Media Takes: No Libby Legacy for the Press?
Not so long ago the who-leaked-CIA-analyst-Valerie-Plame's-name? saga was the biggest story in Washington–a blockbuster with the potential to bring down those at the highest levels of the White House (Vice President Dick Cheney! Presidential aide Karl Rove!), tarnish the reputations of media stars, and irrevocably undermine journalists' ability to protect confidential sources.
Reporters and administration muckety-mucks were being subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury investigating whether Plame was outed by a White House furious at her husband Joseph Wilson's public undermining of the administration's rationale for war. New York Times reporter Judith Miller went to jail for 85 days for refusing to talk. And just about everyone in the nation's capital who had ever engaged in the transaction of anonymous sourcing was walking on eggshells.
What a difference 30 months and a few confidentiality waivers can make.
This week, the Plamegate saga expired with a whimper as the trial of Cheney aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the only person charged in the investigation, limped to a quiet close in a courtroom with plenty of empty seats. Next week, jury members are expected to decide whether Libby lied to the grand jury about when he learned of Plame's CIA affiliation and when he told reporters. No one has ever been charged with the leak itself.
And so after all the sturm und drang that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation incited in 2004, just what did it all finally add up to?
Oh, Libby's trial provided some rare glimpses into behind-the-scenes Washington maneuvering:
- His handwritten meeting notes detailing a White House strategy to undermine Wilson's credibility;
- Testimony by reporters on sourcing deals struck to get inside information;
- The expletives-deleted audiotape of then Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage's gossipy mention of Wilson's wife during an interview with journalist Bob Woodward, who was working on a book. (Those who have heard the tape say the men then segued into chatter about who might replace Victoria "Torie" Clarke as Pentagon spokesperson.)
It was revealing, but rarely revelatory.
The left never got the satisfaction of seeing Cheney, Rove, or even Libby filleted on the witness stand by the surgical Fitzgerald. Libby's defense that he was an administration scapegoat with a lousy memory sagged under the weight of testimony. And with waivers from their confidential sources, a who's who of reporters paraded to court and–in a scene that 2½ years ago would have seemed a journalistic abomination–provided details of their previously secret conversations.
On the day this week that the defense called a half-dozen reporters to testify that they'd heard about Plame from administration officials other than Libby, some–not all–seemed to savor their Law & Order moments, sharing, for example, tales of taking a source call while corralling children in the Elephant House at the National Zoo.
Both the administration and the media went into the leak investigation and Libby trial already terribly wounded by the Iraq war, its faulty rationale, and coverage of it that in many cases was off the mark. But this episode has not turned out to be the watershed many predicted. Cheney and Rove are still in the White House, and investigative reporters are still getting help from confidential sources.
Certainly, however, some will pay the price.
Scooter Libby's memory defense was weak, and his version of events disputed. Unless the jury finds him a sympathetic character, he likely faces conviction on at least a couple of the five charges against him. And Miller, one of Libby's formerly favorite reporters, saw her reputation shredded: her prewar reporting and relationship with the Bush administration criticized, her career with the Times ended as colleagues publicly turned on her, and her testimony on the witness stand baffling.
But though many First Amendment advocates are sounding the death knell for reporter-source protections, the "Fitzgerald effect" has yet to fully play out.
So, in the end, one can't help but ask: After all that, this is it?