This time in the Wen Ho Lee case:
A federal judge found Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus in contempt Wednesday, saying the journalist must reveal his government sources for stories about the criminal investigation of nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee.
U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer said that “in order to avoid a repetition of the Judith Miller imbroglio,” Pincus must contact his sources to inform them of the court’s order in case they wish to release him from his pledge of confidentiality.
Miller, a former New York Times reporter, served 85 days in jail for contempt in the CIA leak investigation, agreeing to talk only after she spoke by telephone with her source, former top White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby.
The ruling is the latest example of court-ordered pressure on journalists to reveal their confidential sources.
Relying on anonymous sources, Pincus and reporters for other news organizations in 1999 identified Lee as the focus of a criminal investigation into the possible theft of nuclear secrets on behalf of China.
Never charged with espionage and eventually allowed to plead guilty to a single count of mishandling computer files, Lee is seeking the identity of the reporters’ sources for his lawsuit against the departments of Energy and Justice. Lee says the government improperly disclosed personal information about him in violation of the Privacy Act.
To be brutally honest, there has been so many accusations of scandal and so many mini scnadals and it has been so many years, I can;t even remember the specifics of the Wen Ho Lee case. Was he the one who blabbed about nuclear secrets to Monica Lewinsky who was giving oral sex to Scooter Libby who, while lying under oath was overheard by Jeff Gannon who then outed Valerie Plame?
Shygetz
While killing Vince Foster–yep, that’s him.
Pb
Actually I think he was the guy who lied us into an unnecessary war while detaining innocents, forging documents, appointing incompetent cronies to high offices, selling the country out to corporate interests, and then questioning our patriotism and calling us liars. One of the two, anyhow.
Shygetz
Wait, wasn’t he also part of the conspiracy to eliminate the white man in America through the wholesale genocide of womb baby Snowflakes(TM)?
Cyrus
Cue people complaining that this will have a horrible chilling effect on all those virtuous, corruption-exposing whistleblowers in 3… 2… 1…
When the CFO of Enron 2.0 uses its employees’ retirement accounts to buy a mansion in Tahiti and someone in that company wants to do the right thing for once, that’s why whistleblowers are sometimes given immunity. Not because Judy Miller has a Constitutionally-protected right to get the story first.
Do I think the story shouldn’t have been written? I don’t know, it depends. But reporters don’t have special rights, if they deserve any recognition it’s to the extent that they’re working to find the truth, be muckrakers, etc. If a reporter isn’t willing to take the legal consequences he can reasonably expect for printing a story, then either the story isn’t worth printing or he’s not worth being a reporter.
Steve S
Wasn’t Wen Ho Lee, the Republicans proof that Clinton was complicit in selling nuclear secrets to China?
Why, yes, I do believe that’s true.
And you complain about Bush getting called on exagerrating reasons to go into Iraq, when it turns out he did exagerrate the reasons and nobody denies that?
Pathetic.