One Mighty-Determined Plumber
The lawman investigating a White House leak just won't take no for an answer
Long before Osama bin Laden became a household name, a young federal prosecutor named Patrick Fitzgerald in the U.S. attorney's office in the Southern District of New York became steeped in the emerging world of jihad, toiling with little public recognition to prosecute some of the world's most dangerous terrorists, all with ties to the evolving Islamic fundamentalist movement. Men like Ramzi Yousef, who engineered the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993; Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the Egyptian cleric who plotted to destroy New York tunnels, bridges, and other landmarks; the four leaders of the U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998; and, that same year, bin Laden himself. "He is a one-man encyclopedia on al Qaeda because he has this absolutely scary photographic memory," says Deputy Attorney General James Comey, who is Fitzgerald's best friend. "He is a one-man dot connector, which is very valuable."
These days, Fitzgerald, who was named the U.S. attorney in Chicago just days before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, is getting more than his fair share of national headlines--but for an entirely different kind of dot-connecting that has alarmed American media organizations and outraged champions of the First Amendment. The story, by now, is a familiar one: In December 2003, Fitzgerald, 44, was named as a Justice Department special counsel to investigate whether Bush administration officials illegally leaked the name of a covert CIA operative named Valerie Plame to conservative columnist Robert Novak. Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, has alleged his wife was outed to punish him for challenging the administration's claim, as part of its advocacy for invading Iraq, that Saddam Hussein had tried to obtain uranium ore from Niger. Unable to prove the sources of the leak, despite having questioned numerous government officials, including President George Bush, Fitzgerald subpoenaed several reporters, including Judith Miller of the New York Times and Time magazine's Matthew Cooper, to reveal their confidential sources.
High court showdown. Miller, who never even wrote about Plame, and Cooper have declined to cooperate, and they and their publications have lost two battles at the federal district and appeals court levels to protect their sources, setting the stage for a landmark showdown in the U.S. Supreme Court. (The court ruled in 1972 that reporters could be required to testify before a grand jury if a prosecutor could prove it was necessary.) The court is expected to announce this week whether it will grant a hearing in the matter. If it allows the lower-court rulings to stand, Miller and Cooper could face up to 18 months in jail.
In a separate leak inquiry, Fitzgerald is also seeking to obtain the telephone records of Miller and a Times colleague, Philip Shenon, to determine who tipped the reporters off about an imminent raid on two Islamic charities that Fitzgerald was investigating, leading the reporters to contact the charities for comment and, Fitzgerald believes, compromise the surprise raid. Fitzgerald has been criticized for his handling of the charity investigations, which fizzled out in a weak plea bargain, a modest jail sentence, and failed cooperation from a key defendant, who the judge in the case concluded was more a victim of guilt by association than a financial backer of al Qaeda.
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