Free Scooter Libby!

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I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, former Chief of Staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, is on trial for lying under oath during an investigation into CIA employee Valerie Plame Wilson's blown cover.

Mark Wilson / Getty

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But when journalists are threatened, the voices of journalism make no such distinction between good leaks and bad ones. If they did, this one would certainly qualify as a bad leak. The secret it revealed, a U.S. intelligence officer's identity, should have stayed secret. Nor did anyone ever suggest that New York Times reporter Judy Miller should not qualify for protection because she never used the stuff Scooter leaked to her.

Libby is charged with perjury, not with the leak itself. But some might recall that perjury, and not illicit sex, was the charge in the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton a few years ago. And many people--including me--felt that prosecutor Ken Starr had set Clinton up: perjury is not good, but there had been a fundamental unfairness in forcing Clinton to choose between committing perjury and revealing information he should never have been asked for. Libby's case is similar, isn't it? That is, it is similar if you hold to all the theology about the importance of leaks. If leaks are good and must be protected and if we make no distinction between good leaks and bad ones, unofficial leaks and official ones, true leaks and false ones (and the theology makes no such distinctions: all leaks must be protected), then Libby should not have had to testify about whether he had leaked the Plame identity to anyone. And if he had not been asked, he would not now be accused of lying.

If leaks are vital to the freedom of the press, then surely both of the people needed to create a leak--the reporter and the source--deserve protection. If Judy Miller is a martyr of press freedom, then so is Scooter Libby.