Journo jailed in CIA leak probe

2005-07-06 21:24

Washington - A judge here sent New York Times reporter Judith Miller to prison on Wednesday for refusing to divulge the name of a source to a grand jury probing the leak of the identity of a CIA agent.

Citing Miller for contempt of court, judge Thomas Hogan jailed the veteran reporter until she agreed to testify or until the grand jury's mandate ran out in four months.

Miller told the judge: "If journalists cannot be trusted to guarantee confidentiality, then journalists cannot function.

"There cannot be free press. In a surprise move, another journalist who had been facing possible prison time in connection with the case, Time magazine's Matthew Cooper, told the judge on Wednesday that he had agreed to testify to the grand jury.

Cooper said his source had given him a personal waiver allowing him to testify.

Miller and Cooper have been at the centre of a high-stakes case thick with political intrigue, enmeshing the White House, press freedom and the rationale for the Iraq war.

They had refused to name their sources to a federal prosecutor examining which Bush administration official leaked the name of CIA spy Valerie Plame during a fierce row about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction programme.

Plame's husband, former US ambassador Joseph Wilson, claimed her cover was blown in revenge for an article he penned in the New York Times criticising Bush's justification for war with Iraq.

The case prompted media watch-dog groups to warn that constitutional press freedom guarantees were under assault.

Plame's name was first published in a column by veteran reporter Robert Novak in 2003, which cited senior administration officials.

Wilson claimed his wife was "outed" as punishment for his contradiction of President George W Bush's assertion in the 2003 State of the Union address that Saddam Hussein sought yellowcake uranium from Africa.

- AP