Local politicians in the Russian capital are so fed up with being interviewed by scruffy journalists that security guards at the town hall will now turn away journalists with open shirts, as well as those with patched jeans, string vests, tight shorts or flip-flops TV crews are the worst offenders, apparently.. The award-winning journalist Judith Miller has swapped the sun-glasses and sharp clothes for a brown and green jump-suit with the word "prisoner" emblazoned on the back. She has given up her desk at The New York Times for a 70 square foot cell at the Alexandria Detention Centre, Virginia. In an unlikely turn of events Miller, 57, a Pulitzer Prize winner, was jailed last week after refusing to reveal the identity of an anonymous source.
Her case is extraordinary for several reasons: not only did Miller not write anything that her source told her but another journalist who did publish "leaked" information is still at large and writing his column. Added to that is the entire question of what legal protection journalists should receive, along with allegations that the Bush administration has used journalists as tools of propaganda to cover- lies and falsehoods. "It's a very odd affair, very strange," said Brooks Jackson, a former Wall Street Journal reporter and now a director of the Annenberg Public Policy Centre of the University of Pennsylvania. "And it's very difficult to see reporters in jail, especially when there is a question as to whether a crime has been committed."Just what is going on? To understand the context of Miller's incarceration - where the alleged 11 September "20th hijacker", Zacarias Moussaiou, is a fellow inmate - one must return to the summer of 2003, the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq and the failure to discover the much hyped WMD. Joseph Wilson, a former US ambassador to Africa, revealed in The Independent on Sunday and The New York Times that a claim by President Bush that Iraq had been seeking to buy uranium from Africa to restart nuclear programme was demonstrably false.Wilson travelled to Africa at the request of the CIA and showed the claims were false and that documents they were based on - the so-called Niger memos - must have been forgeries. As a result, the Bush administration was forced to issue an embarrassing apology.Weeks later, Robert Novak, a columnist with close links to the administration, claimed in a column that two "senior administration officials" told him Wilson had been sent to Africa at the suggestion of his wife, an undercover CIA agent.
He also named Wilson's wife - Valerie Plame - and in doing so may have committed the federal offence of outing a covert operative.The oleaginous Novak was not the only journalist who spoke to government sources about Wilson's wife. Matthew Cooper of Time magazine and Miller were among a handful of other reporters who spoke to sources. And when the Bush administration - under growing pressure to do something about the leaked information - asked the Justice Department to investigate, Miller was one those reporters federal investigators wanted to speak to.Adding to the interest in the case is the possible identity of the source. Karl Rove, the president's senior adviser and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the Chief of Staff for Vice-President Dick Cheney, have both been the focus of speculation. Both have admitted speaking to reporters but deny identifying Plame.The case has been in and out of the courts for more than a year. After Time magazine buckled it was just Miller left refusing to cooperate.
