Fallout from the scandal of how a secret CIA operative’s name came to be leaked to the United States media, which is threatening to engulf the White House in crisis this week, has also reached the newsroom of the venerable New York Times.
In an extraordinary memo to the paper’s staff, executive editor Bill Keller has launched a thinly veiled attack on its controversial reporter Judith Miller, who spent 85 days in jail to protect the identity of a secret source in the affair of the CIA operative Valerie Plame.
He said Miller had misled the paper about the real nature of her contacts with her source, later revealed as Lewis ”Scooter” Libby, a White House aide who could face criminal charges this week.
The Plame affair involves an investigation into whether White House officials deliberately leaked Plame’s identity and undercover job at the CIA as a punishment for her husband Joe Wilson’s accusations that the Bush administration was twisting intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.
Keller said he had been unaware of the exact nature of Miller’s secret contacts with Libby, and that if he had known about them he would have been less willing to back Miller in her court fight to protect her source’s identity.
The memo reveals deep fractures in America’s most respected newspaper and is the latest problem to hit the Times, which is still recovering from the Jayson Blair plagiarism scandal. Miller has been derided by many colleagues for her role in pushing the White House line on Iraq’s weapons programmes, but lauded by others for going to jail to protect a source.
Her high-profile role in the affair has prompted a round of heart-searching in American journalism about the use of unnamed sources and the often too close relationship between the Washington press corps and administration officials.
But the New York Times‘s troubles are now just one offshoot of the affair that began as an obscure investigation into a leak but has spread to become the biggest crisis facing US President George Bush in his five years in office. White House officials are braced for possible criminal charges against Libby, Bush’s political guru Karl Rove, and perhaps even other officials. If Rove or Libby is indicted this week, they are expected to resign while they fight the case in court.
Losing Rove would be a hammer blow to Bush. He is the architect of Bush’s rise to power and the two men have a friendship going back more than three decades. He is also a bête noir to Democrats, who believe the fall of Rove would give them a vital boost in next year’s crucial mid-term congressional elections.
Former White House officials have described a mood in Bush’s inner circle of an administration under siege. ”It is a grim place. No one at the top is talking about it. But you can bet it is all they are thinking about,” said one.
Few details have emerged from lawyers involved in the case or the many officials called to testify. Yet a picture has emerged of a probe focusing on the work of a shadowy organisation within the heart of the White House called the White House Iraq Group. Both Libby and Rove were members of the secretive WHIG which was formed to put forward the view to the American public that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the US.
Wilson had been tasked in 2002 with going to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq was trying to buy uranium there. When he returned sceptical of the idea, he felt his opinion was ignored and the Niger issue still used as part of the case for war. He eventually went public in an article in the New York Times. Shortly afterwards, his wife’s name and job appeared in a column written by conservative writer Robert Novak.
Libby and Rove have both reportedly testified that they learnt about Plame from others, did not know she had covert status and did not knowingly leak her identity.
But many insiders believe the real importance of the investigation no longer lies with the detail of leaking Plame’s name. Though that charge carries a potential jail term, it might be difficult to prove on narrow legal grounds or that the leaking was deliberate. Instead, it is now thought Fitzgerald has focused on possibly conflicting testimony given by Rove, Libby and perhaps others during the lengthy inquiry. That would leave them open to charges of perjury, false statement or obstruction of justice if special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald believes he was deliberately misled or lied to. Another possibility is that he would issue indictments on the lesser charge of leaking classified information, carrying a lower burden of proof than just a straight charge over knowingly breaking a CIA agent’s cover.
A third possibility would be a more wide-ranging conspiracy charge, seen in Washington as a ”nuclear option” that could devastate the administration. It would have to show that several officials deliberately planned together to expose Plame. Wilder rumours last week even envisaged Vice-President Dick Cheney being involved and forced to step down. – Guardian Unlimited Â