There are many who believe that Judith Miller should not go to jail because she is protecting a confidential source. I am not one of those people and furthermore I believe that she should not only go to jail for refusing to surrender the name but that she should also be prosecuted for nothing less than as an accessory after the fact for aiding and abetting a traitor. Robert Novak should also rot in jail for his crime but I believe that Miller and Cooper are as guilty if not worse so because of their refusal to give up Karl Rove over the Valerie Plame outing.
Do not get me wrong, I believe that a reporter has the right to protect a source under the current shield laws, but this case is different in the fact that they were not protecting a source that was witness to the crime and wished to make it right by society. No, these reporters were protecting a traitor to our nation and that is unforgivable.
Let us not forget that this woman not only supported the invasion of Iraq but also was one of the main cheerleaders because she wanted to profit from a book of lies about Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction. Judith Miller is nothing more than an Armstrong Williams wannabe and she championed the case to go to war because she had an impeccable source, Ahmad Chalabi.
While it is true that she never wrote about Valerie Plame herself, she was involved in the case by association. The shield law that allows a reporter the right to refuse to divulge the identity of an anonymous source is one that was intended to serve the public good by conveying a sense of confidentiality for the informant. What Miller is guilty of is protecting a source that was hell bent on seeking retribution on Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had truthfully contradicted the claim that Hussein was trying to obtain yellowcake uranium from the country of Niger. In other words, she was protecting the criminal from the whistleblower and that is directly opposite of the intention of the law.
The Republicans are trying to spin this web of treason as something that is not all that important by claiming that Valerie Plame was not really that covert of an agent and that anyone could have found out her identity if they dug deep enough. Quite frankly I do not care if she was in deep cover or not, it is my opinion that anyone who works at the CIA from the lowly janitor up to the Deputy Director should remain nameless because of possible coercion by our enemies. One never knows where an enemy may be able to obtain useful information and therefore it is imperative that all CIA employees maintain anonymity and any revelation of the identity of that employee be met with the harshest measure of prosecution and implementation of sentence.
Many believe that by prosecuting Miller for her role sets a bad precedent and that we have now begun down a slippery slope of government control over the media. I agree that we are headed down that slippery slope but for a different reason. By allowing the improper use of the shield law it will only serve to embolden future use by political adversaries against each other in order to accomplish the goals of their political ideology.
You may wonder why I have singled out Miller instead of also including Cooper and the reason is very simple. As with any criminal investigation the first one who talks gets the ability to negotiate with the prosecutor and this one is no different. Novak does not deserve any exemption from prosecution because he is the guilty party who knowingly committed the crime. And being that we have heard Presidunce Bush many times reiterate that we are a nation at war it is only reasonable that Novak, Miller and Rove should face no less than life imprisonment or at most be executed for their crime of treason during a time of war.
