Plame: CIA leak case rocks US media

"A top US journalist has been jailed in a case that has concerned newsrooms across the nation.

"New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine faced 120 days in prison for refusing to name their sources to an inquiry into the unmasking of a CIA agent.

"Cooper has now said he will testify but Miller refused, in Wednesday's climax to a case dubbed an 'historic showdown' with the government.

"Journalists and media observers have greeted the saga with anger and dismay.

"'The case is particularly outrageous because... [the] prosecutor is training his guns on the wrong culprits,' Robert Kuttner wrote in the Boston Globe on Wednesday."
BBC

July 2003: Valerie Plame's work is revealed by conservative newspaper columnist Robert Novak
Sept 2003: Department of Justice launches probe into allegations that White House staff illegally blew her cover
Feb 2005: Appeals court rules Miller and Cooper must testify about their sources to inquiry
June 2005: Supreme Court refuses to take up the case

(Also from BBC)