http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61388-2005Mar23.htmlI do not see anything in this article saying that everyone knew Plame was a covert CIA agent. All I see is an entreaty to protect Cooper and Miller by determining if a crime was committed first.
Perhaps there is more out there, but this is what I found thus far.
Media Groups Back Reporters In Court Filing
Judges Urged to Determine if Crime Occurred in Leak Case
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 24, 2005; Page A03
A federal court should first determine whether a crime has been committed in the disclosure of an undercover CIA operative's name before prosecutors are allowed to continue seeking testimony from journalists about their confidential sources, the nation's largest news organizations and journalism groups asserted in a court filing yesterday.
The 40-page brief, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, argues that there is "ample evidence . . . to doubt that a crime has been committed" in the case, which centers on the question of whether Bush administration officials knowingly revealed the identity of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame in the summer of 2003. Plame's name was published first by syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak and later by other publications.
The friend-of-the-court brief was filed by 36 news organizations, including The Washington Post and major broadcast and cable television news networks, in support of reporters at the New York Times and Time magazine who face possible jail time for refusing to cooperate with a grand jury investigating the allegations. Those two organizations filed a petition Tuesday asking the full appeals court to review the case.
A three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit ruled in February that two reporters -- Judith Miller of the Times and Matthew Cooper of Time -- should be jailed for contempt if they continued to refuse to name their sources to the grand jury.
So we know Miller went to jail and Cooper sang. What I want to know is what this briefing had in it. My suspicion is that the RW National Review is putting words into these news organization's mouths, but I would like a little proof because I have a few RWers I would like to smack-down for daring to mention such a biased source and pass it off as evidence. This way we debunk the talkig points AND the source in one fell-swoop.