Going to the Mat for the Bad Guys
The journalist who revealed last July that Plame was an undercover CIA officer is syndicated columnist Robert Novak. He acknowledged talking to two “senior administration officials.” Plame’s husband, Joseph Wilson, accused the Bush administration of getting back at him through his wife for his essay early last July in the New York Times that accused the government of distorting intelligence to hype its claim that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Presumably Novak wasn’t the only journalist those officials communicated with. The Washington Post reported last year that there were at least six.
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Some journalists have wondered why Fitzgerald is going after secondary targets, giving Novak, a conservative friendly to the White House, a pass. But we don’t know that Novak hasn’t been subpoenaed too. And it might be that Fitzgerald thinks the best way to get Novak, a tough guy, to break is to make him responsible for the martyrdom of other journalists.
Journalists understand intuitively that what Fitzgerald and Hogan have done to Matthew Cooper is bad for journalism and the people’s right to know. But rarely can the counterintuitive argument be made so easily. Lawbreakers are afoot–Bush officials who abused their office to punish a dissenter. These lawbreakers attempted to make confederates of certain journalists, counting on, if not their cooperation, their silence. They got it.
Fletcher, the Bugle’s fearsome city editor, came by Surge O’Malley’s desk.
O’Malley dimly remembered. “But Fairchild wasn’t a legitimate candidate,” he protested.
