Contempt

Cooper, Miller, Plame, Novak, Bush and Rove

"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

— From George W. Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address.

The Supreme court on July 27 2005 rejected appeals by Mathew Cooper and Judith Miller, reporters for Time Magazine and the New York Times respectively. A lower court last year charged them with contempt of court for their refusal to reveal sources of information concerning a story they were both investigating separately.

On July 14 2003, a syndicated columnist named Robert Novak exposed Valerie Plame as a CIA operative. He cited two senior Bush administration officials who remain anonymous. (Bush advisor Karl Rove spoke with Novak a week before publication of Novak's column.)

"Given the structure of the consortiums that operated the mines, it would be exceedingly difficult for Niger to transfer uranium to Iraq.... In short, there's simply too much oversight over too small an industry for a sale to have transpired."
— Joseph Wilson, in The New York Times, 6 July 2003

Valerie Plame's husband is former U.S. envoy Joseph Wilson. Wilson had written an article that the New York Times published on July 6, 2003, challenging the Bush administration's claim that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium ore from Niger. It is possible the Bush administration exposed Plame's vocation in retaliation for her husband's dissent. (The administration had asked Wilson to travel to Niger on investigation of this matter; and had subsequently disregarded his report.)

Mathew Cooper of Time Magazine wrote an article about Novak's exposure of Plame. Judith Miller of the New York Times conducted interviews. She never wrote a story.

Robert Novak has never revealed who told him [it was Rove] that Plame was an operative of the CIA. It is potentially criminal to do so — and it is ostensibly in the investigation of this crime that Cooper and Miller are under pressure to reveal their sources.

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