Time, reporter subpoenaed again on CIA leak: WSJ

A Time magazine reporter and his employer Time Inc received fresh subpoenas from the US Justice Department seeking more information about sources for an article on the disclosure of a CIA officer's identity, The Wall Street Journal said on Thursday.
The reporter, Matthew Cooper, and Time received the subpoenas on Tuesday in a probe focusing on officials in the administration of US President George W. Bush as the source of the leak.
Last month, a federal judge in Washington lifted a contempt order against Cooper and the magazine after Cooper agreed to testify about conversations he had with Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney and a source for Cooper's articles about the leak. Libby waived confidentiality to allow Cooper to testify.
But the new subpoenas by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald mean Cooper might yet face jail time.
Time officials were surprised by the subpoenas. "We're very disappointed," deputy general counsel Robin Bierstedt told the newspaper.
She said Time would file a motion to quash the subpoenas. Legal experts said that is likely to fail, the newspaper said, and Time and Cooper will likely be held in contempt again.
The Justice Department probe began after syndicated columnist Robert Novak identified the CIA officer, Valerie Plame, in a July 2003 column.
Her husband, Joe Wilson, is a former diplomat whom the CIA asked in 2002 to check reports that Iraq tried to buy enriched uranium from Niger. Wilson accused the Bush administration of having leaked his wife's identity as retribution for his having publicly taken issue with the claim. Disclosing the identity of a clandestine intelligence officer is a crime.
Federal judges have in recent months held several reporters in contempt for refusing to divulge their sources. US law does not grant journalists an absolute level of privilege comparable to those afforded doctors and priests, but reporters have long argued that the First Amendment, protecting freedom of speech and the press, implicitly grants that privilege.