Forced Testimony

Media pundits have been at odds over whether subpoenaed reporter Matthew Cooper should finger his source or shut his mouth. Cooper had kept silent, but as City Paper goes to press, he is now talking.

Cooper was released from his promise of confidentiality by Dick Cheney's chief of staff. In holding out for that release, Cooper should be commended for protecting everybody's right to know. The reporter for Time magazine had been held in contempt of court for refusing to say who outted CIA operative Valerie Plame in what was surely an act of retribution by the Bush administration. Plame is the wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson who, in a New York Times op-ed, contended that the Bush administration distorted government intelligence sources to justify invading Iraq. Wilson's commentary was published July 6, 2003, and within a week everyone knew that his wife was a spook, so her career was ruined. With the appointment of a special prosecutor, Cooper had been told to talk or go to jail.

When it comes to official malfeasance, goes one argument, Cooper ought to have forgotten the promises he made and give up the name of the government official who wielded the hatchet against Wilson's wife. Others maintained that many, if not all, confidential sources — including whistleblowers — would stop talking if Cooper broke his promise to protect his source's identity.

The ability to make and keep that confidentiality promise in exchange for sensitive information is often the only way that journalists can ferret out information that the public needs to know. Now that the reporter has been released from his promise, it will certainly be fascinating to see who was pulling the strings behind the scenes. But I suspect that, as in Iran-Contra, the culprit at the bottom would be willing to take a hit for those at the top. One significant outcome of forcing Cooper to speak would be to further chill the flow of government information that is already practically at a trickle. One of the earliest pre-9/11 acts of Bush's Justice Department was to reclassify the very sort of information that Clinton's Justice Department had declassified. As any self-respecting journalist will confirm, this gutting of the Freedom of Information Act on the federal level has spawned a general indifference to the public's right to know on all levels of government, as well as in public corporations and nonprofits.

By forcing journalists to disclose confidential sources, all news organizations would in effect be co-opted as government agents. Extracting information from news organizations should be used only if there is no other way for prosecutors to get critical information, and only if there is a real risk of substantial harm.

Kudos to Matt Cooper for having kept his silence so that confidential news sources will continue to be heard.

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