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By Enrique del Val Blanco, Economist and Political Analyst

July 7, 2005

Original Article (Spanish)

In one of the gravest attacks on freedom of the press in the supposed mother country of democracy and freedom, journalists have been cornered by jail threats, and the media has once again yielded before government pressure, revealing their sources of information.

It all began when a journalist from Time magazine and The New York Times revealed the name of the wife of an American diplomat, the wife being an undercover agent of the much-feared Central Intelligence Agency.

In fact, revealing the identity of an agent who conducts covert operations, from killing people to destabilizing out-of-favor regimes, activities that have been well-demonstrated over the last century, mainly the second half, is a crime one commits at pain of 10 years in prison.

But the facts of this case are more complicated. It began when a State Department official was sent to Niger, to find out if Iraq’s dictatorial regime was enriching uranium [also known a ‘yellow cake’] obtained from that African country. On his return, the diplomat at issue, Mr. Joseph C. Wilson, declared that he had found absolutely no evidence for this, and was unwavering in his opinion. [After Wilson’s return, President Bush included the Niger allegations in his State of the Union speech].

The government of President Bush, also unwaveringly, sought to maintain the lie. Just days later [after Wilson publicly dismissed the claim that Niger supplied Iraq with uranium] several journalists revealed that the diplomat had only been chosen for the mission at the behest of his wife, Mrs. Plame, who was a covert agent of the Central Intelligence Agency.  A great commotion then ensued, and a special prosecutor was named to find the government source that gave the press the agent’s identity.

All of this has led, little by little, to threats of imprisonment against a journalist from Time magazine, Mr. Cooper, and a reporter from The New York Times, Mrs. Miller. Surprisingly, the management of Time acceded to government demands to turn over the names of their reporters sources, but not The New York Times.

All of this was done for the purpose of discovering what we already know - that the person who released the information [the name of Mrs. Plame] is none other than Carl Rove, chief White House adviser and great friend of George Bush.

This revelation has caused the sensation that all of this is being orchestrated by the Bush government to discredit the diplomat, who failed to faithfully follow the instructions of the hawks that, to the world’s misfortune, govern that country. [Wilson published an op-ed piece in the New York Times dismissing the Niger claims].

But independently of who was the source of the information and who benefits from it, we must face the lamentable fact and this attack on the sources of intelligence will create a very bad precedent, not only for the American press, but worldwide. We all know how often it is, that to get to the truth, reporters need confidential sources, and that this is the only way the public is ever informed of what is actually happening.

For a magazine with the prestige and reputation of Time to have buckled under pressure and to have hung out to dry one of its reporters does nothing but persuade us that the United States media is subjugated by the plans of the government, and that its supposed independence is a lie.

The argument of the owners of Time magazine, that "the law comes first," is one with which we all can agree. But the law also protects confidential sources, and the print media has a duty to its readers, which is why, without attacking personal privacy, it must investigate issues of public concern.

The most surprising thing about the case is that the reporter who first wrote of Mrs. Plame, Mr. [Robert] Novak, has not been threatened with imprisonment, because, one assumes, that he has already made a deal [with prosecutors].

We must conclude that, like everything else in that country, anything is negotiable, both lawful and unlawful.

The worse part of this case is that it has confirmed that, in the country which objectifies freedom for so many, freedom means nothing next to the special interests of the government, and that this in no way allows the media to fulfill its obligation as a supplier of information.

Without the benefit of inside information, many of the atrocities that have been committed by various governments would never have become public knowledge; two examples are the cases of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and what is happening every day to those poor devils in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, who have already been held several years without judgment.

To reveal the identity of an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency who, as we have said, commits all kinds of outrages including murder, should not be a crime, but just the opposite.