Page 52 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Anonymous Sources, Leaks, and Nat onal Secur ty | 1

This system is far from perfect. It can confuse even the most savvy participants. At the
I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby trial in 2007, for instance, Libby’s press aide, Cathie Martin, testified
that he often spoke “off the record” when he really meant “deep background.”

were raised about false entries on her résumé, and soon after she confessed that
“Jimmy” was a fabrication.
That episode led to soul-searching in journalism and the reexamination of how
anonymous sources were used. Some news outlets curtailed the use of anony-
mous sources, but the major news organizations continued to rely on anonymous
sources, particularly in national security matters.

CasE sTuDy: ThE PLamE CasE
For years, the government in power—whether Democrat or Republican—
investigated unauthorized leaks of information, usually focusing on the people
who leaked the information, not the reporters. Leakers were almost never found.
What has changed in recent years is that the government has begun in earnest
to look at reporters as well, not necessarily to prosecute them but to have the
reporters lead them to the source who gave up classified information.
From 2003 to 2007, two issues, leaks and national security, held center stage
in Washington. The dispute began with President Bush’s 2003 State of the Union
address, in which he claimed that Saddam Hussein had sought to obtain ura-
nium in Africa as part of a campaign to build up weapons of mass destruction.
In July 2003, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who had served as acting ambassador to Iraq
at the time of the Persian Gulf War in the early 1990s, wrote a pivotal op-ed ar-
ticle for the New York Times in which he contradicted what Bush had said in his
State of the Union address. Wilson related how the CIA had sent him to Niger
in 2002 to figure out whether Iraq had, in fact, sought to purchase uranium ore.
Wilson’s investigation concluded that there was no credible evidence that Sad-
dam Hussein had made any such effort, and he charged that senior Bush admin-
istration officials had distorted intelligence about Iraq’s effort to obtain uranium
to buttress the case for going to war.
Later that month, Robert Novak, a veteran conservative syndicated columnist,
cited two unnamed senior administration sources who told him the selection of
Mr. Wilson to conduct this investigation had been pushed by his wife, Valerie
Plame, a CIA “operative on weapons of mass destruction.” (Years later, Plame
appeared before a Congressional committee and sharply disputed that she had
any meaningful role in the decision to send her husband to Niger.) Quite pos-
sibly, it was felt, a public official had anonymously disclosed the information
about Ms. Plame’s job in an effort to smear her husband.
President Bush was very public in condemning the leak and he promised to fire
anyone involved in the leak. An aggressive special counsel, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, was
named to find out which Bush administration officials leaked the identity of
Ms. Plame, which might have been a federal crime. In the end, no one was fired.