Times reporter ordered to testify in leak case

From the New York Times:

"A federal district judge in Washington has ordered a reporter for The New York Times to testify before a grand jury investigating the disclosure of the identity of a covert C.I.A. officer.

In a decision dated Sept. 9 and released yesterday, the judge, Thomas F. Hogan, said the reporter, Judith Miller, must describe any conversations she had with "a specified executive branch official." The judge said Ms. Miller had received subpoenas issued by a special prosecutor investigating "the potentially illegal disclosure of the identity of C.I.A. official Valerie Plame."

"The decision did not name the executive branch official in question. Three journalists who received earlier subpoenas in the inquiry testified about contacts with I. Lewis Libby, the chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney.

In an Op-Ed article in The New York Times on July 6, 2003, Mr. Wilson asserted that President Bush had relied on discredited intelligence when he said, in his State of the Union address in 2003, that Iraq had "sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.''

On July 14, 2003, the syndicated columnist Robert Novak, disclosed Ms. Plame's identity. He wrote that "two administration officials" had told him that Ms. Plame was "an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction." Disclosing the identity of a covert officer for the Central Intelligence Agency can be a crime.

Mr. Wilson has suggested that the White House may have leaked his wife's name as retribution for his criticism of Mr. Bush. "