White House Leak Inquiry Summons Journalists

A journalist from the New York Times has been drawn into an official inquiry set up to establish the source of an illegal leak from the White House, raising fears that the investigation is becoming an attack on the right of reporters to protect their sources.

Judith Miller has received a grand jury subpoena, joining other journalists facing the threat of jail in a politically sensitive investigation into the leaking of an undercover CIA operative's name to a columnist in July last year.

This week Matthew Cooper, a journalist for Time magazine, was found in contempt of court and ordered to be jailed and fined $1,000 (£543) a day until he agrees to testify to the investigation.

But a judge suspended the sentence pending an appeal. Two other journalists have also been subpoenaed.

Neither Mr Cooper nor Ms Miller broke the story which triggered the investigation into the outing of the undercover CIA agent, Valerie Plame.

Under US law, exposure of a covert operative is punishable by a 10-year prison term.

Ms Plame's cover was blown when two Bush administration officials disclosed her identity to Robert Novak, a syndicated conservative columnist.

Her husband, Joe Wilson, a former ambassador, accused the Bush administration of leaking her name as retribution for his refusal to support the White House in building the case for war in Iraq.

Media commentators see the legal threat against Mr Cooper as especially grave because his story was on the abuse of power by Bush administration officials.

His lawyer, Floyd Abrams, said yesterday that the special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, risked undermining a basic journalistic principle.

"I find it deeply disturbing the visage of one journalist after another being called in and being obliged to choose between being incarcerated or violating a promise of confidentiality," he said.

Although the focus of the investigation this week was journalists, the White House has also come under scrutiny.

So far, President George Bush, the vice-president, Dick Cheney, and the secretary of state, Colin Powell, have been interviewed, along with White House aides.

Yesterday, the New York Times said it would fight the subpoena.

"Journalists should not have to face the prospect of imprisonment for doing nothing more than aggressively seeking to report on the government's actions," said Arthur Sulzberger Jr, the paper's publisher.

"Such subpoenas make it less likely that sources will be willing to talk candidly with reporters and ultimately it is the public that suffers."

Ms Miller is a Pulitzer prize winner but she has been criticised for her reporting on Iraq, which promoted the Bush administration's view that Saddam Hussein had an active nuclear weapons programme.

In an email to a colleague in May 2003 she said her reporting had relied heavily on the former Pentagon protege Ahmad Chalabi, who fell out of favour amid reports that he was passing on US secrets to Iran.

A year later the New York Times published a note to readers that said its reporting in the run-up to the war was less than rigorous.

Ms Miller had worked on three of the five stories the paper singled out for criticism.