Post State Dept. Reporter Questioned in Leak Probe (Plame)

[shraby]

A Washington Post reporter was questioned yesterday by the special prosecutor investigating the possibly illegal leak of a CIA employee's identity by Bush administration officials.

State Department reporter Glenn Kessler submitted to a tape-recorded interview that will be provided to a grand jury investigating the disclosure last summer of CIA employee Valerie Plame's name to columnist Robert D. Novak.

Kessler said he agreed to be interviewed about two phone conversations he had with I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, at Libby's urging. At the prosecutor's request, Libby and other White House aides have signed waivers saying they agree to release reporters they have talked to from keeping confidential any disclosures about Plame.

(more)

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62265-2004Jun22.html>

[AP]

1. I argued here at DU that the WH officials who spoke to the press shouldn't

be able to be claimed by the reporters as confidential sources whose identities need to be protected.

If you're a government official who is acting within your official capacities, it doesn't make sense that a reporter should be able to protect you as a source.

Deepthroat is one thing. A whistleblower whose job is NOT to talk to the press is one thing. But if a press secretary calls you, performing their job, what interest is a reporter serving by protecting your confidentiality? A press secretary's job is to serve the public by talking to the press.

I'd love to hear a debate on this issue because I'm not sure which way this one should go.

But I suspect the WH employees signed waivers perhaps because they were acknowleding that they don't deserve the same sort of confidential status as your average information leaker.

[Algomas]

4. Sounds like they are more concerned...

with protecting their jobs than their sources. What repulsive toads they are. If they took the Bu$hco leak (so to speak) that means they are in the "loop". It is unnatural for a rat to rat on a fellow rat, unless of course it becomes expedient. Like when the ship starts sinking...

[Snazzy]

6. treason ought to trump all

I'd guess this reporter was on the margins and a Scooter pal. I don't recall the name on the shop around--it was somebody else at WaPo, wasn't it?

What exactly is the popular press read of the agreement that is made when they go "on background"? There was some (blog?) meme recently which made sense, more about Condi I think. That when your admin. on-background source turns out to be feeding you a bunch of politically self-serving shit that is later proved fabricated, that sure as hell should pierce the identity shield. The agreement is a vehicle to offer your readers inside information--a scoop of a sanctioned leak, which for one degree of policy subtlety, the admin. doesn't want to be "on record" saying. The historical enforcement mechanism is now somehow gone with reporters being happy happy admin. stenographers: if the information is bogus, the leaker should be exposed. For the good of the readers/viewers and the integrity of the media outlet.

That's getting off Plame a bit, but there is a ballpark relationship here. If somebody is making the rounds with highly partisan (and in this case, ask me, treasonous) information--which is so out-there that only a scumbag like Novak lacks the integrity and sense to say no and not run it--didn't whichever media just get a story? Why not run it? The admin. said: here's something illegal, hardball and nasty we want to get around. Ethics correctly prevented most media from saying "Plame" but it shouldn't prevent them from saying "no deal on 'on-background,' you just gave me a story."

Somehow this admin. has stretched on-background to include almost everything they do, and there is no consequence, no defacto contract with the press. The justification you hear is access, which is bull for major media. The WH can't just stop talking to major media (or even needing to make PR deals with them)--it's a strawman.

Of course, the media are also to blame--you need the balls to enforce the contract. Someone should testify who got the Plame info--maybe it will make their ass grass in Wash., but it can fix the contract and someone else will take their place. It's a more important principle, giving teeth to the public watchdog than shielding what I think you rightly postulate is a source not worthy of protection.

[grasswire]

2. does this make sense?

He testified that Libby did not release Plame's name?

[Syrinx]

3. maybe the actual leak came from higher up

Or maybe the reporter has been bribed or threatened.

:shrug:

(I really hope this relates to Josh Marshall's "tectonic shifts.")

[aquart]

5. Just the info that Wilson's wife, who works for the Agency on WMD ...

got hubby the Niger trip. Since it wasn't a secret who Wilson's wife is, the name is not as important as revealing she's an agent.

Edit. Not Libby. Uh huh. Perhaps the butler?

I'm sleepy and I read it wrong. But if Scooter is clean, does that kick it upstairs? Lower level people wouldn't know. That means, Look up.

[meg]

7. So, you bought the WH lie

Wilson said it was NOT common knowledge about what his wife did. She worked for some company - Brewster something. WH shills passed the story that people knew otherwise.

[HootieMcBoob]

8. Wilson's wife didn't get him the job

He was the most qualified person. He had worked in Africa and Iraq for a very long time. He was in fact, the last person to talk with Saddam before the first gulf war. He actually had the guts to personally stand up to Hussein himself. That Wilson's wife "got him the job" is the way the administration and it's right wing echo chamber spun it. And on top of that it was not well known that she was an agent - quite the opposite in fact. She was the deepest kind of undercover agent. Outing her not only ruined her career but killed and entire undercover company along with all of the other people who had worked in that company and all of the contacts that they had made. That company and Ms. Plame were all working on tracking the proliferation of WMD! Over a decade of work was flushed down the drain!