After June 27, 2005: Reporter Asks Wilson to Intervene with Judge

A few days after the Supreme Court’s refusal to quash the subpoenas of two reporters in the Valerie Plame Wilson case (see June 27, 2005), Plame Wilson and her husband, Joseph Wilson, pass one of the reporters, Matthew Cooper, on the street. Cooper buttonholes Wilson and, obviously struggling with himself, asks, “Could you do something for me?” Cooper asks Wilson if he would write the judge who ruled against Cooper and fellow reporter Judith Miller (see August 9, 2004) a letter asking for leniency for him. Wilson, whom his wife will describe as “taken aback,” tells Cooper that he will ask his lawyer about the request. Over dinner, the Wilsons marvel over Cooper’s request. They wonder if “Matt [had] momentarily lost his mind.” Plame Wilson will write: “A request from Joe for leniency on Matt’s behalf would carry little or no weight with the presiding judge. More pointedly, it was obviously in our interest to have the reporters testify. We, along with the entire country, wanted to hear what they would say under oath. We wanted to know what sources in the administration had leaked my name to the media, thereby undermining our national security.” More generally, Plame Wilson will reflect: “In the debate over whether reporters should be compelled to reveal their sources, it seemed to me that some of the leading advocates of reporters’ First Amendment rights had lost sight of a basic fact in this case: people in the administration had used reporters to advance their own political agenda. That alone is not unusual, or even criminal. But the reporters’ refusal to testify would not help to uncover government wrongdoing, but assist officials who wanted to cover up their illegal behavior. It was the Pentagon Papers (see March 1971) or Watergate (see June 15, 1974) turned on its head.… [T]his particular case was not about the freedom of the press, or about reporters’ roles as watchdogs on behalf of the governed, the citizens of this country. These reporters were allowing themselves to be exploited by the administration and were obstructing the investigation. It didn’t make much ethical sense to me.” [Wilson, 2007, pp. 220-221]