What Does the Government Really Want from Miller and Cooper?

What Does the Government Really Want from Miller and Cooper?

The case of the two reporters who are under threat of jail for refusing to turn over notes in the Valerie Plame leak is coming to a climax.

My thoughts are mixed: it's certainly a defeat for journalists. No one will care, of course, about the principle of confidential sources. Journalists are about the only people less popular than "politicians." They don't even get the home town exception that politicials get ("MY congressman's not like those other crooks.") But as TalkLeft notes:

Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald has stated in court pleadings that he already knows the identity of Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper's sources regarding the senior white house official who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame to Robert Novak.

So, why is it so necessary for them to provide the information?

As the Wapo article suggests, the investigation has moved from one involving the identity of the White House official to one involving perjury - i.e., a cover-up. The source may have been questioned in front of the grand jury and lied.

And in another post she details the logical conclusion: the leaker is none other that the Turd Blossom himself, Karl Rove.

If this is true, this is Bush's worse than Watergate moment. The top political aid and brains of the whole outfit deliberately outs an undercover CIA operative for political purposes and then lies under oath about it. And as the last president will tell you, lying under oath is something that any good good Republican will find objectionable - even impeachable if one can make the link to Bush.

I'm left with two questions: Is this, in the middle of the bigger Supreme Court battle, worth the fight? And the classic - what did the President know and when did he know it?

Politics