What about Bob?
The 1982 law that makes it a crime to reveal the identity of a CIA operative doesn’t seem to extend to Bob Novak who revealed the identity of Valerie Plame(Wilson), wife of Joseph Wilson as a CIA operative. Nor does it seem to apply to Karl Rove who it has been revealed, sent an email to Matthew Cooper of Time Magazine disclosing Valerie’s identity. Cooper has been facing jail time for not discussing his source with a Grand Jury. Bob Novak who actually revealed the name of Valerie Plame in a column does not appear to be subject to any penalties.
Cooper backed down from his First Amendment defense and revealed his source as Karl Rove averting, for now, a potential contempt of court charge and jail sentence. It is interesting to note that Bob Novak, a staunch Bush Administration apologist and supporter, wrote the original article on Plame, but has flown under the rader of prosecution. Karl Rove sits in the same blameless position. Judy Miller never even wrote an article on Plame and now is facing jail time.
In an obvious misunderstanding of the First Amendment’s position on freedom of the press we find CNN quoting Judge Thomas Hogan,
“We have to follow the law,” U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan said.
“If she were given a pass today, then the next person could say as a matter of principle, ‘I will not obey the law because of the abortion issue,’ or the election of a president or whatever. They could claim the moral high ground, and then we could descend into anarchy.”1
I don’t think that freedom of the press can be compared to say clinic bombings or shooting Doctors who work at the clinics, or civil unrest and protests over stolen elections and false presidents but the above quote seems to try to tie them together. Freedom of the press was designed to keep an independent eye on government and to report to the citizens on our elected officials.
The prosecutor seems to be more interested - at least for now - on punishing people who did not actually report the name of Plame, but those who have refused to give up their sources.
Bob Novak’s column follows the Op-Ed piece by Joseph Wilson blasting the Bush Administration’s claims that Saddam Hussein was seeking nuclear materials in Niger. Wilson was in a position to know, he personally investigated the allegations. Bob broke the law. Karl Rove broke the law. George W. Bush has undoubtedly broken the law, by making false claims regarding Saddam’s weapons capabilities and aspirations, by invading a sovereign country on false pretenses, slaughtering tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi’s, and lastly by outing a CIA operative’s identity. Nothing happens from the White House that isn’t approved by Bush and Co.
1 - CNN.com
2- Today’s opinion
