Miller's Time

What makes the spectacle even more surreal is that Miller never wrote a story about Plame after two senior administration officials passed the information to columnist Robert D. Novak two years ago. Some, including Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson IV, have suggested that she was identified in retribution for a Times opinion piece he wrote in July 2003, charging the administration with twisting intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war.

Novak, in turn, found himself being grilled last week on CNN, where he works as a commentator, over his refusal to say whether he has testified, or has even been subpoenaed, in the case.

The plot took another dramatic twist yesterday when Time magazine's Matthew Cooper avoided jail, saying his source had freed him from his confidentiality pledge hours before the court hearing.

The jailing of Miller comes during a week when Bob Woodward, once played by Robert Redford, is publishing a book about his relationship with the Watergate source known as Deep Throat. The former FBI official, W. Mark Felt, has reached a book and movie deal in which he could wind up being portrayed by Tom Hanks.

The contrast seems to capture a changing mood toward the shadowy deal-making in which journalists extract information by promising to withhold people's names -- a practice that major news organizations now admit has been overused and abused -- and sources use their anonymity to spin, settle scores or expose what they see as wrongdoing.

"The public no longer respects what we do," said Daniel Schorr, the veteran National Public Radio commentator, describing himself as "very depressed" about the atmosphere. In 1976, he recalled, a public outcry helped persuade a House committee not to hold him in contempt of Congress for refusing to reveal his source for a secret legislative report on the CIA. "Today they would send me to jail without a murmur," Schorr said.

The media world has its share of dissenters. "I don't think journalists should have special rights to be accomplices to crimes," said Jonah Goldberg, a National Review editor. While he feels sorry for Cooper and Miller, he said, "nothing burnishes a journalist's career more than grabbing a toothbrush and going to jail."

Although a number of journalists have been jailed in contempt cases -- from Myron Farber, a New York Times reporter who served 40 days in 1978 in a case involving hospital deaths, to Vanessa Leggett, who served five months in 2001 over a homicide case -- none has been as prominent as Miller, 57, and Cooper, 42.

Miller is a hard-charging, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and co-author of a best-selling book on bioterrorism. She is controversial for her reporting on sources who alleged that Iraq under Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction, but her involvement in this case has rallied some journalistic critics to her side.

In an interview yesterday, Times Executive Editor Bill Keller called Miller "a tough, principled, brave reporter."

"You can try to psychoanalyze what she's doing any way you like, but what it comes down to is a matter of principle," Keller said. "She gave her word. . . . I know it's been hard on her. She's a human being and she's scared and uncertain about what's going to happen to her. She's a little exhausted from having been so tirelessly out on the front lines."

Miller, who is married to retired Random House editor Jason Epstein, 76, calls the case against her "positively Orwellian." She recently told CNN the case was not about her but "whether or not there could be a Deep Throat today."