In which John Dickerson may get his Plame subpoena after all

Former Time Magazine reporter John Dickerson had a big day at the Lewis “Scooter” Libby trial. On February 7 of last year Dickerson wrote a two-part story for Slate called “Where’s My Subpoena?” The story was his take on both why his name surfaced in connection with special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation into who blew former covert CIA operative Valerie Wilson’s cover, and why Fitzgerald hadn’t come after him with the same gusto as he did Dickerson’s former Time colleague, Matt Cooper. Dickerson, who is covering the trial for Slate, resurfaced in the splashiest possible fashion when former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer named him as one of two reporters to whom he had revealed Wilson’s identity during a presidential jaunt to Africa (NBC’s David Gregory was the other).

In a story posted after his adventure, Dickerson says Fleischer’s account is inaccurate; that Fleischer urged him to ask the CIA who sent Wilson’s husband on a trip to Niger to investigate administration claims that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from that country, but never hinted at Wilson’s identity. Unless Fitzgerald comes up with contemporaneous notes or emails from Fleischer confirming his description of the conversations, you really have to go with Dickerson, who does have notes, on this one. Aside from that, in any contest between a White House press secretary and an organically grown human, you simply have to side with your own species.

That thought has no doubt occurred to Team Libby as well, and Dickerson says he expects that he’ll finally get that subpoena he wrote about last year.

Aside from providing the most surreal moment of the trial to this point, and with apologies to Dickerson, the funniest, the incident points up one of the most irritating things about the press. Matt Cooper told Dickerson about Karl Rove’s peddling of Wilson’s identity almost as soon as Cooper got off the phone with Rove. Dickerson told Cooper about Fleischer’s nudges with similar dispatch. Cooper or Dickerson or both apparently shared the information with Time reporter Viveca Novak. There may in fact have been not a single Washington reporter who didn’t know more or less who leaked what, and when, and why, at least a year before their readers did.

In the meantime they reported statements from the administration that they knew to be false. The most notable of those involve Fleischer’s successor, Scott McClellan, and his carefully worded self-exculpatory assurances that no one in the White House was responsible for the leak — and specifically Rove, Libby and Elliot Abrams, the national security advisor who was pardoned by the elder Bush after his conviction on charges of lying to Congress in connection with the Iran-Contra scandal — but even the most cursory review of stories on the case during the period between the beginning of the investigation and the indictment of Libby will turn up a host of others.

And of course there remains much that reporters know and we don’t. If the Cooper to Dickerson to Viveca Novak relay of Rove’s involvement is any guide, a whole bunch of reporters know which senior administration official blew the whistle to the Post’s Mike Allen and Dana Priest on the two “top White House officials” who leaked Wilson’s identity to a half-dozen journalists before her name was revealed in print. The Allen-Priest story motivated Fleischer to seek immunity from Fitzgerald, which is how Dickerson’s face wound up on a big screen monitor at the trial today.

Confidential sources can play an important role in reporting. Very few press watchers would advocate doing away with them. But reporters should not allow confidentiality to force them into reporting lies. Reporters who find themselves in that position should recuse themselves from writing those stories. In this case that apparently might have precluded most of the Washington press corps from covering the leak.

When that happens, bring in the farm team. If enough reporters start losing bylines, perhaps they’ll figure out a way to reconcile confidentiality and accountability. Readers don’t need to know the details of every confidential source, but news stories are meant to provide information to us, not to conceal it from us or divert us from it.

To this point in the trial, the most damaging testimony against Libby has come from his colleagues in Dick Cheney’s office, Cathie Martin and David Addington, Libby’s successor, and from Fleischer. Addington took the stand after Fleischer finished up today, and broadly confirmed both Fleischer’s and Martin’s testimony to the effect that Libby was focused on on containing the damage done to the administration’s uranium claims and that he was interested in Wilson’s CIA employment. The discrepancy between Fleischer’s and Dickerson’s recollections of their conversations won’t be of much use to the defense; either way, Fleischer obviously knew Valerie Wilson was a CIA employee.

For a roundup of today’s coverage, visit the Media Bloggers Association Libby page here, and Media Channel’s Libby page here.

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This post has been updated to reflect intraspecial solidarity.