Senate considers protecting reporters

A journalist who did publish Plame's identity, Time magazine's Matt Cooper, barely escaped being sent to jail when he said his source, Rove, had released him from their confidentiality agreement. He told the committee that protecting reporters and their sources is key to the media's ability to shine light on government wrongdoing.

"It's not about us journalists as some priestly class but it is about the public and our democracy," Cooper told the panel.

The patchwork of state shield laws and the absence of a federal statute make it confusing for reporters promising sources anonymity in exchange for information, Cooper said.

In need of clarification
"We need some clarity," he said. "As a working journalist, I'd like to know better what promises I can legally make and which ones I can't."

Also testifying were Time magazine Editor in Chief Norman Pearlstine, media lawyer Floyd Abrams and Lee Levine, a lawyer who represents Associated Press and Los Angeles Times reporters in the government's probe of who leaked information about nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee.

In his testimony before the committee Wednesday, Levine cited a list of legal and journalistic precedents for a national shield law.

"Given that, I believe the time has now come for congressional action," Levine said.

A storm has raged around the leak of the CIA officer's name in July 2003.

President Bush said Monday that if anyone in his administration committed a crime in connection with the public leak of the identity of a CIA operative, that person will "no longer work in my administration." The statement came a day after Cooper said a 2003 phone call with Rove was the first time he heard about the wife of Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson apparently working for the agency.

Disclosing identity a federal crime
Disclosure of an undercover intelligence officer's identity can be a federal crime if prosecutors can show the leak was intentional and the person who released that information knew of the officer's secret status.

Plame's name was disclosed in a column by Robert Novak days after her husband, a former ambassador, questioned part of Bush's justification for invading Iraq. A federal grand jury is investigating whether a crime was committed.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan held Miller and Cooper in contempt in October, rejecting their argument that the First Amendment shielded them from revealing their sources. Last month the Supreme Court refused to intervene.

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