US: Judith Miller of the New York Times was jailed last night by a judge for refusing to name her source in the Bush administration who gave her potentially criminal information regarding the identity of a CIA agent.
Chief US District Judge Thomas Hogan ordered the journalist to jail and said she must stay there until she agrees to testify or until the end of the grand jury's term in October. "If journalists cannot be trusted to keep confidences, then journalists cannot function and there cannot be a free press," Miller said in court.
A second journalist, Matthew Cooper of Time magazine was spared jail when he agreed to testify before a grand jury investigating the leaking of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame.
He said his source "expressed personal consent" at his identity being revealed. Plame's husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson, had angered the White House by alleging it manipulated intelligence to justify war against Iraq and the leaking of her identity was seen as retaliation against Wilson. Knowingly disclosing the identity of a CIA operative is a criminal offence and a special prosecutor, Peter Fitzgerald, was appointed to investigate.
A lawyer for President Bush's political adviser Karl Rove has acknowledged that Rove was interviewed by Cooper for the article in which he named Valerie Plame as a CIA operative. The lawyer, Robert Luskin, said that Mr Rove "has never knowingly disclosed classified information".
The use of the word "knowingly" has been widely taken as an admission that Mr Rove did in fact discuss Ms Plame's CIA role. White House spokesman Scott McClellan said at the time that any suggestion that Mr Rove had played a role in outing Ms Plame was "totally ridiculous".
Judge Hogan held the reporters in contempt of court in October, and last week the US Supreme Court rejected their argument that they could protect their source under the First Amendment of the US constitution, guaranteeing free speech. Arguing that Miller should be jailed Fitzgerald cited the comment of Time magazine's editor-in-chief, Norman Pearlstine last Thursday that "I feel we are not above the law."
Pearlstine handed over Cooper's e-mail and computer documents to the prosecutor after the Supreme Court failed to intervene. The prosecutor said that even though Time had revealed Cooper's source, the magazine's reporter still had to testify or face jail. Conservative writer Robert Novak first disclosed that Wilson's wife was a member of the CIA - three days before Cooper's article appeared - but he has refused to say if he has testified to the prosecutor.