they could, understandably, avoid jail....Richard Cohen, 6/20/07:
For some odd reason, the same people who were so appalled about government snooping, the USA Patriot Act and other such threats to civil liberties cheered as the special prosecutor weed-whacked the press, jailed a reporter....
But a prosecution...entails the government at its most coercive -- a power so immense and sometimes so secretive that it poses much more of a threat to civil liberties, including freedom of the press, than anything in the interstices of the scary Patriot Act.
I'll say that the ability of the press to ferret out information and use anonymous sources and to guarantee to those sources that they'll remain confidential has been shredded by this case. Reporter after reporter was compelled to give up their sources. This has been a very bad case for the American press and for the American public and it's all about nothing. A leak.Graham Greene, 1938, in The Lawless Roads1:
...I went to Pete's bar and had a brandy and Coca Cola highball. Pete was a Greek and had been in America for thirty-seven years, but he couldn't speak enough English for you to notice it. Germany was a fine country, he said; America was no good at all; Greece wasn't so bad - his opinions puzzled me till I realized that he judged every country by its drink laws - I suppose, if you are in the business, that's as good a way as any other. We writers are apt to judge a country by freedom of the Press, and politicians by freedom of speech - it's the same, really.Emphasis added. Hat tip: me.
1Greene, a recent convert to Catholicism, proceeds to judge Mexico entirely on how terribly they have persecuted the poor persecuted Catholic Church. I see this passage as his apology-in-advance for the entire rest of the book.
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