Letter: Miller protecting wrongdoers, not whistleblowers

Wednesday, July 13, 2005 | 9:17 a.m.

Ordinarily, reporters protect their sources so whistleblowers exposing wrongdoing can be assured they can do so anonymously.

New York Times reporter Judith Miller was just jailed for not revealing her sources to a federal grand jury. Is this a violation of the First Amendment? Absolutely not!

In a two-year investigation involving senior White House officials who outed a CIA operative, Valerie Plame, Miller was ordered to name her sources. The Intelligence Identities Protection Act makes it a crime to expose a covert CIA agent.

Plame is the wife of Joseph Wilson, who was sent to Niger to determine the validity of a document that said Saddam Hussein attempted to buy yellow cake uranium necessary to manufacture nuclear weapons. Wilson reported back that the document was a forgery. Several months later the false claim was included in the State of the Union message. Wilson wrote a column in the Times and discredited the claim. Because he told the truth, the administration decided to punish him and expose his wife out of petty revenge.

Unfortunately it also collapsed Plame's network organization that was tracking WMD. It took years and countless taxpayer dollars to establish this network around the world. This is a serious threat to national security.

Miller is not protecting sources exposing wrongdoing. She's protecting sources who committed the wrongdoing. She is complicit in a criminal act and should be charged with obstructing justice and aiding and abetting.

JOANN FISCHELLA