In Re Grand Jury Subpoena, Miller

United States Court of Appeals
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued December 8, 2004 Decided February 15, 2005
Reissued February 3, 2006
Reissued June 29, 2007

No. 04-3138

IN RE: GRAND JURY SUBPOENA, JUDITH MILLER

Consolidated with
04-3139, 04-3140

Appeals from the United States District Court
for the District of Columbia
(No. 04mc00407)
(No. 04mc00460)
(No. 04mc00461)

Floyd Abrams argued the cause for appellants. With him on
the briefs was Joel Kurtzberg. Donald J. Mulvihill entered an
appearance.

Reid Alan Cox was on the brief for amicus curiae Center for
Individual Freedom in support of appellants.

Theodore J. Boutrous, Jr. and Thomas H. Dupree, Jr. were
on the brief for amici curiae Magazine Publishers of America,
Inc., et al. in support of appellants.

James P. Fleissner, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the
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cause and filed the brief for appellee.

Before: SENTELLE, HENDERSON and TATEL, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge SENTELLE.

Concurring opinion filed by Circuit Judge SENTELLE.

Concurring opinion filed by Circuit Judge HENDERSON.

Opinion concurring in the judgment filed by Circuit Judge
TATEL.

SENTELLE, Circuit Judge: An investigative reporter for the
New York Times; the White House correspondent for the
weekly news magazine Time; and Time, Inc., the publisher of
Time, appeal from orders of the District Court for the District of
Columbia finding all three appellants in civil contempt for
refusing to give evidence in response to grand jury subpoenas
served by Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald. Appellants
assert that the information concealed by them, specifically the
identity of confidential sources, is protected by a reporter’s
privilege arising from the First Amendment, or failing that, by
federal common law privilege. The District Court held that
neither the First Amendment nor the federal common law
provides protection for journalists’ confidential sources in the
context of a grand jury investigation. For the reasons set forth
below, we agree with the District Court that there is no First
Amendment privilege protecting the evidence sought. We
further conclude that if any such common law privilege exists,
it is not absolute, and in this case has been overcome by the
filings of the Special Counsel with the District Court. We
further conclude that other assignments of error raised by
appellants are without merit. We therefore affirm the decision
of the District Court.
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I. Background

According to the briefs and record before us, the
controversy giving rise to this litigation began with a political
and news media controversy over a sixteen-word sentence in the
State of the Union Address of President George W. Bush on
January 28, 2003. In that address, President Bush stated: “The
British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently
sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” The
ensuing public controversy focused not on the British source of
the alleged information, but rather on the accuracy of the
proposition that Saddam Hussein had sought uranium, a key
ingredient in the development of nuclear weaponry, from Africa.
Many publications on the subject followed. On July 6, 2003, the
New York Times published an op-ed piece by former
Ambassador Joseph Wilson, in which he claimed to have been
sent to Niger in 2002 by the Central Intelligence Agency
(“CIA”) in response to inquiries from Vice President Cheney to
investigate whether Iraq had been seeking to purchase uranium
from Niger. Wilson claimed that he had conducted the
requested investigation and reported on his return that there was
no credible evidence that any such effort had been made.

On July 14, 2003, columnist Robert Novak published a
column in the Chicago Sun-Times in which he asserted that the
decision to send Wilson to Niger had been made “routinely
without Director George Tenet’s knowledge,” and, most
significant to the present litigation, that “two senior
administration officials” told him that Wilson’s selection was at
the suggestion of Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, whom Novak
described as a CIA “operative on weapons of mass destruction.”
Robert Novak, The Mission to Niger, CHI. SUN-TIMES, July 14,
2003, at 31. After Novak’s column was published, various
media accounts reported that other reporters had been told by
government officials that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA
 4

monitoring weapons of mass destruction, and that she was
involved in her husband’s selection for the mission to Niger.
One such article, published by Time.com on July 17, 2003, was
authored in part by appellant Matthew Cooper. That article
stated that:

Some government officials have noted to Time in
interviews . . . that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA
official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction . . . [and] have suggested that she was involved
in the husband’s being dispatched to Niger to investigate
reports that Saddam Hussein’s government had sought to
purchase large quantities of uranium ore . . . .

Matthew Cooper et al., A War on Wilson?, TIME.COM, at
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,465270,00.html
(Dec. 13, 2004). Other media accounts reported that “two top
White House officials called at least six Washington journalists
and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson’s wife.”
Mike Allen & Dana Priest, Bush Administration is Focus of
Inquiry; CIA Agent’s Identity was Leaked to Media, WASH.
POST, Sept. 28, 2003, at A1. The Department of Justice
undertook an investigation into whether government employees
had violated federal law by the unauthorized disclosure of the
identity of a CIA agent. See, e.g., 50 U.S.C. § 421
(criminalizing, inter alia, disclosure of the identity of a covert
agent by anyone having had authorized access to classified
information). As the investigation proceeded, in December of
2003, the Attorney General recused himself from participation
and delegated his full authority in the investigation to the
Deputy Attorney General as Acting Attorney General. The
Deputy, in turn, appointed Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United States
Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, as Special Counsel
and delegated full authority concerning the investigation to him.
As part of the ongoing investigation, a grand jury investigation
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began in January of 2004.

In cooperation with Special Counsel Fitzgerald, the grand
jury conducted an extensive investigation. On May 21, 2004, a
grand jury subpoena was issued to appellant Matthew Cooper,
seeking testimony and documents related to two specific articles
dated July 17, 2003, and July 21, 2003, to which Cooper had
contributed. Cooper refused to comply with the subpoena, even
after the Special Counsel offered to narrow its scope to cover
only conversations between Cooper and a specific individual
identified by the Special Counsel. Instead, Cooper moved to
quash the subpoena on June 3, 2004. On July 6, 2004, the Chief
Judge of the United States District Court for the District of
Columbia denied Cooper’s motion in open court, and confirmed
the denial with reasoning set forth in a written order issued on
July 20, 2004.

A further grand jury subpoena was issued to Time, Inc.,
seeking the same documents requested in the subpoena to
Cooper. Time also moved to quash its subpoena. On August 6,
2004, the District Court denied Time’s motion. Both Cooper
and Time refused to comply with the subpoenas despite the
District Court’s denial of their motions to quash. The District
Court thereafter found that Cooper and Time had refused to
comply with the subpoenas without just cause and held them in
civil contempt of court. After both Cooper and Time had filed
appeals, and further negotiations between Special Counsel and
the two had proceeded, Cooper agreed to provide testimony and
documents relevant to a specific source who had stated that he
had no objection to their release. Cooper and Time fulfilled
their obligations under the agreement, the Special Counsel
moved to vacate the District Court’s contempt order, and the
notices of appeal were voluntarily dismissed.
 6

On September 13, 2004, the grand jury issued a further
subpoena to Cooper seeking “[a]ny and all documents . . .
[relating to] conversations between Matthew Cooper and official
source(s) prior to July 14, 2003, concerning in any way: former
Ambassador Joseph Wilson; the 2002 trip by former
Ambassador Wilson to Niger; Valerie Wilson Plame, a/k/a
Valerie Wilson, a/k/a Valerie Plame (the wife of former
Ambassador Wilson); and/or any affiliation between Valerie
Wilson Plame and the CIA.” An August 2, 2004 subpoena to
Time requested “[a]ll notes, tape recordings, e-mails, or other
documents of Matthew Cooper relating to the July 17, 2003
Time.com article entitled ‘A War on Wilson?’ and the July 21,
2003 Time Magazine article entitled, ‘A Question of Trust.’”
Cooper and Time again moved to quash the subpoenas, and on
October 7, 2004, the District Court denied the motion. The two
refused to comply with the subpoenas, and on October 13, 2004,
the District Court held that their refusal was without just cause
and held both in contempt.

In the meantime, on August 12 and August 14, grand jury
subpoenas were issued to Judith Miller, seeking documents and
testimony related to conversations between her and a specified
government official “occurring from on or about July 6, 2003,
to on or about July 13, 2003, . . . concerning Valerie Plame
Wilson (whether referred to by name or by description as the
wife of Ambassador Wilson) or concerning Iraqi efforts to
obtain uranium.” Miller refused to comply with the subpoenas
and moved to quash them. The District Court denied Miller’s
motion to quash. Thereafter, the court found that Miller had
refused to comply without just cause and held her in civil
contempt of court also. She also has appealed.

The appellants have proceeded with common counsel and
common briefing in a consolidated proceeding before this court.
They assert four theories for reversal. Their first claim is that
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the First Amendment affords journalists a constitutional right to
conceal their confidential sources even against the subpoenas of
grand juries. Secondly, they claim that reporters enjoy an
evidentiary privilege under the common law to conceal
confidential sources. Adjunct to this claim, while denying that
the privilege is less than absolute, they argue that if the privilege
is in fact qualified, the United States has not overcome the
privilege. Thirdly, appellants argue that their due process rights
were violated by the Special Counsel’s ex parte and in camera
submission of evidence to the court to establish that the United
States had overcome any qualified privilege. Finally, they argue
that the Special Counsel failed to comply with Department of
Justice guidelines for the issuance of subpoenas to journalists,
and that the failure to comply is an independent ground for
reversal of their contempt conviction. Finding no grounds for
relief under the First Amendment, due process clause, or
Department of Justice guidelines, and persuaded that any
common law privilege that exists would be overcome in this
case, we affirm the judgment of the District Court for the
reasons set out more fully below.

II. Analysis

A. The First Amendment Claim

In his opinion below, the Chief District Judge held that “a
reporter called to testify before a grand jury regarding
confidential information enjoys no First Amendment
protection.” In Re Special Counsel Investigation, 332 F. Supp.
2d 26, 31 (D.D.C. 2004). Appellants argue that “this proposition
of law is flatly contrary to the great weight of authority in this
and other circuits.” Appellants are wrong. The governing
authority in this case, as the District Court correctly held, comes
not from this or any other circuit, but the Supreme Court of the
United States. In Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665 (1972), the
 8

Highest Court considered and rejected the same claim of First
Amendment privilege on facts materially indistinguishable from
those at bar.

Like the present case, Branzburg was a consolidated
proceeding involving multiple contempt proceedings against
news media defendants. The named petitioner, Branzburg, had
been held in contempt in two related proceedings, arising from
one extended task of investigative journalism. The first arose
from an article published by his employer, a daily newspaper,
describing his observation of two Kentucky residents
synthesizing hashish from marijuana as part of a profitable
illegal drug operation. The article included a photograph “of
hands working above a laboratory table on . . . a substance
identified . . . as hashish.” 408 U.S. at 667. A Kentucky grand
jury subpoenaed the journalist who “refused to identify the
individuals he had seen possessing marihuana or the persons he
had seen making hashish from marihuana.” Id. at 668.
Branzburg claimed privilege both under the First Amendment of
the United States Constitution and various state statutory and
constitutional provisions. He was held in contempt and the
proceeding eventually made its way to the Supreme Court.

The second case involving petitioner Branzburg arose out
of a later article published by the same newspaper describing the
use of drugs in Frankfort, Kentucky. According to the article,
this publication was the product of two weeks spent
interviewing drug users in the area. The article further reported
that its author had seen some of his sources smoking marijuana.
The article related numerous conversations with and
observations of unnamed drug users. Branzburg was again
subpoenaed to appear before a Kentucky grand jury “to testify
in the matter of violation of statutes concerning use and sale of
drugs,” id. at 669 (internal quotation marks omitted). Branzburg
moved to quash the subpoena. The motion was denied. The
 9

journalist sought the protection of the Kentucky Court of
Appeals by way of mandamus and prohibition, claiming “that if
he were forced to go before the grand jury or to answer
questions regarding the identity of informants or disclose
information given him in confidence, his effectiveness as a
reporter would be greatly damaged.” Id. at 670. The Kentucky
courts rejected Branzburg’s claim of a First Amendment
privilege. Again, he petitioned for certiorari in the Supreme
Court.

The consolidated petitions in Branzburg also included In re
Pappas. Petitioner Pappas was a television newsman-
photographer for a Massachusetts television station. On July 30,
1970, during a time of civil unrest in New Bedford,
Massachusetts, he gained entrance to the headquarters of the
Black Panther Party, upon his agreement not to disclose
anything he saw or heard inside the headquarters. Subsequently,
he was subpoenaed to appear before a Massachusetts grand jury.
Although he appeared and answered other questions, he refused
to answer any questions about what had taken place inside the
Black Panther headquarters, “claiming that the First Amendment
afforded him a privilege to protect confidential informants and
their information.” Id. at 673. The Massachusetts trial court
denied his motion to quash made on First Amendment and other
grounds and ruled that the journalist “had no constitutional
privilege to refuse to divulge to the grand jury what he had seen
and heard, including the identity of persons he had observed.”
Id. Like Branzburg, Pappas petitioned for certiorari to the
United States Supreme Court.

In the final petition consolidated in the Branzburg
proceedings, the Court considered the petition for certiorari of
the United States from a decision of the Ninth Circuit Court of
Appeals, Caldwell v. United States, 434 F.2d 1081 (9th Cir.
1970), in which the circuit had recognized a qualified
 10

testimonial privilege for newsmen arising from the First
Amendment and allowing a reporter claiming protection under
the privilege to refuse to testify before a grand jury investigating
allegations of violations of numerous criminal statutes by the
Black Panther Party in California. The reporter in Caldwell had
engaged in investigative journalism directed toward the Black
Panthers at a time when they were suspected of such crimes as
making threats against the President of the United States and a
possible conspiracy to assassinate the President, as well as
interstate travel to incite rioting and the commission of mail
frauds and swindles. He claimed to have obtained information
from confidential informants.

As can be seen from the account of the underlying facts in
Branzburg, there is no material factual distinction between the
petitions before the Supreme Court in Branzburg and the
appeals before us today. Each of the reporters in Branzburg
claimed to have received communications from sources in
confidence, just as the journalists before us claimed to have
done. At least one of the petitioners in Branzburg had witnessed
the commission of crimes. On the record before us, there is at
least sufficient allegation to warrant grand jury inquiry that one
or both journalists received information concerning the identity
of a covert operative of the United States from government
employees acting in violation of the law by making the
disclosure. Each petitioner in Branzburg and each journalist
before us claimed or claims the protection of a First Amendment
reporter’s privilege. The Supreme Court in no uncertain terms
rejected the existence of such a privilege. As we said at the
outset of this discussion, the Supreme Court has already decided
the First Amendment issue before us today.

In rejecting the claim of privilege, the Supreme Court made
its reasoning transparent and forceful. The High Court
recognized that “the grand jury’s authority to subpoena
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witnesses is not only historic . . . but essential to its task.” 408
U.S. at 688 (citation omitted). The grand juries and the courts
operate under the “longstanding principle that ‘the public has a
right to every man’s evidence,’ except for those persons
protected by constitutional, common law, or statutory privilege.”
Id. (citations and internal punctuation omitted). The Court then
noted that “the only testimonial privilege for unofficial
witnesses that is rooted in the Federal Constitution is the Fifth
Amendment privilege against compelled self-incrimination.” Id.
at 689-90. The Court then expressly declined “to create another
by interpreting the First Amendment to grant newsmen a
testimonial privilege that other citizens do not enjoy.” Id. at
690. In language as relevant to the alleged illegal disclosure of
the identity of covert agents as it was to the alleged illegal
processing of hashish, the Court stated that it could not
“seriously entertain the notion that the First Amendment protects
a newsman’s agreement to conceal the criminal conduct of his
source, or evidence thereof, on the theory that it is better to write
about a crime than to do something about it.” Id. at 692.

Lest there be any mistake as to the breadth of the rejection
of the claimed First Amendment privilege, the High Court went
on to recognize that “there remain those situations where a
source is not engaged in criminal conduct but has information
suggesting illegal conduct by others.” Id. at 693. As to this
category of informants, the Court was equally adamant in
rejecting the claim of First Amendment privilege:

[W]e cannot accept the argument that the public interest in
possible future news about crime from undisclosed,
unverified sources must take precedence over the public
interest in pursuing and prosecuting those crimes reported
to the press by informants and in thus deterring the
commission of such crimes in the future.
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Id. at 695.

The Branzburg Court further supported the rejection of this
claimed privilege by the commonsense observation that “it is
obvious that agreements to conceal information relevant to the
commission of crime have very little to recommend them from
the standpoint of public policy.” Id. at 696. While the Court
recognized the right of the press to abide by its agreements not
to publish information that it has, the Court stated unequivocally
that “the right to withhold news is not equivalent to a First
Amendment exemption from an ordinary duty of all other
citizens to furnish relevant information to a grand jury
performing an important public function.” Id. at 697.

We have pressed appellants for some distinction between
the facts before the Supreme Court in Branzburg and those
before us today. They have offered none, nor have we
independently found any. Unquestionably, the Supreme Court
decided in Branzburg that there is no First Amendment privilege
protecting journalists from appearing before a grand jury or
from testifying before a grand jury or otherwise providing
evidence to a grand jury regardless of any confidence promised
by the reporter to any source. The Highest Court has spoken and
never revisited the question. Without doubt, that is the end of
the matter.

Despite the absolute and unreversed answer to the question
of constitutional privilege by the Supreme Court in Branzburg,
appellants nonetheless persist in arguing that the District Court
erred in concluding that journalists subpoenaed to reveal their
confidential sources before federal grand juries enjoy no First
Amendment protection. They base this argument on the
concurring opinion of Justice Powell in Branzburg and a case
from this circuit, Zerilli v. Smith, 656 F.2d 705, 711 (D.C. Cir.
1981). These authorities, either separately or together, provide
 13

no support for the existence of such a privilege protecting
reporters subpoenaed to a grand jury. Appellants’ argument
concerning Justice Powell’s concurrence begins with the fact
that the decision of the Supreme Court was reached by a 5-4
divided Court. Thus, each of the justices joining in the result
was essential to the result. Therefore, appellants argue, it is the
opinion of the least encompassing justice which determines the
precedent set by the decision rather than the decision which
appellants style a “plurality” opinion authored by Justice White.
In support of this proposition, they advance an argument that
first admits that when the opinion of an individual justice is not
needed for a majority his separate opinion is not a gloss giving
authoritative definition to the majority opinion in which he did
not join, but rather is no more than his separate thoughts, and
“the meaning of a majority opinion is to be found within the
opinion itself.” McKoy v. North Carolina, 494 U.S. 433, 448
n.3 (1990) (Blackmun, J., concurring). But, appellants argue,
when the individual justice is needed to constitute the majority,
“the opinion is not a majority except to the extent that it agrees
with his views. What he writes is not a ‘gloss’ but the least
common denominator.” That is to say, the separate opinion
“cannot add to what the majority opinion holds, binding the
other four justices to say what they have not said; but it can
assuredly narrow what the majority opinion holds, by explaining
the more limited interpretation adopted by a necessary member
of that majority . . . .” Id. at 462 n.3 (Scalia, J., joined by
Rehnquist, C.J., and O’Connor, J., dissenting).

Without attempting to resolve any dispute or difference that
may exist between Justice Blackmun and the three dissenting
justices in McKoy, even if we accept Justice Scalia’s analysis at
full value, it does not help appellants in this case. Justice
Powell’s concurring opinion was not the opinion of a justice
who refused to join the majority. He joined the majority by its
terms, rejecting none of Justice White’s reasoning on behalf of
 14

the majority. He wrote separately “to emphasize” what seemed
to him “to be the limited nature of the Court’s holding.” 408
U.S. at 709 (Powell, J., concurring). Justice White’s opinion is
not a plurality opinion of four justices joined by a separate
Justice Powell to create a majority, it is the opinion of the
majority of the Court. As such it is authoritative precedent. It
says what it says. It rejects the privilege asserted by appellants.

Nonetheless, appellants urge that Justice Powell must have
been contemplating the creation or recognition of some further
sort of First Amendment privilege for reporters asserting
confidential sources, else why would he have bothered writing?
To that, the United States replies that by its terms Justice
Powell’s opinion recognizes only that

if the newsman is called upon to give information bearing
only on a remote and tenuous relationship to the subject
investigation, of if he has some other reason to believe that
his testimony implicates confidential source relationships
without a legitimate need of law enforcement, he will have
access to the court on a motion to quash and an appropriate
protective order may be entered.

Id. at 710 (emphasis added).

Therefore, the United States contends, Justice Powell, who
expressed no disagreement with the majority about the existence
of a constitutional privilege, only emphasized that there would
be First Amendment protection in cases of bad faith
investigations. Appellants counter that Justice Powell could not
have meant what the United States argues, as this would have
given reporters no more protection than other citizens.
However, they never make it clear why they are convinced that
Justice Powell must have intended to give reporters more
protection than other citizens. The Constitution protects all
 15

citizens, and there is no reason to believe that Justice Powell
intended to elevate the journalistic class above the rest. Cf.
Branzburg at 690 (“the only testimonial privilege for unofficial
witnesses that is rooted in the Federal Constitution is the Fifth
Amendment privilege against compelled self-incrimination.”).

In any event, whatever Justice Powell specifically intended,
he joined the majority. Not only did he join the majority in
name, but because of his joinder with the rest of a majority, the
Court reached a result that rejected First Amendment privilege
not to testify before the grand jury for reporters situated
precisely like those in the present case. As we noted above,
there is no factual difference between Branzburg and the present
case. If Justice Powell in any way meant to afford more
protection than was afforded by the rest of the majority, that
protection cannot possibly extend to appellants as Branzburg is
directly on point and reached a result in which Justice Powell
joined, rejecting the applicability of constitutional privilege.

Zerilli cannot possibly help appellants, although they assert
that Zerilli, citing Justice Powell’s “deciding vote” in
Branzburg, recognized, at least in dicta, a reporter’s privilege in
civil cases and held that Branzburg was not controlling as to that
issue. Indeed, the Zerilli Court expressly distinguished its case
from Branzburg. “Although Branzburg may limit the scope of
a reporter’s First Amendment privilege in criminal proceedings,
this circuit has previously held that in civil cases, where the
public interest in effective law enforcement is absent, that case
is not controlling.” 656 F.2d at 705. Zerilli has no force in the
present case. Even if Zerilli states the law applicable to civil
cases, this is not a civil case. Zerilli could not subtract from the
Supreme Court’s holding in Branzburg. Zerilli, along with
several other lower court decisions cited by appellants, may
recognize or at least suggest the possibility of privileges under
various circumstances. None of them can change the law
 16

applicable to grand juries as set forth in Branzburg. As the
Supreme Court has told us:

If a precedent of this Court has direct application in a case,
yet appears to rest on reasons rejected in some other line of
decisions, the court of appeals should follow the case which
directly controls, leaving to this Court the prerogative of
overruling its own decisions.

Rodriguez de Quijas v. Shearson/American Express, 490 U.S.
477, 484 (1989). The Supreme Court has not overruled
Branzburg.

B. The Common Law Privilege

Appellants argue that even if there is no First Amendment
privilege protecting their confidential source information, we
should recognize a privilege under federal common law, arguing
that regardless of whether a federal common law privilege
protecting reporters existed in 1972 when Branzburg was
decided, in the intervening years much has changed. While
appellants argue for an absolute privilege under the common
law, they wisely recognize the possibility that a court not
recognizing such an absolute privilege might nonetheless find a
qualified privilege. They therefore also argue that if there is a
qualified privilege, then the government has not overcome that
qualified privilege. The Court is not of one mind on the
existence of a common law privilege. Judge Sentelle would
hold that there is no such common law privilege for reasons set
forth in a separate opinion. Judge Tatel would hold that there is
such a common law privilege. Judge Henderson believes that
we need not, and therefore should not, reach that question.
However, all believe that if there is any such privilege, it is not
absolute and may be overcome by an appropriate showing. All
further believe, for the reasons set forth in the separate opinion
 17

of Judge Tatel, that if such a privilege applies here, it has been
overcome. Therefore, the common law privilege, even if one
exists, does not warrant reversal.

C. The Due Process Argument

While appellants insist that their privilege is absolute, they
assert a secondary line of argument that if their privilege is
conditional, then their due process rights have been violated by
the refusal of the Special Counsel and the District Court to
provide them access to the Special Counsel’s secret evidentiary
submissions in support of the enforcement of the subpoenas.
This argument is without merit. As appellants themselves admit
in their brief, this circuit has recognized that “a district court can
ensure that [grand jury] secrecy is protected by provisions for
sealed, or when necessary ex parte, filings.” In re Grand Jury,
121 F.3d 729, 757 (D.C. Cir. 1997). Indeed, the rule of grand
jury secrecy is so well established that we have noted that
“[t]here is a plethora of authority recognizing that the grand jury
context presents an unusual setting where privacy and secrecy
are the norm.” In re Sealed Case, 199 F.3d 522, 526 (D.C. Cir.
2000) (collecting authorities).

As the Supreme Court has reminded us on occasion, “the
grand jury is an institution separate from the courts.” United
States v. Williams, 504 U.S. 36, 47 (1992). The function of that
separate institution is to “serv[e] as a kind of buffer or referee
between the government and the people.” Id. The function of
the grand jury “depends on ‘maintaining the secrecy of the grand
jury proceedings in the federal courts.’” In re Sealed Case, 199
F.3d at 526 (quoting United States v. Procter & Gamble Co.,
356 U.S. 677, 681 (1958)). The authorities collected in In re
Sealed Case recite the broad variety of circumstances in which
the courts have upheld this grand jury secrecy, a secrecy that has
been the persistent rule for grand jury proceedings for at least
 18

four hundred years. See Douglas Oil v. Petrol Stops Northwest,
441 U.S. 211, 218 n.9 (1979) (“Since the 17th century, grand
jury proceedings have been closed to the public, and records of
such proceedings have been kept from the public eye.”).

In the Douglas Oil decision, the Supreme Court catalogs
multiple reasons for preserving the ancient secrecy of the grand
jury:

(1) disclosure of pre-indictment proceedings would make
many prospective witnesses “hesitant to come forward
voluntarily, knowing that those against whom they testify
would be aware of that testimony”; (2) witnesses who did
appear “would be less likely to testify fully and frankly as
they would be open to retribution as well as inducements”;
and (3) there “would be the risk that those about to be
indicted would flee or would try to influence individual
grand jurors to vote against indictment.”

In re North (Omnibus Order), 16 F.3d 1234, 1242 (D.C. Cir.,
Spec. Div., 1994) (quoting Douglas Oil Co., 441 U.S. at 218-
19).

Appellants have offered nothing to take the present grand
jury investigation outside the general rule, let alone elevate their
objections to constitutional due process status. Indeed,
appellants’ argument is principally built around a case from
another circuit never authoritative here, no longer authoritative
in the circuit of its origin, and distinguishable on its facts from
the beginning. In United States v. Dinsio, 468 F.2d 1392 (9th
Cir. 1973), the court ruled that a defendant who had been held
in contempt for refusing to furnish finger and palm print
exemplars to a federal grand jury was deprived of her due
process rights when the district court refused to let her inspect
an ex parte government affidavit upon which the court had
 19

determined that the grand jury’s request was reasonable. The
Ninth Circuit itself has since declared that “to the extent that our
decision in United States v. Dinsio . . . may be considered to
support the witness in his refusal to cooperate, it has been
superseded by United States v. Mara [410 U.S. 19 (1973)], and
United States v. Dionisio, 410 U.S. 1 (1973).” In re Braughton,
520 F.2d 765, 767 (9th Cir. 1975). The Ninth Circuit went on
to say “nothing in the law of this circuit now requires a court to
interrupt a grand jury while a recalcitrant witness produces a
series of mini trials challenging the reasonableness of the
government’s efforts to obtain fingerprint, voice, or handwriting
exemplars or the relevance of such exemplars to the
government’s case.” Id.

Similarly, Dinsio was never the law of this circuit, just as it
is no longer the law of the Ninth Circuit, and nothing in the law
of the District of Columbia Circuit requires or has ever required
a district court to interrupt the grand jury while a recalcitrant
witness enjoys a series of mini trials over his access to materials
cloaked by grand jury secrecy.

Assuming for the sake of this case that the general rule of
grand jury secrecy is not sufficient to justify the District Court’s
use of in camera and ex parte proceedings, we further note that
we have approved the use of such a procedure in other cases
raising privilege claims. In In re Sealed Case No. 98-377, 151
F.3d 1059 (D.C. Cir. 1998), a case, like this one, involving the
use of in camera and ex parte proceedings in the context of a
Rule 6(e) motion by the government, we upheld their use, and
in so doing, relied, at least in part, on precedent established in
privilege analysis. We observed there that “courts often use in
camera, ex parte proceedings to determine the propriety of a
crime fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege when such
proceedings are necessary to ensure the secrecy of ongoing
grand jury proceedings.” Id. at 1075 (citing In re Grand Jury,
 20

103 F.3d 1140, 1145 (3d Cir.), cert. denied sub nom. Roe v.
United States, 520 U.S. 1253 (1997)). Having previously noted
the propriety of the procedures to protect the well-established
attorney-client privilege, we are persuaded that a similar
protection of grand jury secrecy is appropriate to protect
whatever privilege, if any, may exist between a reporter and a
confidential source.

We affirm the District Court’s ruling on the maintenance of
the seal of grand jury secrecy.

D. Department of Justice Guidelines

In their final argument for reversal of the District Court’s
contempt finding, appellants contend that the Special Counsel
did not comply with the Department of Justice guidelines for
issuing subpoenas to news media and that such failure provides
an independent basis for reversal. The District Court expressed
its doubt that the DOJ guidelines were enforceable, but found
that even if they were, Special Counsel had fully complied with
the guidelines. Because we conclude that the guidelines create
no enforceable right, we need not reach the question of the
Special Counsel’s compliance.

The guidelines in question are set forth in 28 C.F.R. § 50.10
and the United States Attorney’s Manual, § 9-2.161. Those
guidelines provide that subpoenas for testimony by news media
must be approved by the Attorney General, a requirement not
pertinent in the present case as the Special Counsel had received
delegation of all the Attorney General’s authority, and should
meet the following standards:

(a) “In criminal cases, there should be reasonable grounds
to believe, based on information obtained from
nonmedia sources, that a crime has occurred, and that
 21

the information sought is essential to a successful
investigation–particularly with reference to
establishing guilt or innocence. The subpoena should
not be used to obtain peripheral, nonessential, or
speculative information.” 28 C.F.R. § 50.10(f)(1).

(b) Before issuing a subpoena to a member of the news
media, all reasonable efforts should be made to obtain
the desired information from alternative sources. Id. at
§§ 50.10(b), 50.10(f)(3);

(c) Wherever possible, subpoenas should be directed at
information regarding a limited subject matter and a
reasonably limited period of time. Subpoenas should
avoid requiring production of a large volume of
unpublished materials and provide reasonable notice of
the demand for documents. Id. at § 50.10(f)(6);

(d) “The use of subpoenas to members of the news media
should, except under exigent circumstances, be limited
to the verification of published information and to such
surrounding circumstances as relate to the accuracy of
the published information.” Id. at § 50.10(f)(4); and

(e) When issuance of a subpoena to a member of the
media is contemplated, the government shall pursue
negotiations with the relevant media organization. The
negotiations should seek accommodation of the
interests of the grand jury and the media. Where the
nature of the investigation permits, the government
should make clear what its needs are in a particular
case as well as its willingness to respond to particular
problems of the media. Id. at § 50.10(c).
 22

However, as the District Court correctly observed, the guidelines
expressly state that they do “not create or recognize any legally
enforceable right in any person.” Id. at § 50.10(n). This
reservation has been upheld by several federal appellate and
district courts. See In re Special Proceedings, 373 F.3d 37, 44
n.3 (1st Cir. 2004) (noting that DOJ guidelines state that they do
not create legally enforceable rights); In re Grand Jury
Subpoena American Broadcasting Companies, Inc., 947 F.
Supp. 1314, 1322 (D. Ark. 1996) (declining to quash subpoena
based on failure to comply with DOJ regulations, on ground that
regulations, by their own terms, confer no rights on media
witnesses). See also In re Grand Jury Proceedings No. 92-4, 42
F.3d 876, 880 (4th Cir. 1994) (holding that special prosecutor’s
failure to comply with guidelines regarding issuance of
subpoenas to attorney, even if applicable, were not enforceable
by witness through motion to quash). The guidelines, not
required by any constitutional or statutory provision, see In re
Special Proceedings, 373 F.3d at 44 n.3, exist to guide the
Department’s exercise of its discretion in determining whether
and when to seek the issuance of subpoenas to reporters, not to
confer substantive or procedural benefits upon individual media
personnel. See In re Shain, 978 F.2d 850, 853 (4th Cir. 1992)
(holding reporters have no right to seek enforcement of DOJ
guidelines before being compelled to testify) (citing United
States v. Caceres, 440 U.S. 741 (1979) (exclusionary rule not
applicable to evidence obtained in violation of internal IRS
regulations governing electronic surveillance)); In re Grand
Jury Proceedings No. 92-4, 42 F.3d at 880 (following In re
Shain, 978 F.2d at 854).

Appellants rely on Morton v. Ruiz, 415 U.S. 199 (1974). In
that case, the Supreme Court stated that “where the rights of
individuals are affected, it is incumbent upon agencies to follow
their own procedures. This is so even where the internal
procedures are possibly more rigorous than otherwise would be
 23

required.” Id. at 235.

Ruiz, however, is distinguishable. Regulations considered
by the Court in that case required the publication of directives
that “inform the public of privileges and benefits available and
of eligibility requirements.” Id. (quotation marks omitted). The
Supreme Court found that the publication requirement was
intended to benefit potential beneficiaries and therefore
invalidated a Bureau of Indian Affairs attempt to limit general
assistance benefits to otherwise eligible beneficiaries based on
an unpublished eligibility requirement. This reasoning has no
applicability to the guidelines before us.

It is well established that the exercise of prosecutorial
discretion is at the very core of the executive function. Courts
consistently hesitate to attempt a review of the executive’s
exercise of that function. See, e.g., United States v. Armstrong,
517 U.S. 456, 464-65 (1996). Federal prosecutors have “broad
discretion to enforce the Nation’s criminal laws.” Id. at 464
(internal punctuation and citations omitted). The prosecutor’s
discretion arises from their designation “as the President’s
delegates to help him discharge his constitutional responsibility
to ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed.’” Id. (quoting
U.S. CONST. art. II, § 3). Given the nature of the guidelines
themselves, and the function they govern, we conclude that the
guidelines provide no enforceable rights to any individuals, but
merely guide the discretion of the prosecutors. We therefore
need not reach the question of the Special Counsel’s compliance
with the guidelines, and again we affirm the decision of the
District Court.

III. Conclusion

For the reasons set forth above, the judgment of the District
Court is affirmed.
 SENTELLE, Circuit Judge, concurring: As noted in the
opinion of the court, I write separately to express my differing
basis for affirming the District Court on the common law
privilege issue. I would hold that reporters refusing to testify
before grand juries as to their “confidential sources” enjoy no
common law privilege beyond the protection against harassing
grand juries conducting groundless investigations that is
available to all other citizens. While I understand, and do not
actually disagree with, the conclusion of my colleagues that any
such privilege enjoyed by the reporters has been overcome by
the showing of the United States, and that we therefore need not
determine whether such privilege exists, I find this ordering of
issues a bit disturbing. To me, the question of the existence of
such privilege vel non is logically anterior to the quantum of
proof necessary to overcome it. While I understand Judge
Henderson’s theory that she cannot support a privilege afforded
by the common law which would not be overcome by the
quantum of proof offered by the government, I think it more
logical to not reach the quantum question in the absence of a
determination as to the existence of the privilege than to proceed
the other way around.1 That said, I fully join the conclusion that
we should affirm the District Court’s decision to hold the
appellants in contempt, unswayed by their claim of protection of
common law privilege. I write separately only to explain my
reasons for rejecting the theory that such a privilege is known to
the common law.

I base my rejection of the common law privilege theory on
foundations of precedent, policy, and separation of powers. As
to precedent, I find Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665 (1972), to
be as dispositive of the question of common law privilege as it
is of a First Amendment privilege. While Branzburg generally
is cited for its constitutional implications, the Branzburg Court
repeatedly discussed the privilege question in common law
terms as well as constitutional. Indeed, the majority opinion by

1
See Opinion of Judge Tatel at pp. 5-9.
 2

Justice White includes the phrase “common law” no fewer than
eight times. More significant than the fact that the Court
frequently spoke of the common law is what the Court had to
say about it: “at common law, courts consistently refuse to
recognize the existence of any privilege authorizing a newsman
to refuse to reveal confidential information to a grand jury.” Id.
at 685 (collecting cases).

At page 688, the Court continued, “although the powers of
the grand jury are not unlimited and are subject to the
supervision of a judge, the longstanding principle that ‘the
public . . . has a right to every man’s evidence,’ except for those
persons protected by a constitutional, common law, or statutory
privilege . . . is particularly applicable to grand jury
proceedings.” (emphasis added) (citations omitted).
Significantly, the Court made this statement in the course of
holding the journalists litigating before it unprotected by
privilege against contempt citations. Granted, the Court
expressly held that it was not about to create a new
“constitutional” privilege. But in the same paragraph with that
rejection it expressly discusses the possible protection of
common law and in the end reaches a result that leaves the
reporters unprotected. I think it therefore indisputable that the
High Court rejected a common law privilege in the same breath
as its rejection of such a privilege based on the First
Amendment. Especially is this so when we consider that it
makes little sense to assume that the Court first reached out to
take a constitutional question it would not have needed to
answer had there been such a common law privilege, and then
proceeded to answer that question in such a fashion as to reach
a result upholding contempt citations and reversing vacation of
such citations.2

2
By way of comparison, under the constitutional avoidance
doctrine, the Supreme Court counsels courts “to adopt constructions
 3

Because the Supreme Court rejected the common law
privilege, I think it would be at least presumptuous if not
overreaching for us to now adopt the privilege. As the opinion
of the court notes, “the Supreme Court has told us:

If a precedent of this Court has direct application in a case,
yet appears to rest on reasons rejected in some other line of
decisions, the court of appeals should follow the case which
directly controls, leaving to this Court the prerogative of
overruling its own decisions.”

Maj. Op. at 16 (quoting Rodriguez de Quijas v.
Shearson/American Express, 490 U.S. 477, 484 (1989)).

The Supreme Court has rejected a common law privilege
for reporters subpoenaed to give evidence to grand juries. In my
view that rejection stands unless and until the Supreme Court
itself overrules that part of Branzburg. Although the appellants
argue that other changes in the law since Branzburg should lead
to an opposite result, I think that argument should appropriately
be made to the Supreme Court, not the lower courts.3

Even if appellants are correct that we would have the power

of statutes to ‘avoid decision of constitutional questions,’ not to
deliberately create constitutional questions.” See, e.g., McConnell v.
Federal Election Commission, 540 U.S. 93, 180 (2003); United States
v. 37 Photographs, 402 U.S. 363, 373 (1971), United States ex rel.
Attorney General v. Delaware and Hudson Co., 213 U.S. 366, 407
(1909); Ashwander v. Tennessee Valley Authority, 297 U.S. 288, 341
(1936) (Brandeis, J., concurring).
3
I wish to make it plain that I do not fault the appellants for
making the argument, understanding that they must if they wish to
preserve it for Supreme Court review. Nonetheless, I think it is only
the High Court and not this one that may act upon that argument.
 4

to adopt such a privilege in the face of the Branzburg precedent,
I nonetheless would not accept that invitation. Appellants’
argument for our authority to adopt the new privilege begins
with the Federal Rules of Evidence. Rule 501, enacted by
Congress in the Federal Rules of Evidence in 1975, three years
after Branzburg, rejected an enumeration of specific federal
privileges and provided that privileges in federal criminal cases
“shall be governed by the principles of the common law as they
may be interpreted by the courts of the United States in the light
of reason and experience.” Although the rules became effective
after Branzburg, Rule 501 does not effect any change in the
authority of federal courts to adopt evidentiary privileges.
Before the enactment of the Federal Rules of Evidence, the
authority of the federal courts to adopt common law privileges
was governed by case law. The relevant case law provided for
precisely the same authority as Congress enacted in the rules.
Indeed, the language of the rule is drawn directly from case law
governing at the time of Branzburg. The Supreme Court
expressly held in Wolfle v. United States, 291 U.S. 7 (1934), that

the rules governing the competence of witnesses in criminal
trials in the federal courts are not necessarily restricted to
those local rules enforced at the time of the admission into
the union of the particular state where the trial takes place,
but are governed by common law principles as interpreted
and applied by the federal courts in the light of reason and
experience.

291 U.S. 7, 12 (1934) (citing Funk v. United States, 290 U.S.
371 (1933)) (emphasis added). Given the venerable origins of
the language used in Rule 501, it cannot be said that the courts
have more power to adopt privileges today than at the time of
Branzburg. The power is precisely the same. Thus, the
enactment of Rule 501 cannot by itself work any change in the
law which should empower us to depart from the Supreme
 5

Court’s clear precedent in Branzburg.

Appellants persist, however, that the state of the common
law has changed sufficiently to warrant a new approach. By
appellants’ count, at the time of the Branzburg decision, only
seventeen states had enacted what appellants refer to as “shield
laws” to protect journalists from forced disclosure of
confidential sources or newsgathering materials, while today,
thirty-one states (plus the District of Columbia) have such
statutes.4 Nonetheless, I think it remains the prerogative of the
Supreme Court rather than inferior federal tribunals to determine
whether these changes are sufficient to warrant an overruling of
the Court’s rejection of such a common law privilege in
Branzburg.

Furthermore, even if we are authorized to make that
decision, reasons of policy and separation of powers counsel
against our exercising that authority. While I concede that the
adoption of the “shield” by legislation rather than judicial fiat
does not prevent the change being considered by the courts in
assessing the common law, I find the adoption of the privilege
by the legislatures of the states instructive as to how the federal
government should proceed, if at all, to adopt the privilege. The
statutes differ greatly as to the scope of the privilege, and as to
the identity of persons entitled to the protection of the privilege.

4
The fact that the adoption has been by legislation rather than
court decision does not deprive the change in law of common law
force. As the Supreme Court has noted, “the policy decisions of the
states bear on the question whether federal courts should recognize a
new privilege or amend the coverage of an existing one[,]” and further
has told us that “it is of no consequence that recognition of the
privilege in the vast majority of the states is the product of legislative
action rather than judicial decision.” Jaffee v. Redmond, 518 U.S. 1,
12-13 (1996).
 6

We have alluded in the majority opinion to the differing
decisions of courts as to civil, criminal, and grand jury
proceedings. There is also a more fundamental policy question
involved in the crafting of such a privilege.

The Supreme Court itself in Branzburg noted the difficult
and vexing nature of this question, observing that applying such
privilege would make it

necessary to define those categories of newsmen who
qualify for the privilege, a questionable procedure in light
of the traditional doctrine that liberty of the press is the
right of the lonely pamphleteer who uses carbon paper or a
mimeograph just as much as of the large metropolitan
publisher who utilizes the latest photocomposition methods.

408 U.S. at 704. The Supreme Court went on to observe that
“freedom of the press is a ‘fundamental personal right . . . not
confined to newspapers and periodicals. It necessarily embraces
pamphlets and leaflets . . . . The press in its historic connotation
comprehends every sort of publication which affords a vehicle
of information and opinion.’” Id. (quoting Lovell v. Griffin, 304
U.S. 444, 450, 452 (1938)). Are we then to create a privilege
that protects only those reporters employed by Time Magazine,
the New York Times, and other media giants, or do we extend
that protection as well to the owner of a desktop printer
producing a weekly newsletter to inform his neighbors, lodge
brothers, co-religionists, or co-conspirators? Perhaps more to
the point today, does the privilege also protect the proprietor of
a web log: the stereotypical “blogger” sitting in his pajamas at
his personal computer posting on the World Wide Web his best
product to inform whoever happens to browse his way? If not,
why not? How could one draw a distinction consistent with the
court’s vision of a broadly granted personal right? If so, then
would it not be possible for a government official wishing to
 7

engage in the sort of unlawful leaking under investigation in the
present controversy to call a trusted friend or a political ally,
advise him to set up a web log (which I understand takes about
three minutes) and then leak to him under a promise of
confidentiality the information which the law forbids the official
to disclose?

The state legislatures have dealt with this vexing question
of entitlement to the privilege in a variety of ways. Some are
quite restrictive. Alabama limits its protection to “person[s]
engaged in, connected with, or employed on any newspaper,
radio broadcasting station or television station, while engaged in
a newsgathering capacity.” ALA. CODE § 12-21-142. Alaska’s
statutes protect only the “reporter,” a category limited to
“person[s] regularly engaged in the business of collecting or
writing news for publication or presentation to the public,
through a news organization.” ALASKA STAT. § 09.25.300. The
statutory privilege in Arizona protects “a person engaged in
newspaper, radio, television or reportorial work, or connected
with or employed by a newspaper or radio or television station
. . . .” ARIZ. REV. STAT. § 12-2237. Arkansas’s legislature has
declared the privilege applicable to “any editor, reporter, or
other writer for any newspaper, periodical, or radio station, or
publisher of any newspaper or periodical, or manager or owner
of any radio station . . . .” ARK. CODE ANN. § 16-85-510.
Delaware is perhaps the most specific, protecting a “reporter,”
which

means any journalist, scholar, educator, polemicist, or other
individual who either: (a) At the time he or she obtained the
information that is sought was earning his or her principal
livelihood by, or in each of the preceding 3 weeks or 4 of
the preceding 8 weeks had spent at least 20 hours engaged
in the practice of, obtaining or preparing information for
dissemination with the aid of facilities for the mass
 8

reproduction of words, sounds, or images in a form
available to the general public; or (b) Obtained the
information that is sought while serving in the capacity of
an agent, assistant, employee, or supervisor of an individual
who qualifies as a reporter under subparagraph a.

DEL. CODE ANN. tit. 10 § 4320. Presumably, states such as
these would provide the privilege only to the “established”
press.

Others are quite inclusive. The Nebraska legislature, for
example, has declared:

(1) That the policy of the State of Nebraska is to insure the
free flow of news and other information to the public, and
that those who gather, write, or edit information for the
public or disseminate information to the public may
perform these vital functions only in a free and unfettered
atmosphere; (2) That such persons shall not be inhibited,
directly or indirectly, by governmental restraint or sanction
imposed by governmental process, but rather that they shall
be encouraged to gather, write, edit, or disseminate news or
other information vigorously so that the public may be fully
informed.

NEB. REV. STAT. § 20-144. To that end, it protects any “medium
of communication” which term “shall include, but not be limited
to, any newspaper, magazine, other periodical, book, pamphlet,
news service, wire service, news or feature syndicate, broadcast
station or network, or cable television system.” Id. at § 20-
145(2) (emphasis added).

In defining the persons protected by that privilege,
Nebraska tells us that “Person shall mean any individual,
partnership, limited liability company, corporation, association,
 9

or other legal entity existing under or authorized by the law of
the United States, any state or possession of the United States,
the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, or
any foreign country.” Id. at 20-145(7). Presumably, then,
Nebraska, perhaps more in keeping with the spirit of the recent
revolutionaries who gave us the First Amendment, protects the
pamphleteer at the rented printer, and the blogger at the PC, as
well as the giant corporation with its New York publishing
house.

The variety of legislative choices among the states only
serves to heighten the concern expressed by the majority in
Branzburg. See 408 U.S. at 704. This concern is reinforced by
examination of the Jaffee decision, upon which appellants rely.
In Jaffee, the Supreme Court extended a federal privilege “to
confidential communications made to licensed social workers in
the course of psychotherapy.” 518 U.S. at 15. There is little
definitional problem with the application of this privilege. The
court need only ask: Does this “social worker” have a license?
If the answer is “yes,” then the privilege applies; if it’s “no,” the
privilege does not. If the courts extend the privilege only to a
defined group of reporters, are we in danger of creating a
“licensed” or “established” press? If we do so, have we run
afoul of the breadth of the freedom of the press, that
“fundamental personal right” for which the Court in Branzburg
expressed its concern? 408 U.S. at 704. Conversely, if we
extend that privilege to the easily created blog, or the ill-defined
pamphleteer, have we defeated legitimate investigative ends of
grand juries in cases like the leak of intelligence involved in the
present investigation?

Nor does the identity of the protected persons constitute the
only difficult policy decision. Branzburg enumerates several
concerns. For example, does “the public interest in possible
future news about crime from undisclosed, unverified sources
 10

. . . take precedence over the public interest in pursuing and
prosecuting those crimes reported to the press by informants and
in thus deterring the commission of such crimes in the future”?
Id. at 695. Do “agreements to conceal information relevant to
the commission of crime avail little to recommend them from
the standpoint of public policy”? Id. at 696. What are we to do
with the historic common law recognition of “a duty to raise the
‘hue and cry’ and report felonies to the authorities”? Id. (see
also authorities collected in id. at 696 n.34). Should we be
creating immunity from prosecution for “misprision” of a
felony–that is, the concealment of a felony? Id. at 696.

Should the privilege be absolute or limited? If limited, how
limited? Without attempting to catalog, I note that the state
statutes provide a variety of answers to that policy question.
Therefore, if such a decision requires the resolution of so many
difficult policy questions, many of them beyond the normal
compass of a single case or controversy such as those with
which the courts regularly deal, doesn’t that decision smack of
legislation more than adjudication? Here, I think the experience
of the states is most instructive. The creation of a reporter’s
privilege, if it is to be done at all, looks more like a legislative
than an adjudicative decision. I suggest that the media as a
whole, or at least those elements of the media concerned about
this privilege, would better address those concerns to the Article
I legislative branch for presentment to the Article II executive
than to the Article III courts.

For all the reasons set forth above, I would hold that there
is no common law privilege protecting reporters or any other
news media personnel, no matter how defined, from the reach of
grand jury subpoenas on claim of confidentiality.
 HENDERSON, Circuit Judge, concurring: I write separately to
emphasize that adherence to the principle of judicial
restraint—patience in judicial decision-making—would produce
a better result in II.B of the majority opinion. Because my
colleagues and I agree that any federal common-law reporter’s
privilege that may exist is not absolute and that the Special
Counsel’s evidence defeats whatever privilege we may fashion,
we need not, and therefore should not, decide anything more
today than that the Special Counsel’s evidentiary proffer
overcomes any hurdle, however high, a federal common-law
reporter’s privilege may erect.
In our circuit it is a venerable practice, and one frequently
observed, to assume arguendo the answer to one question—e.g.,
whether to recognize a federal common-law reporter’s
privilege—in order to resolve a given case by answering another
and equally dispositive one—e.g., whether any privilege would
protect these reporters.1 Although both of my colleagues

1
See, e.g., Dir., Office of Thrift Supervision v. Vinson & Elkins,
LLP, 124 F.3d 1304, 1308 (D.C. Cir. 1997) (because appellant failed
to show sufficient need for attorney interview notes, court “save[d] for
another day” “difficult matters” of determining “degree of selection
necessary to transform facts into opinions and the standard of review
we should employ of a district court determination” regarding
discovery of attorney work product); Littlewolf v. Lujan, 877 F.2d
1058, 1065 (D.C. Cir. 1989) (“find[ing] it unnecessary to address the
difficult questions raised by appellants regarding the Due Process
adequacy of the period provided by the Act” because “[e]ven if we
assume arguendo that the six-month limitations period is unreasonably
short and that, as a consequence, the Act effectively ‘takes’ the Band
members’ property rights, we conclude that the statute provides the
Indians with just compensation”); cf. Michel v. INS, 206 F.3d 253, 260
n.4 (2d Cir. 2000) (“Where . . . no harm results from our failing to
answer a question, we believe that the ‘doctrine of judicial restraint
provides a fully adequate justification for deciding [the] case on the
best and narrowest ground available.’” (quoting Air Courier
Conference of Am. v. Am. Postal Workers Union, 498 U.S. 517, 531
(1991) (Stevens, J., concurring in judgment))).
 2

question the logic of this approach here, it is a mode of decision-
making they themselves have often used.2 In this case, however,

2
See, e.g., Tradesmen Int’l, Inc. v. NLRB, 275 F.3d 1137, 1142
(D.C. Cir. 2002) (Sentelle, J.) (assuming union organizer’s activity
constituted “concerted activity” under 29 U.S.C. § 157 but holding it
was not protected under statute); Jackson v. Dist. of Columbia, 254
F.3d 262, 265 (D.C. Cir. 2001) (Tatel, J.) (“continu[ing]” assumption
that Religious Freedom Restoration Act applies to federal government
and holding prisoners failed to exhaust administrative remedies);
Carney v. Am. Univ., 151 F.3d 1090, 1094-95 (D.C. Cir. 1998) (Tatel,
J.) (assuming without deciding retaliation violates 42 U.S.C. § 1981
and remanding claim for trial); Massachusetts. v. United States Dep’t
of Transp., 93 F.3d 890, 892 (D.C. Cir. 1996) (Sentelle, J.) (“We need
not determine whether an agency’s interpretation of a statute on the
preemption question is subject to Chevron analysis in order to decide
this case, as the agency’s determination here cannot be upheld with or
without deference.”).
Judge Tatel distinguishes these cases by concluding that their
analysis cannot be used to avoid the “dispositive” issue in this case.
Tatel Slip Op. at 8. There are, however, only three ways of answering
the question whether these reporters’ confidential source information
is protected by a federal common-law privilege: (1) there is no
privilege, (2) there is an absolute privilege and (3) there is a qualified
privilege. None of us, including the reporters in their brief, would
choose door number two, see Tatel Slip Op. at 19; Appellants’ Br. at
42, and only one of us heads for door number one, see Sentelle Slip
Op. at 1. That leaves door number three. But in choosing this route,
the critical question is not definitional, as Judge Tatel sees it, see Tatel
Slip Op. at 8, but quantitative: Is the Special Counsel’s evidentiary
proffer sufficient to overcome any qualified privilege that may exist?
Because we agree that the answer is “yes,” there is no need for us to
go any further. Granted, the circumstances of the cited cases differ but
they use the same analysis. Moreover, its application here is
consistent with the tried and true principle that “[w]here . . . no harm
results from our failing to answer a question, . . . the ‘doctrine of
judicial restraint provides a fully adequate justification for deciding
 3

they employ two divergent forms of “wide-angle adjudication.”
See Harry T. Edwards, The Role of the Judge in Modern Society:
Some Reflections on Current Practices in Federal Appellate
Adjudication, 32 CLEV. ST . L. REV. 385, 414 (1983-84). Judge
Sentelle would hold that a reporter enjoys no federal common-
law privilege to refuse to provide a bona fide grand jury with
relevant documents and testimony while Judge Tatel would fix
the contours of a qualified reporter’s privilege by using a novel
multi-factor balancing test only to conclude that it helps these
reporters not at all. 3
While I am convinced that we need not, and therefore should
not, go further than to conclude, as did the district court, see
Appendix 35-36, 275, that the Special Counsel’s showing
decides the case, I feel compelled to comment briefly on my
colleagues’ opposing conclusions if only to make clear why I
think it unwise to advance either of them. I cannot agree with
Judge Sentelle’s conclusion that the United States Supreme

[the] case on the best and narrowest ground available.’” Michel, 206
F.3d at 260 n.4 (quoting Air Courier Conference of Am., 498 U.S. at
531 (Stevens, J., concurring in judgment)); see supra note 2.
3
Judge Tatel maintains that “[f]or the sake of reporters and
sources,” we must establish the contours of a privilege in order to
“clarify the rules governing their relationship.” Tatel Slip Op. at 9.
But the press’s collection of information, including from confidential
sources, seems to me near impervious to regulation: “[E]xperience
teaches us more than sufficiently that men have nothing less in their
power than their tongue . . . .” BENEDICT DE SPINOZ A , E T HICS 168
(G.H.R. Parkinson ed. & trans., Oxford Univ. Press 2000); cf.
STANLEY WALKER, CITY EDIT OR 44 (Johns Hopkins Univ. Press
1999) (1934) (“Women, wampum, and wrongdoing are always
news.”). As the Branzburg Court recognized, “the relationship of
many informants to the press is a symbiotic one which is unlikely to
be greatly inhibited by the threat of subpoena.” 408 U.S. 665, 694
(1972).
 4

Court has answered the question we now avoid. Branzburg v.
Hayes addressed only “whether requiring newsmen to appear
and testify before state or federal grand juries abridges the
freedom of speech and press guaranteed by the First
Amendment” and “h[e]ld that it does not.” 408 U.S. 665, 667
(1972) (emphases added). The boundaries of constitutional law
and common law do not necessarily coincide, however, and
while we are unquestionably bound by Branzburg’s rejection of
a reporter’s privilege rooted in the First Amendment, we are not
bound by Branzburg’s commentary on the state of the common
law in 1972. Federal Rule of Evidence 501, which came into
being nearly three years after Branzburg, authorizes federal
courts to develop testimonial privileges “in the light of reason
and experience,” allowing for the often evolving state of the
common law. See FED . R. EVID. 501; Trammel v. United States,
445 U.S. 40, 47 (1980) (“In rejecting the proposed Rules and
enacting Rule 501, Congress manifested an affirmative intention
not to freeze the law of privilege.”); id. (“The Federal Rules of
Evidence acknowledge the authority of the federal courts to
continue the evolutionary development of testimonial
privileges.”). Judge Sentelle’s view also discounts the fact that,
even as they rejected a reporter’s First Amendment right to
withhold testimony from a bona fide grand jury, both the
Branzburg majority opinion as well as Justice Powell’s separate
concurrence hint ambiguously at the existence of some special
protection for reporters stemming from their significant role in
sustaining our republican form of government.4

4
See Branzburg, 408 U.S. at 708 (“[N]ews gathering is not without
its First Amendment protections, and grand jury investigations if
instituted or conducted other than in good faith, would pose wholly
different issues for resolution under the First Amendment.”); id. at 710
(“The asserted claim to privilege should be judged on its facts by the
striking of a proper balance between freedom of the press and the
obligation of all citizens to give relevant testimony with respect to
 5

At the same time, I am far less eager a federal common-law
pioneer than Judge Tatel as I find less comfort than he in riding
Jaffee v. Redmond, 518 U.S. 1 (1996), into the testimonial
privilege frontier. Just as Rule 501 imposes no “freeze” on the
development of the common law, see Univ. of Penn. v. EEOC,
493 U.S. 182, 189 (1990); Trammel, 445 U.S. at 47, it likewise
does not authorize federal courts to mint testimonial privileges
for any group—including the “journalistic class,” as Judge
Sentelle dubs it, Maj. Slip Op. at 15—that demands one. The
Supreme Court has warned that testimonial privileges “are not
lightly created nor expansively construed, for they are in
derogation of the search for truth.” United States v. Nixon, 418
U.S. 683, 710 (1974); see Branzburg, 408 U.S. at 690; see also
Jaffee, 518 U.S. at 21 (Scalia, J., dissenting). Accordingly, we
should proceed as cautiously as possible “when erecting barriers
between us and the truth,” id., recognizing that the Legislature
remains the more appropriate institution to reconcile the
competing interests—prosecuting criminal acts versus
constricting the flow of information to the public—that inform
any reporter’s privilege to withhold relevant information from
a bona fide grand jury. See Univ. of Penn., 493 U.S. at 189.
Because Jaffee sits rather awkwardly within a jurisprudence
marked by a fairly uniform disinclination to announce new
privileges5 or even expand existing ones,6 and even though it

criminal conduct.”) (Powell, J., concurring); see also In re Grand
Jury, 955 F.2d 229, 434 (4th Cir. 1992) (noting Branzburg’s
observation that First Amendment protects reporter in grand jury
proceedings initiated or conducted in bad faith presents a “paradox”
because “district courts can control prosecutorial abuse in any setting,
not just in cases involving the First Amendment”).
5
See Univ. of Penn., 493 U.S. 182 (rejecting privilege protecting
academic peer-review materials); United States v. Gillock, 445 U.S.
360 (1980) (rejecting privilege protecting “legislative acts”); see also
 6

enjoyed the support of an overwhelming majority, I am hesitant
to apply its methodology to a case that does not require us to do
so. While it would not be the first of its kind, see Lemon v.
Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971) (“Lemon test”); cf. Elk Grove
Unified Sch. Dist. v. Newdow, __ U.S. __, 124 S. Ct. 2301, 2327
n.1 (2004) (“We have selectively invoked particular tests, such
as the ‘Lemon test,’ with predictable outcomes.” (internal
citation omitted)) (Thomas, J., concurring in judgment), the type
of multi-factor balancing test Judge Tatel proposes seems, at
least to me, to lack analytical rigor because its application to this
case is foreordained. Indeed, I am not convinced that a
balancing test that requires more than an evaluation of the
essentiality of the information to the prosecution and the
exhaustion of available alternative sources thereof is either
useful or appropriate. While Judge Tatel makes the centerpiece
of his test the balancing of “the public interest in compelling
disclosure, measured by the harm the leak caused, against the
public interest in newsgathering, measured by the leaked
information’s value,” see Tatel Slip Op. at 21, this court (in the

Jaffee, 518 U.S. at 18-36 (Scalia, J., dissenting).
6
See United States v. Zolin, 491 U.S. 554 (1989) (permitting in
camera review of materials to establish applicability of crime-fraud
exception to attorney-client privilege); Trammel v. United States, 445
U.S. 40 (1980) (witness spouse’s voluntary testimony not covered by
spousal privilege); see also Jaffee, 518 U.S. at 18-36 (Scalia, J.,
dissenting).
 7

civil context),7 the United States Department of Justice8 and the
lone district court that has recognized a federal common-law
reporter’s privilege in the grand jury context 9 have declined to
consider either of these factors in deciding whether to recognize

7
Zerilli v. Smith, 656 F.2d 705, 713-714 (D.C. Cir. 1981); Carey v.
Hume, 492 F.2d 631, 636-38 (D.C. Cir. 1972); cf. United States v.
Ahn, 231 F.3d 26, 37 (D.C. Cir. 2000) (affirming district court’s
conclusion that reporter’s privilege was not overcome because his
testimony was not “‘essential or crucial’” to defendant’s case or
relevant to determination of guilt or innocence).
8
See 28 C.F.R. § 50.10. As Judge Tatel points out, see Tatel Slip
Op. at 20, the Justice Department regulations aim to “strike the proper
balance between the public’s interest in the free dissemination of ideas
and information and the public’s interest in effective law enforcement
and the fair administration of justice,” id. § 50.10(a), but the
regulations do not balance the two interests. They establish instead
that, in requesting authorization to subpoena a member of the press,
the government should: reasonably believe that, in a criminal case, the
information sought is essential “to a successful
investigation—particularly with reference to directly establishing guilt
or innocence,” id. § 50.10(f)(1); attempt unsuccessfully to obtain the
information from “alternative nonmedia sources,” id. § 50.10(f)(3);
seek only to verify, “except under exigent circumstances,” published
information and “such surrounding circumstances as relate to the
accuracy of the published information,” id. § 50.10(f)(4); treat
“[e]ven” requests for publicly disclosed information “with care to
avoid claims of harassment,” id. § 50.10(f)(5); and, “wherever
possible,” seek material information on a limited subject matter and
for a limited time period, avoid requiring the production of large
quantities of unpublished material and “give reasonable and timely
notice of the demand for documents,” id. § 50.10(f)(6).
9
See In re Williams, 766 F. Supp. 358, 368-70 (W.D. Pa. 1991),
aff’d by equally divided court, 963 F.2d 567 (3d Cir. 1992) (en banc)
(order without treatment of merits).
 8

a reporter’s exemption from compulsory process.10 There is a
good reason for this: I suspect that balancing “harm” against
“news value” may prove unproductive because in most of the
projected scenarios—leaks of information involving, for
example, military operations, national security, policy choices
or political adversaries—the two interests overlap. Furthermore,
Branzburg warns of the risk inherent in the judicial assessment
of the importance of prosecuting particular crimes. See 408 U.S.
at 706 (“By requiring testimony from a reporter in investigations
involving some crimes but not in others, [the courts] would be
making a value judgment that a legislature had declined to
make, since in each case the criminal law involved would
represent a considered legislative judgment, not constitutionally
suspect, of what conduct is liable to criminal prosecution. The
task of judges, like other officials outside the legislative branch,
is not to make the law but to uphold it in accordance with their
oaths.”). And any evaluation of the importance of
newsgathering keyed to its perceived “benefit” to the public,
Tatel Slip Op. at 20; see id. at 27 (“beneficial newsgathering”),
seems antithetical to our nation’s abiding commitment to the
uninhibited trade in ideas. See, e.g., Riley v. Nat’l Fed’n of
Blind, Inc., 487 U.S. 781, 790-91 (1988) (“The First
Amendment mandates that we presume that speakers, not the
government, know best both what they want to say and how to
say it.”); Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15, 24 (1971) (“The

10
Judge Tatel insists that his test is not “novel . . . , considering its
basis in Zerilli and Carey and the Justice Department’s own
guidelines.” Tatel Slip Op. at 22. But the central factors of his
test—the balancing of “the public interest in compelling disclosure,
measured by the harm the leak caused, against the public interest in
newsgathering, measured by the leaked information’s value,” Tatel
Slip Op. at 21—find no support that I can detect in those cases. See
28 C.F.R. § 50.10; Zerilli, 656 F.2d at 713-714; Carey, 492 F.2d at
636-38.
 9

constitutional right of free expression is . . . designed and
intended to remove governmental restraints from the arena of
public discussion, putting the decision as to what views shall be
voiced largely into the hands of each of us.”); McConnell v.
FEC, 251 F. Supp.2d 176, 360 (D.D.C. 2003) (“[T]he First
Amendment delegates to the populace at large the responsibility
of conducting an ‘uninhibited, robust, and wide-open’ debate.”
(quoting New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 270
(1964))); cf. Gertz v. Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323, 346 (1974).
Moreover, to attempt to establish the contours of a reporter’s
privilege here would tend, unnecessarily, to leave a future panel
less maneuverability in a case that might require just that to
achieve justice. On this score, Judge Tatel levels the identical
charge against my approach, see Tatel Slip Op. at 8, but I fail to
see how declining to decide whether a reporter’s privilege exists
or to define its contours could confine a future panel.
For the foregoing reasons, I am convinced that the court would
chart the best course by charting the narrowest one and,
accordingly, concur only in the judgment with respect to II.B of
the majority opinion. In all other respects, I fully concur.
 TATEL, Circuit Judge, concurring in the judgment: This
case involves a clash between two truth-seeking institutions: the
grand jury and the press. On the one hand, the grand jury, a
body “deeply rooted in Anglo-American history” and
guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment, see United States v.
Calandra, 414 U.S. 338, 342-43 (1974), holds “broad powers”
to collect evidence through judicially enforceable subpoenas.
See United States v. Sells Eng’g, Inc., 463 U.S. 418, 423-24
(1983). “Without thorough and effective investigation, the
grand jury would be unable either to ferret out crimes deserving
of prosecution, or to screen out charges not warranting
prosecution.” Id. at 424. On the other hand, the press, shielded
by the First Amendment, “has been a mighty catalyst in
awakening public interest in governmental affairs, exposing
corruption among public officers and employees and generally
informing the citizenry of public events and occurrences.” Estes
v. Texas, 381 U.S. 532, 539 (1965). Using language we have
quoted with approval, see Carey v. Hume, 492 F.2d 631, 634-35
(D.C. Cir. 1974), the Second Circuit aptly described this conflict
between press freedom and the rule of law: “Freedom of the
press, hard-won over the centuries by men of courage, is basic
to a free society. But basic too are courts of justice, armed with
the power to discover truth. The concept that it is the duty of a
witness to testify in a court of law has roots fully as deep in our
history as does the guarantee of a free press.” Garland v. Torre,
259 F.2d 545, 548 (2d Cir. 1958).
Because I agree that the balance in this case, which involves
the alleged exposure of a covert agent, favors compelling the
reporters’ testimony, I join the judgment of the court. I write
separately, however, because I find Branzburg v. Hayes, 408
U.S. 665 (1972), more ambiguous than do my colleagues and
because I believe that the consensus of forty-nine states plus the
District of Columbia—and even the Department of
Justice—would require us to protect reporters’ sources as a
 2

matter of federal common law were the leak at issue either less
harmful or more newsworthy.

I.
Although I join the court’s rejection of appellants’ First
Amendment argument, I am uncertain that Branzburg offers “no
support” for a constitutional reporter privilege in the grand jury
context. See majority op. at 12-13. To be sure, Branzburg
upheld the enforcement of subpoenas seeking confidential
source information, including notes and testimony about
interviews and observations at a militant group’s headquarters.
See 408 U.S. at 672-77. Yet even the Branzburg majority
declared that “news gathering is not without its First
Amendment protections,” id. at 707, a phrase we have
interpreted (albeit in dictum) to “indicate[] that a qualified
privilege would be available in some circumstances even where
a reporter is called before a grand jury to testify,” Zerilli v.
Smith, 656 F.2d 705, 711 (D.C. Cir. 1981). Branzburg’s caveat,
placed in a discussion of “[o]fficial harassment of the press” and
“grand jury investigations . . . instituted or conducted other than
in good faith,” Branzburg, 408 U.S. at 707-08, seems to refer
only to journalists’ power to quash “unreasonable or oppressive”
subpoenas, see Fed. R. Crim. P. 17(c)(2). But given that any
witness—journalist or otherwise—may challenge such a
subpoena, the majority must have meant, at the very least, that
the First Amendment demands a broader notion of “harassment”
for journalists than for other witnesses. Reinforcing that view,
the majority added, “We do not expect courts will forget that
grand juries must operate within the limits of the First
Amendment as well as the Fifth.” Branzburg, 408 U.S. at 708.
That prediction, too, would appear meaningless if no First
Amendment safeguards existed for subpoenaed reporters.
Then there is Justice Powell’s “enigmatic concurring
opinion.” Id. at 725 (Stewart, J., dissenting). Though providing
 3

the majority’s essential fifth vote, he wrote separately to outline
a “case-by-case” approach, see id. at 710 (Powell, J.,
concurring), that fits uncomfortably, to say the least, with the
Branzburg majority’s categorical rejection of the reporters’
claims. Emphasizing “the limited nature of the Court’s
holding,” id. at 709, he wrote:
The asserted claim to privilege should be judged on its facts
by the striking of a proper balance between freedom of the
press and the obligation of all citizens to give relevant
testimony with respect to criminal conduct. The balance of
these vital constitutional and societal interests on a case-by-
case basis accords with the tried and traditional way of
adjudicating such questions.
Id. at 710. “In short,” Justice Powell concluded, “the courts will
be available to newsmen under circumstances where legitimate
First Amendment interests require protection.” Id. Even more
than the majority opinion, this language places limits on grand
jury authority to demand information about source
identities—though, again, the precise extent of those limits
seems unclear.
Given Branzburg’s internal confusion and the “obvious
First Amendment problems” involved in “[c]ompelling a
reporter to disclose the identity of a confidential source,” Zerilli,
656 F.2d at 710, it is hardly surprising that lower courts have, as
Chief Judge Hogan put it, “chipped away at the holding of
Branzburg,” finding constitutional protections for reporters in
“various factual scenarios different than those presented in
Branzburg.” In re Special Counsel Investigation, 332 F. Supp.
2d 26, 31 (D.D.C. 2004). We ourselves have affirmed the denial
of a criminal defense subpoena on grounds that the defendant
“failed to carry his burden” of “demonstrat[ing] that the
reporters’ qualified privilege should be overcome.” United
States v. Ahn, 231 F.3d 26, 37 (D.C. Cir. 2000). In civil
litigation, moreover, we have held that the First Amendment
 4

requires courts to “look to the facts on a case-by-case basis in
the course of weighing the need for the testimony in question
against the claims of the newsman that the public’s right to
know is impaired.” Carey, 492 F.2d at 636; see also Zerilli, 656
F.2d at 707 (affirming the denial of a motion to compel
discovery because “in this case the First Amendment interest in
protecting a news reporter’s sources outweighs the interest in
compelled disclosure”). Other circuits have reached similar
conclusions. See, e.g., United States v. LaRouche Campaign,
841 F.2d 1176, 1180-81 (1st Cir. 1988) (acknowledging First
Amendment limits on criminal defense subpoenas directed at
news organizations); United States v. Burke, 700 F.2d 70, 76-77
(2d Cir. 1983) (extending a First Amendment reporter privilege
developed in civil cases to a criminal defense subpoena); Bruno
& Stillman, Inc. v. Globe Newspaper Co., 633 F.2d 583, 593-99
(1st Cir. 1980) (describing First Amendment limits on discovery
of reporters’ sources in civil litigation); Silkwood v. Kerr-McGee
Corp., 563 F.2d 433, 436-37 (10th Cir. 1977) (indicating that a
qualified newsgathering privilege “is no longer in doubt”); but
see In re Grand Jury Proceedings, 810 F.2d 580, 584-85 (6th
Cir. 1987) (rejecting claims of First Amendment privilege in
grand jury proceedings).
In this case, however, our hands are tied for two
independent reasons. First, although this circuit has limited
Branzburg in other contexts, see Zerilli, 656 F.2d at 707; Carey,
492 F.2d at 636; Ahn, 231 F.3d at 37, with respect to criminal
investigations we have twice construed that decision broadly.
In Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press v. AT&T, 593
F.2d 1030 (D.C. Cir. 1978), which addressed a First Amendment
challenge regarding access to journalists’ phone records and
describing Branzburg as foreclosing “case-by-case
consideration,” we declared, “Good faith investigation interests
always override a journalist’s interest in protecting his source.”
Id. at 1049 (emphasis added). Echoing this broad view, we have
also described Branzburg as “squarely reject[ing]” a claim to
 5

“general immunity, qualified or otherwise, from grand jury
questioning.” See In re Possible Violations of 18 U.S.C. 371,
641, 1503, 564 F.2d 567, 571 (D.C. Cir. 1977). In this circuit,
then, absent any indication of bad faith, I see no grounds for a
First Amendment challenge to the subpoenas at issue here.
Second, although Branzburg involved militants and drug
dealers rather than government leakers, the factual parallels
between that case and this one preclude us from quashing the
subpoenas on constitutional grounds. See majority op. at 10. If,
as Branzburg concludes, the First Amendment permits
compulsion of reporters’ testimony about individuals
manufacturing drugs or plotting against the government, see 408
U.S. at 667-69, 675-77, all information the government could
have obtained from an undercover investigation of its own, the
case for a constitutional privilege appears weak indeed with
respect to leaks, which in all likelihood will be extremely
difficult to prove without the reporter’s aid. Thus, if
Branzburg is to be limited or distinguished in the circumstances
of this case, we must leave that task to the Supreme Court.

II.
But Branzburg is not the end of the story. In 1975—three
years after Branzburg—Congress enacted Rule 501 of the
Federal Rules of Evidence, authorizing federal courts to develop
evidentiary privileges in federal question cases according to “the
principles of the common law as they may be interpreted . . . in
the light of reason and experience.” Fed. R. Evid. 501; see also
Pub. L. No. 93-595, 88 Stat. 1926 (1975). Given Branzburg’s
instruction that “Congress has freedom to determine whether a
statutory newsman’s privilege is necessary and desirable and to
fashion standards and rules as narrow or broad as deemed
necessary to deal with the evil discerned,” 408 U.S. at 706, Rule
501’s delegation of congressional authority requires that we look
 6

anew at the “necess[ity] and desirab[ility]” of the reporter
privilege—though from a common law perspective.
Under Rule 501, that common lawmaking obligation exists
whether or not, absent the rule’s delegation, Congress would be
“the more appropriate institution to reconcile the competing
interests . . . that inform any reporter’s privilege to withhold
relevant information from a bona fide grand jury.” Sep. op. at
5 (Henderson, J., concurring) (citing Univ. of Pa. v. EEOC, 493
U.S. 182, 189 (1990)); but see sep. op. at 4-5 (Sentelle, J.,
concurring) (observing that even before Rule 501, case law
provided federal courts with “precisely the same authority” to
recognize common law privileges) (citing Wolfle v. United
States, 291 U.S. 7, 12 (1934)); Univ. of Pa., 493 U.S. at 189
(declining to recognize a privilege “where it appears that
Congress has considered the relevant competing concerns but
has not provided the privilege itself”). As the Supreme Court
has explained, “Rule 501 was adopted precisely because
Congress wished to leave privilege questions to the courts rather
than attempt to codify them.” United States v. Weber Aircraft
Corp., 465 U.S. 792, 803 n.25 (1984). Thus, subject of course
to congressional override, we must assess the arguments for and
against the claimed privilege, just as the Supreme Court has
done in cases recognizing common law privileges since 1975.
See, e.g., Jaffee v. Redmond, 518 U.S. 1, 15 (1996)
(psychotherapist-patient); Upjohn Co. v. United States, 449 U.S.
383, 389 (1981) (attorney-client); Trammel v. United States, 445
U.S. 40, 51 (1980) (confidential marital communications).
In this case, just as Jaffee v. Redmond recognized a common
law psychotherapist privilege based on “the uniform judgment
of the States,” 518 U.S. at 14, I believe that “reason and
experience” dictate a privilege for reporters’ confidential
sources—albeit a qualified one. Guided by Jaffee’s reasoning,
I reach this conclusion by considering first whether “reason and
experience” justify recognizing a privilege at all, and if so
 7

whether the privilege should be qualified or absolute and
whether it should cover the communications at issue in this case.
Before undertaking that analysis, I think it helpful to
explain why, in my view, we should not, as would Judge
Henderson, short-circuit Jaffee’s framework and decide whether
the special counsel may overcome the reporter privilege without
ever reaching the issue of whether the privilege in fact exists.
See sep. op. at 1 (Henderson, J., concurring). Unless we
conclude, as does Judge Sentelle, see sep. op. at 1 (Sentelle, J.,
concurring), and as did the district court, see In re Special
Counsel Investigation, 338 F. Supp. 2d 16, 18-19 (D.D.C. 2004),
that no privilege exists, we cannot resolve this case without
adopting some standard. Judge Henderson criticizes my
approach, but she never indicates what standard she would
apply, except to state that “the Special Counsel’s evidentiary
proffer overcomes any hurdle, however high, a federal common-
law reporter’s privilege may erect.” See sep. op. at 1
(Henderson, J., concurring). To reach even that conclusion,
however, one must explain why federal common law cannot
support any higher “hurdle,” such as an absolute privilege for
source identities, which exists in the District of Columbia and
several states, see, e.g., D.C. Code Ann. §§ 16-4702, 16-
4703(b); 42 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 5942; Ala. Code § 12-21-142, or
a privilege that applies unless non-disclosure “will cause a
miscarriage of justice,” N.D. Cent. Code § 31-01-06.2; see also
Minn. Stat. § 595.024; N.M. Stat. Ann. § 38-6-7. Without ruling
out all such plausible alternatives that would allow the reporters
to prevail, how could one know that they cannot prevail here?
And without selecting some other test based on Jaffee and Rule
501, how could one know that no such alternatives are
plausible?
Because the Jaffee analysis is thus essential to resolving this
case (assuming a privilege exists), our frequent practice of
avoiding non-essential issues is inapplicable. To be sure,
 8

declining to resolve waived issues, see, e.g., Carney v. Am.
Univ., 151 F.3d 1090, 1094-95 (D.C. Cir. 1998), disposing of
procedurally defective claims without reaching the merits, see,
e.g., Jackson v. District of Columbia, 254 F.3d 262, 264, 270-71
(D.C. Cir. 2001); cf. Massachusetts v. U.S. Dep’t of Transp., 93
F.3d 890, 891 (D.C. Cir. 1996) (assuming deferential review
because even under that standard agency action was
unreasonable), and expressing no view on one element of a
claim because another element is clearly defective, see, e.g.,
Tradesmen Int’l, Inc. v. NLRB, 275 F.3d 1137, 1142 (D.C. Cir.
2002); Dir., Office of Thrift Supervision v. Vinson & Elkins,
LLP, 124 F.3d 1304, 1308 (D.C. Cir. 1997); Littlewolf v. Lujan,
877 F.2d 1058, 1060 (D.C. Cir. 1989), may well represent
“patience in judicial decision-making,” sep. op. at 1 (Henderson,
J., concurring). Patience, however, cannot justify “declining . .
. to define [the disputed privilege’s] contours,” see id. at 9, for
that is the dispositive issue in this case.
Accordingly, given that we must apply some test to the
government’s showing, if we simply assume the privilege exists
but our assumption is wrong, then we will have reached out to
establish a framework for a non-existent claim—an undertaking
hardly consistent with principles of judicial restraint. Indeed,
our decision would establish a precedent, potentially binding on
future panels, regarding the scope of the assumed privilege, even
though resolving that question was entirely unnecessary.
Therefore, I think it imperative to decide as a threshold matter
whether the privilege exists, turning only afterwards to the
privilege’s specific contours.
In this case, moreover, the issue of the privilege’s existence
is fully briefed, and resolving it definitively will provide critical
guidance in similar situations in the future. This is not the only
case to raise reporter privilege issues in D.C. federal courts in
recent years. See Lee v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, 327 F. Supp. 2d
26 (D.D.C. 2004); Lee v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, 287 F. Supp. 2d
 9

15 (D.D.C. 2003). And given the many leaks that no doubt
occur in this city every day, it would be naive to suppose that it
will be the last. For the sake of reporters and sources whom
such litigation may ensnare, we should take this opportunity to
clarify the rules governing their relationship.
Thus, I agree with Judge Sentelle that “the question of the
existence of such privilege vel non is logically anterior to the
quantum of proof necessary to overcome it.” Sep. op. at 1
(Sentelle, J., concurring). Without resolving the first question,
we cannot and should not decide the second.

Existence of the Privilege
Under Jaffee, the common law analysis starts with the
interests that call for recognizing a privilege. See 518 U.S. at
11. If, as the Supreme Court held there, “[t]he mental health of
our citizenry is a public good of transcendent importance,”
id.—one that trumps the “fundamental maxim that the public has
a right to every man’s evidence,” id. at 9 (internal quotation
marks and ellipsis omitted)—then surely press freedom is no
less important, given journalism’s vital role in our democracy.
Indeed, while the Jaffee dissenters questioned psychotherapy’s
“indispensable role in the maintenance of the citizenry’s mental
health,” see id. at 22 (Scalia, J., dissenting), the First
Amendment’s express protection for “freedom . . . of the press”
forecloses any debate about that institution’s “important role in
the discussion of public affairs,” Mills v. Alabama, 384 U.S.
214, 219 (1966). “Whatever differences may exist about
interpretations of the First Amendment, there is practically
universal agreement that a major purpose of that Amendment
was to protect the free discussion of governmental affairs.”
Brown v. Hartlage, 456 U.S. 45, 52 (1982) (quoting Mills, 384
U.S. at 218-19).
Like psychotherapists, as well as attorneys and spouses, all
of whom enjoy privileges under Rule 501, see, e.g., Jaffee, 518
 10

U.S. at 18 (psychotherapists); Upjohn Co., 449 U.S. at 389
(attorneys); SEC v. Lavin, 111 F.3d 921, 925 (D.C. Cir. 1997)
(spouses), reporters “depend[] upon an atmosphere of
confidence and trust,” Jaffee, 518 U.S. at 10. If litigants and
investigators could easily discover journalists’ sources, the
press’s truth-seeking function would be severely impaired.
Reporters could reprint government statements, but not ferret
out underlying disagreements among officials; they could cover
public governmental actions, but would have great difficulty
getting potential whistleblowers to talk about government
misdeeds; they could report arrest statistics, but not garner first-
hand information about the criminal underworld. Such valuable
endeavors would be all but impossible, for just as mental
patients who fear “embarrassment or disgrace,” id., will “surely
be chilled” in seeking therapy, id. at 12, so will sources who fear
identification avoid revealing information that could get them in
trouble.
Because of these chilling effects, “[w]ithout a privilege,
much of the desirable evidence to which litigants . . . seek access
. . . is unlikely to come into being.” Id. Consequently, as with
other privileges, “the likely evidentiary benefit that would result
from the denial of the privilege is modest.” Id. At the same
time, although suppression of some leaks is surely desirable (a
point to which I shall return), the public harm that would flow
from undermining all source relationships would be immense.
For example, appellant Judith Miller tells us that her Pulitzer
Prize-winning articles on Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network
relied on “information received from confidential sources at the
highest levels of our government.” (Miller Aff. ¶ 10,
Appellant’s App. at 169.) Likewise, appellant Matthew Cooper
maintains that his reports for “Time’s four million-plus readers
about White House policy in Iraq, the chances of passage of
major legislation such as Budget and Energy Bills, and the
Clinton White House” would have been impossible without
confidentiality. (Cooper Aff. ¶ 21, Appellant’s App. at 286.)
 11

Insofar as such stories exemplify the press’s role “as a
constitutionally chosen means for keeping officials elected by
the people responsible to all the people whom they were elected
to serve,” Mills, 384 U.S. at 219, “reason and experience”
support protecting newsgathering methods crucial to their
genesis. Acknowledging as much in Zerilli, we emphasized that
“[c]ompelling a reporter to disclose the identity of a source may
significantly interfere with this news gathering ability” and
weaken “a vital source of information,” leaving citizens “far less
able to make informed political, social, and economic choices.”
656 F.2d at 711.
It is true, as the special counsel observes, that apart from
affidavits and citations to two articles in their reply brief, the
reporters present no empirical evidence that denial of the
privilege “will have a significant impact on the free flow of
information protected by the First Amendment.” Appellee’s Br.
at 47. But the Supreme Court has never required proponents of
a privilege to adduce scientific studies demonstrating the
privilege’s benefits. Rather, as the Jaffee dissenters pointed out,
the empirical question—“[h]ow likely is it that a person will be
deterred from seeking psychological counseling, or from being
completely truthful in the course of such counseling, because of
fear of later disclosure in litigation?”—was one “[t]he Court
[did] not attempt to answer.” 518 U.S. at 22-23 (Scalia, J.,
dissenting). Instead, following the wise precept that common
sense need not be “the mere handmaiden of social science data
or expert testimonials,” Amatel v. Reno, 156 F.3d 192, 199 (D.C.
Cir. 1998), Jaffee relied on the traditional common law process:
it examined the logical prerequisites of the confidential
relationship, taking into account the policy and experience of
parallel jurisdictions. See Jaffee, 518 U.S. at 10 (reasoning that
given the need for “frank and complete disclosure of facts,
emotions, memories, and fears” in psychotherapy, “the mere
possibility of disclosure may impede development of the
confidential relationship necessary for successful treatment”).
 12

Likewise, in Trammel v. United States, while justifying the
privilege against adverse spousal testimony in terms of “marital
harmony,” 445 U.S. at 44-45, 53, the Court allowed waiver by
the testifying spouse based not on divorce statistics or
psychological studies, but rather on the commonsense
supposition that “[w]hen one spouse is willing to testify against
the other in a criminal proceeding—whatever the
motivation—their relationship is almost certainly in disrepair,”
id. at 52. And in Swidler & Berlin v. United States, 524 U.S.
399 (1998), though finding the “empirical information . . . scant
and inconclusive,” id. at 410, the Court held that the attorney-
client privilege survives the client’s death because “[k]nowing
that communications will remain confidential even after death
encourages the client to communicate fully and frankly with
counsel,” id. at 407—a proposition the Court supported with
neither evidence nor even citation. Given these decisions, the
equally commonsense proposition that reporters’ sources will be
more candid when promised confidentiality requires no
empirical support.
In any event, the special counsel’s confidence that exposing
sources will have no effect on newsgathering is unjustified.
Citing the “‘symbiotic’ relationships between journalists and
public officials,” the special counsel presumes that leaks will go
on with or without the privilege. Appellee’s Br. at 47 (quoting
Branzburg, 408 U.S. at 694); see also sep. op. at 3 n.3
(Henderson, J., concurring). Not only does this contradict the
Justice Department’s own guidelines, which expressly recognize
that revealing confidential sources can “impair the news
gathering function,” 28 C.F.R. § 50.10, but the available
evidence suggests the special counsel is wrong. As anyone with
even a passing interest in news knows, reporters routinely rely
on sources speaking on condition of anonymity—a strong
indication that leakers demand such protection. Besides, for all
the reasons that lead me to conclude that a privilege exists,
reporters and their editors, attorneys, and sources probably
 13

believe the same, making it speculative indeed for the special
counsel to suppose that dashing that expectation of
confidentiality would have no effect on newsgathering.
Turning next, as did Jaffee, to the consensus among states,
I find support for the privilege at least as strong for journalists
as for psychotherapists. Just as in Jaffee, where “the fact that all
50 states and the District of Columbia have enacted into law
some form of psychotherapist privilege” favored an exercise of
federal common lawmaking, see 518 U.S. at 12, so here
undisputed evidence that forty-nine states plus the District of
Columbia offer at least qualified protection to reporters’ sources
confirms that “‘reason and experience’ support recognition of
the privilege,” id. at 13. Indeed, given these state laws, “[d]enial
of the federal privilege . . . would frustrate the purposes of the
state legislation” by exposing confidences protected under state
law to discovery in federal courts. See id.
Making the case for a privilege here even stronger than in
Jaffee, federal authorities also favor recognizing a privilege for
reporters’ confidential sources. As noted earlier, we ourselves
have limited discovery of reporters’ sources in both civil and
criminal litigation, see Zerilli, 656 F.2d at 707; Carey, 492 F.2d
at 636; Ahn, 231 F.3d at 37, as have other federal courts, see,
e.g., Bruno & Stillman, 633 F.2d at 593-99; Burke, 700 F.2d at
76-77; Silkwood, 563 F.2d at 436-37, including some acting on
the basis of Rule 501, see, e.g., Riley v. City of Chester, 612 F.2d
708, 715 (3d Cir. 1979) (recognizing a qualified common law
privilege in civil litigation); but see In re Grand Jury
Proceedings, 5 F.3d 397, 398 (9th Cir. 1993) (holding that no
“scholar’s privilege” exists under the First Amendment or
common law). In addition, the Justice Department guidelines
(though privately unenforceable, for reasons the court explains,
see majority op. at 20-23) establish a federal policy of protecting
“news media from forms of compulsory process, whether civil
or criminal, which might impair the news gathering function.”
 14

28 C.F.R. § 50.10. Denial of the privilege, then, would not only
buck the clear policy of virtually all states, but would also
contradict regulations binding on the federal government’s own
lawyers.
Resisting this consensus, the special counsel asserts that
Branzburg already performed the analysis required by Rule 501,
thus “resolv[ing] the common law argument.” Appellee’s Br. at
35; see also sep. op. at 1-3 (Sentelle, J., concurring). Branzburg
did no such thing. As the Branzburg majority’s very first
sentence makes plain, the “issue” in that case was “whether
requiring newsmen to appear and testify before state or federal
grand juries abridges the freedom of speech and press
guaranteed by the First Amendment,” 408 U.S. at 667 (emphasis
added), not whether it abridged the common law. Later
emphasizing the same point, the majority stated, “Petitioners
Branzburg and Pappas and respondent Caldwell press First
Amendment claims.” Id. at 679 (emphasis added); see also sep.
op. at 3-4 (Henderson, J., concurring). Indeed, having examined
the briefs and lower court opinions, I see no evidence that the
parties ever even argued for a separate common law privilege.
To be sure, the majority declared that “the great weight of
authority is that newsmen are not exempt from the normal duty
of appearing before a grand jury and answering questions
relevant to a criminal investigation,” id. at 685, but that point
served only to reinforce the majority’s constitutional holding.
Nor does Branzburg support the concurrence’s
constitutional avoidance theory. See sep. op. at 2 (Sentelle, J.,
concurring). Although the Branzburg majority could have
avoided the First Amendment claim by recognizing a common
law privilege, given that the majority opinion neither did so nor
even raised that possibility, Branzburg’s holding hardly
forecloses the common law argument presented here. Quite the
contrary, Branzburg acknowledged that “Congress has freedom
to determine whether a statutory newsman’s privilege is
 15

necessary and desirable and to fashion standards and rules as
narrow or broad as deemed necessary to deal with the evil
discerned,” 408 U.S. at 706, a power Congress delegated to the
federal courts through Rule 501. Thus, if anything, the view that
Branzburg disposed of the common law privilege gets it
backwards. Insofar as Branzburg relied on the “great weight of
authority” to discern the First Amendment’s meaning, see id. at
686, the shift in favor of the privilege since that time—from
seventeen states with statutory privileges then to thirty-one plus
D.C. today, with another eighteen providing common law
protection—could provide a basis for rethinking Branzburg. Cf.
Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304, 306-07 (2002) (overturning
prior understanding of Eighth Amendment “cruel and unusual
punishment” based on a “consensus” among “the American
public, legislators, scholars, and judges” regarding execution of
the mentally retarded). Although that is something only the
Supreme Court can do, this point underscores the error in seeing
Branzburg as dispositive.
Given that the common law issue thus remains open, this
court must assess the reporters’ claim in light of “reason and
experience” today. As Branzburg itself observes in describing
Congress’s powers, privilege rules may require “refashion[ing]
. . . as experience from time to time may dictate.” 408 U.S. at
706. Bestowing that refashioning power on the federal courts,
Rule 501 evidences an “affirmative intention not to freeze the
law of privilege,” but rather “to leave the door open to change.”
Trammel, 445 U.S. at 47. Consistent with that intent, the Court
in Trammel modified the privilege against adverse spousal
testimony recognized just twenty-two years earlier in Hawkins
v. United States, 358 U.S. 74 (1958), allowing the testifying
spouse to waive the privilege, see Trammel, 445 U.S. at 53, even
though Hawkins had held just the opposite, see Hawkins, 358
U.S. at 77-78. Had the Supreme Court addressed a common law
claim in Branzburg, lower courts might lack authority to
reconsider that case’s result notwithstanding the subsequent
 16

growth in support for the privilege. But cf. Trammel, 445 U.S.
at 43 (affirming court of appeals decision limiting Hawkins).
Absent such a definitive ruling, however, and despite
Branzburg’s observation about the “great weight of authority”
thirty-three years ago, see 408 U.S. at 686, we must approach
the issue with the same open-mindedness demonstrated by
Trammel.
For much the same reason, the omission of a reporter
privilege from the Judicial Conference Advisory Committee’s
draft rules submitted to Congress in 1972 (and ultimately
replaced by Rule 501) need not dictate the outcome here. True,
as the special counsel points out, the Supreme Court in United
States v. Gillock, 445 U.S. 360, 367-68 (1980), declined to
recognize a privilege not appearing in the Advisory Committee
draft. As that decision acknowledges, however, the draft rules
merely reflected what was “thought to be . . . indelibly
ensconced in our common law” at the time. See id.
Accordingly, when the Jaffee Court considered whether the
psychotherapist privilege extended to social workers, it relied
not on the 1972 draft, which covered only licensed
psychotherapists, but rather on the reasons for the privilege and
the state laws in effect when Jaffee was decided. See Jaffee, 518
U.S. at 15-17 & n.16. Likewise, here, the dramatic growth in
support for the reporter privilege supercedes the Advisory
Committee’s decades-old choice to omit the privilege from its
draft.
Equally inconsequential is the adoption of the reporter
privilege in thirty-one states through legislation, rather than
judicial action. See sep. op. at 5 (Sentelle, J., concurring). As
the Jaffee dissent pointed out, a far greater proportion of
states—indeed, every state—established the psychotherapist
privilege by statute, see Jaffee, 518 U.S. at 25-26 (Scalia, J.,
dissenting), yet the majority considered that fact “of no
consequence,” id. at 13-14. Nor does it matter that
 17

unconventional forms of journalism—freelance writers and
internet “bloggers,” for example—may raise definitional
conundrums down the road. See sep. op. at 5-9 (Sentelle, J.,
concurring); but see Eugene Volokh, Opinion, You Can Blog,
But You Can’t Hide, N.Y. Times, Dec. 2, 2004, at A39 (“[T]he
rules should be the same for old media and new, professional
and amateur. Any journalist’s privilege should extend to every
journalist.”). As Jaffee makes clear, “[a] rule,” such as Rule
501, “that authorizes the recognition of new privileges on a
case-by-case basis makes it appropriate to define the details of
new privileges in a like manner.” 518 U.S. at 18. After all,
“flexibility and capacity for growth and adaptation is the
peculiar boast and excellence of the common law.” Hurtado v.
California, 110 U.S. 516, 530 (1884). Here, whereas any
meaningful reporter privilege must undoubtedly encompass
appellants Cooper and Miller, full-time journalists for Time
magazine and the New York Times, respectively, future opinions
can elaborate more refined contours of the privilege—a task
shown to be manageable by the experience of the fifty
jurisdictions with statutory or common law protections.
In sum, “reason and experience,” as evidenced by the laws
of forty-nine states and the District of Columbia, as well as
federal courts and the federal government, support recognition
of a privilege for reporters’ confidential sources. To disregard
this modern consensus in favor of decades-old views, as the
special counsel urges, would not only imperil vital
newsgathering, but also shirk the common law function assigned
by Rule 501 and “freeze the law of privilege” contrary to
Congress’s wishes, see Trammel, 445 U.S. at 47.

Scope of the Privilege
The next step, according to Jaffee, is to determine what
principles govern the privilege’s application in this case. See
Jaffee, 518 U.S. at 15-16 (deciding first that a psychotherapist
 18

privilege exists and only then addressing whether the privilege
applies to social workers). Pointing out that many jurisdictions
recognize only qualified protection for reporters, the special
counsel argues that the uniform judgment of states must support
application of the privilege in the precise context at
issue—defiance of grand jury subpoenas—before federal courts
may recognize it. That view, however, belonged to the Jaffee
dissent, not the seven-justice majority. Although the dissenters
noted an “enormous degree of disagreement among the States as
to the scope of the privilege,” 518 U.S. at 33 (Scalia, J.,
dissenting), particularly as to which professions it covered, see
id. at 27 (Scalia, J., dissenting), the Court extended the privilege
to licensed social workers because “[t]he reasons for recognizing
a privilege for treatment by psychiatrists and psychologists
apply with equal force to treatment by a clinical social worker,”
id. at 16-17. Likewise, Jaffee rejected a proposed balancing test
not because other jurisdictions had done so, but because
“[m]aking the promise of confidentiality contingent upon a trial
judge’s later evaluation of the relative importance of the
patient’s interest in privacy and the evidentiary need for
disclosure would eviscerate the effectiveness of the privilege.”
See id. at 17-18.
Here, even assuming that some jurisdictions categorically
exclude grand jury subpoenas—a proposition for which the
special counsel cites no authority—the interests protected by the
privilege militate against such a limited approach. Although the
public interest in law enforcement may well be at its apex when
the government is investigating crime, news stories of
paramount First Amendment importance, such as reports about
government corruption or wrongdoing, may involve sources
who “would surely be chilled,” Jaffee, 518 U.S. at 12, if they
thought grand juries could discover their identities from
reporters in whom they confide. Furthermore, the special
counsel’s proposal is quite anomalous, considering that neither
the attorney-client, nor the spousal, nor even the psychotherapist
 19

privilege gives way to the grand jury’s truth-seeking function.
See, e.g., Swidler & Berlin, 524 U.S. at 403 (attorney-client);
Blau v. United States, 340 U.S. 332, 333 (1951) (spousal); In re
Grand Jury Proceedings (Gregory P. Violette), 183 F.3d 71, 72
(1st Cir. 1999) (allowing grand jury testimony not because no
psychotherapist privilege exists in that context, but rather
because a “crime-fraud exception” applies to the privilege).
As to the scope of the privilege, however, I agree with the
special counsel that protection for source identities cannot be
absolute. Leaks similar to the crime suspected here (exposure
of a covert agent) apparently caused the deaths of several CIA
operatives in the late 1970s and early 1980s, including the
agency’s Athens station chief. See Haig v. Agee, 453 U.S. 280,
284-85 & n.7 (1981). Other leaks—the design for a top secret
nuclear weapon, for example, or plans for an imminent military
strike—could be even more damaging, causing harm far in
excess of their news value. In such cases, the reporter privilege
must give way. Just as attorney-client communications “made
for the purpose of getting advice for the commission of a fraud
or crime” serve no public interest and receive no privilege, see
United States v. Zolin, 491 U.S. 554, 563 (1989) (internal
quotation marks omitted), neither should courts protect sources
whose leaks harm national security while providing minimal
benefit to public debate.
Of course, in some cases a leak’s value may far exceed its
harm, thus calling into question the law enforcement rationale
for disrupting reporter-source relationships. For example,
assuming Miller’s prize-winning Osama bin Laden series caused
no significant harm, I find it difficult to see how one could
justify compelling her to disclose her sources, given the obvious
benefit of alerting the public to then-underappreciated threats
from al Qaeda. News reports about a recent budget controversy
regarding a super-secret satellite program inspire another
example (though I know nothing about the dispute’s details and
 20

express no view as to its merits). See, e.g., Dan Eggen & Walter
Pincus, Justice Reviews Request for Probe of Satellite Reports,
Wash. Post, Dec. 16, 2004, at A3; Douglas Jehl, New Spy Plan
Said to Involve Satellite System, N.Y. Times, Dec. 12, 2004, at
A1. Despite the necessary secrecy of intelligence-gathering
methods, it seems hard to imagine how the harm in leaking
generic descriptions of such a program could outweigh the
benefit of informing the public about billions of dollars wasted
on technology considered duplicative and unnecessary by
leading Senators from both parties. In contrast to the nuclear
weapon and military strike examples mentioned above, cases
like these appear to involve a balance of harm and news value
that strongly favors protecting newsgathering methods.
Given these contrasting examples, much as our civil cases
balance “the public interest in protecting the reporter’s sources
against the private interest in compelling disclosure,” Zerilli,
656 F.2d at 712; see also Carey, 492 F.2d at 634-36, so must the
reporter privilege account for the varying interests at stake in
different source relationships. In other words, to quote the
Justice Department subpoena guidelines, “the approach in every
case must be to strike the proper balance between the public’s
interest in the free dissemination of ideas and information and
the public’s interest in effective law enforcement and the fair
administration of justice.” 28 C.F.R. § 50.10(a).
Citing our reporter privilege cases—Zerilli, Carey, and
Ahn—the special counsel urges us to rely on two factors deemed
“central” in those decisions and emphasized in the Justice
Department guidelines: first, the requesting party’s need for the
evidence, and second, that party’s exhaustion of alternative
sources. See Zerilli, 656 F.2d at 712-14; Ahn, 231 F.3d at 37;
Carey, 492 F.2d at 636-37, 638; 28 C.F.R. § 50.10(b), (f)(1).
While both these considerations are obviously essential to
minimizing the burden on newsgathering, they can serve as
exclusive measures in the privilege analysis only where there
 21

exist means of proof other than compelling the reporter’s
testimony. When prosecuting crimes other than leaks (murder
or embezzlement, say) the government, at least theoretically, can
learn what reporters know by replicating their investigative
efforts, e.g., speaking to the same witnesses and examining the
same documents. Accordingly, if a truly exhaustive
investigation has failed to prove a crime that the government
reasonably believes has occurred, compelled disclosure of a
reporter’s source may be justified notwithstanding the attendant
burdens on newsgathering. As the special counsel
acknowledged at oral argument, however, when the government
seeks to punish a leak, a test focused on need and exhaustion
will almost always be satisfied, leaving the reporter’s source
unprotected regardless of the information’s importance to the
public. The reason for this is obvious: Insofar as the
confidential exchange of information leaves neither paper trail
nor smoking gun, the great majority of leaks will likely be
unprovable without evidence from either leaker or leakee. Of
course, in some cases, circumstantial evidence such as telephone
records may point towards the source, but for the party with the
burden of proof, particularly the government in a criminal case,
such evidence will often be inadequate.
In leak cases, then, courts applying the privilege must
consider not only the government’s need for the information and
exhaustion of alternative sources, but also the two competing
public interests lying at the heart of the balancing test.
Specifically, the court must weigh the public interest in
compelling disclosure, measured by the harm the leak caused,
against the public interest in newsgathering, measured by the
leaked information’s value. That framework allows authorities
seeking to punish a leak to access key evidence when the leaked
information does more harm than good, such as in the nuclear
weapon and military strike examples, while preventing
discovery when no public interest supports it, as would appear
to be the case with Miller’s Osama bin Laden articles. Though
 22

flexible, these standards (contrary to the special counsel’s claim)
are hardly unmanageable. Indeed, the Supreme Court employs
a similar requirement of “legitimate news interest,” meaning
“value and concern to the public at the time of publication,” in
assessing restrictions on government employee speech. See City
of San Diego v. Roe, __ U.S. __, 125 S.Ct. 521, 526 (2004) (per
curiam). Nor is this analysis “novel,” see sep. op. at 3
(Henderson, J., concurring), considering its basis in Zerilli and
Carey and the Justice Department’s own guidelines.
Though recognizing that leaks with “national security
implications” raise different concerns from “information in the
nature of ‘whistleblowing,’” Appellee’s Br. at 44, 48, the special
counsel insists that the prosecutor, not the court, should assess
factors other than need and exhaustion. Under this theory,
balancing the two remaining concerns, the harmfulness of the
leaked information and the damage to newsgathering that might
flow from enforcing the disputed subpoenas, would be a matter
of prosecutorial discretion. In my view, the special counsel’s
position distorts the roles of judge and prosecutor in evidentiary
disputes.
Although courts certainly defer to executive judgments
about which crimes merit prosecution—a judgment that is, after
all, a “core executive constitutional function,” United States v.
Armstrong, 517 U.S. 456, 465 (1996)—nonetheless the
executive branch possesses no special expertise that would
justify judicial deference to prosecutors’ judgments about the
relative magnitude of First Amendment interests. Assessing
those interests traditionally falls within the competence of
courts. Cf. Landmark Communications, Inc. v. Virginia, 435
U.S. 829, 843 (1978) (“Deference to a legislative finding cannot
limit judicial inquiry when First Amendment rights are at
stake.”). Indeed, while the criminality of a leak and the
government’s decision to press charges might well indicate the
leak’s harmfulness—a central concern of the balancing
 23

test—once prosecutors commit to pursuing a case they naturally
seek all useful evidence. Consistent with that adversarial role,
the Federal Rules of Evidence assign to courts the function of
neutral arbiter: “Preliminary questions concerning the
qualification of a person to be a witness, the existence of a
privilege, or the admissibility of evidence shall be determined by
the court.” Fed. R. Evid. 104(a) (emphasis added).
Accordingly, just as courts determine the admissibility of
hearsay or the balance between probative value and unfair
prejudice under Rule 403, so with respect to this issue must
courts weigh factors bearing on the privilege.
Moreover, in addition to these principles applicable to the
judicial role in any evidentiary dispute, the dynamics of leak
inquiries afford a particularly compelling reason for judicial
scrutiny of prosecutorial judgments regarding a leak’s harm and
news value. Because leak cases typically require the
government to investigate itself, if leaks reveal mistakes that
high-level officials would have preferred to keep secret, the
administration may pursue the source with excessive zeal,
regardless of the leaked information’s public value. Of course,
in this case a special counsel was appointed to exercise
independent judgment. Yet independent prosecutors, too, may
skew their assessments of the public interests implicated when
a reporter is subpoenaed. After all, special prosecutors, immune
to political control and lacking a docket of other cases, face
pressure to justify their appointments by bagging their prey. Cf.
Morrison v. Olson, 487 U.S. 654, 727-28 (1988) (Scalia, J.,
dissenting) (noting “the vast power and the immense discretion
that are placed in the hands of a prosecutor with respect to the
objects of his investigation” and observing that “the primary
check against prosecutorial abuse is a political one”). To be
clear: I do not impugn the motives of this special counsel.
Indeed, as I conclude below, his pursuit of the reporters’
testimony appears reasonable. Nevertheless, these
considerations—the special counsel’s political independence, his
 24

lack of a docket, and the concomitant risk of
overzealousness—weigh against his claim to deference in
balancing harm against news value.
Paralleling the special counsel’s argument about executive
discretion, my concurring colleague suggests that my approach
pays insufficient deference to Congress. See sep. op. at 8
(Henderson, J., concurring). “Branzburg,” she writes, “warns of
the risk inherent in the judicial assessment of the importance of
prosecuting particular crimes.” See id. Although it is true that
Branzburg cautioned against second-guessing the “legislative
judgment . . . of what conduct is liable to criminal prosecution,”
408 U.S. at 706, it did so in a passage rejecting a test of
governmental need that apparently “distinguish[ed] between the
value of enforcing different criminal laws,” deeming some
statutes “compelling” and others unimportant. See id. at 702,
705-06. The approach I propose entails no such judgment about
the value of the statute under which the government is
proceeding. Rather, my approach focuses on whether evidence
the government believes it needs, i.e., a reporter’s testimony
about a particular source, is privileged. To be sure, insofar as
the reporter’s testimony is critical in a particular case,
privileging the evidence may render that case unprovable. But
that risk accompanies any privilege or indeed any rule of
evidentiary exclusion. Had Congress believed that judicial
decisions excluding evidence interfered with its “legislative
judgment” regarding underlying crimes, it would hardly have
authorized recognition of common law privileges by enacting
Rule 501.
Furthermore, and perhaps even more important, Branzburg
addressed only a First Amendment privilege claim. See supra at
14. In that case, therefore, because Congress cannot overturn
constitutionally based decisions, recognizing the asserted
privilege would have permanently foreclosed punishment of any
crimes dependent on proof subject to the privilege. The
 25

qualified privilege I would recognize, however, rests on Rule
501, not the Constitution. If Congress believes that this
approach overrides its judgment about what conduct should be
criminal, it may simply overturn the privilege and authorize use
of the evidence.
Next, the special counsel argues that waivers signed by
suspected sources represent an “additional factor” favoring
compulsion of the reporters’ testimony. Appellee’s Br. at 46.
As the reporters point out, however, numerous cases (including
persuasive district court decisions from this circuit) indicate that
only reporters, not sources, may waive the privilege. See, e.g.,
United States v. Cuthbertson, 630 F.2d 139, 147 (3d Cir. 1980);
Palandjian v. Pahlavi, 103 F.R.D. 410, 413 (D.D.C. 1984);
Anderson v. Nixon, 444 F. Supp. 1195, 1198-99 (D.D.C. 1978).
For the contrary proposition, the special counsel cites McKevitt
v. Pallasch, 339 F.3d 530 (7th Cir. 2003), but that case involved
a criminal defendant’s effort to obtain non-confidential records
from the biographers of a government witness, not waiver of
confidentiality by a previously unidentified source. See id. at
531, 533-34. Nor does Hutira v. Islamic Republic of Iran, 211
F. Supp. 2d 115 (D.D.C. 2002), help the special counsel. While
that decision indicated that “‘the absence of confidentiality may
be considered in the balance of competing interests as a factor
that diminishes the journalist’s, and the public’s, interest in non-
disclosure,’” id. at 120 (quoting Shoen v. Shoen, 5 F.3d 1289,
1295 (9th Cir. 1993)), it quashed the subpoena at issue,
reasoning that “the privilege for journalists shields both
confidential and nonconfidential information from compelled
disclosure,” id.
As this case law recognizes, a source’s waiver is irrelevant
to the reasons for the privilege. Because the government could
demand waivers—perhaps even before any leak occurs—as a
condition of employment, a privilege subject to waiver may,
again, amount to no privilege at all, even in those leak cases
 26

where protecting the confidential source is most compelling.
Moreover, although the attorney-client and psychotherapist
privileges are waivable by clients and patients, respectively, see,
e.g., In re Sealed Case, 877 F.2d 976, 980 (D.C. Cir. 1989)
(attorney-client); Jaffee, 518 U.S. at 15 n.14 (psychotherapist),
that is because those privileges exist to prevent disclosure of
sensitive matters related to legal and psychological counseling,
see, e.g., Swidler & Berlin, 524 U.S. at 407-08; Jaffee, 518 U.S.
at 10-11, a rationale that vanishes when the source authorizes
disclosure. In contrast, the reporter privilege safeguards public
dissemination of information—the reporter’s enterprise, not the
source’s.
Consistent with that purpose, the privilege belongs to the
reporter. Not only are journalists best able to judge the
imperatives of newsgathering, but while the source’s interest is
limited to the particular case, the reporter’s interest aligns with
the public, for journalists must cultivate relationships with other
sources who might keep mum if waiving confidentiality at the
government’s behest could lead to their exposure. Indeed, as
compared to counseling-related privileges, the privilege against
spousal testimony represents a better analogy. Just as under
Trammel’s waiver theory testifying spouses, regardless of the
other spouse’s wishes, may judge for themselves whether their
testimony will undermine “marital harmony,” see Trammel, 445
U.S. at 44-45, 52-53, so should journalists—the experts in
newsgathering—base the decision to testify on their own
assessment of the consequences, unconstrained by their source’s
waiver (provided other requirements of the privilege are met).
For their part, appellants insist that a qualified privilege
fails to provide the certainty their work requires because sources
are unlikely to disclose information without an advance
guarantee of secrecy. In particular, they argue that journalists
cannot balance a leak’s harm against its news value until they
know what information the source will reveal, by which time it
 27

is too late to prevent disclosure. True enough, but journalists are
not the ones who must perform the balancing; sources are.
Indeed, the point of the qualified privilege is to create
disincentives for the source—disincentives that not only
promote the public interest, but may also protect journalists
from exploitation by government officials seeking publication
of damaging secrets for partisan advantage. Like other
recipients of potentially privileged communications—say,
attorneys or psychotherapists—the reporter can at most alert the
source to the limits of confidentiality, leaving the judgment of
what to say to the source. While the resulting deterrent effect
may cost the press some leads, little harm will result, for if the
disincentives work as they should, the information sources
refrain from revealing will lack significant news value in the
first place.
In any event, although Jaffee said that “[m]aking the
promise of confidentiality contingent upon a trial judge’s later
evaluation . . . [will] eviscerate the effectiveness of the
privilege,” 518 U.S. at 17, the clash of fundamental interests at
stake when the government seeks discovery of a reporter’s
sources precludes a categorical approach. See Zerilli, 656 F.2d
at 712 n.46 (rejecting arguments for greater “specificity” as to
the scope of the First Amendment privilege in civil litigation).
And as we explained in Zerilli, the “deterrence effect” on
beneficial newsgathering will be small if courts make clear that
the privilege is “overridden only in rare circumstances.” See id.
at 712 & n.46.
In short, the question in this case is whether Miller’s and
Cooper’s sources released information more harmful than
newsworthy. If so, then the public interest in punishing the
wrongdoers—and deterring future leaks—outweighs any burden
on newsgathering, and no privilege covers the communication
(provided, of course, that the special counsel demonstrates
necessity and exhaustion of alternative evidentiary sources).
 28

III.
Applying this standard to the facts of this case, and
considering first only the public record, I have no doubt that the
leak at issue was a serious matter. Authorized “to investigate
and prosecute violations of any federal criminal laws related to
the underlying alleged unauthorized disclosure, as well as
federal crimes committed in the course of, and with intent to
interfere with, [his] investigation, such as perjury, obstruction of
justice, destruction of evidence, and intimidation of witnesses,”
see Letter from James B. Comey, Acting Attorney General, to
Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United States Attorney, Northern District
of Illinois (Feb. 6, 2004), the special counsel is attempting to
discover the origins of press reports describing Valerie Plame as
a CIA operative monitoring weapons of mass destruction. See
majority op. at 3-5. These reports appeared after Plame’s
husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, wrote in a New
York Times op-ed column that his findings on an official mission
to Niger in 2002 cast doubt on President Bush’s assertion in his
January 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq “recently
sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” See id. at
3.
An alleged covert agent, Plame evidently traveled overseas
on clandestine missions beginning nearly two decades ago. See,
e.g., Richard Leiby & Dana Priest, The Spy Next Door; Valerie
Wilson, Ideal Mom, Was Also the Ideal Cover, Wash. Post, Oct.
8, 2003, at A1. Her exposure, therefore, not only may have
jeopardized any covert activities of her own, but also may have
endangered friends and associates from whom she might have
gathered information in the past. Acting to criminalize such
exposure of secret agents, see 50 U.S.C. § 421, Congress has
identified that behavior’s “intolerable” consequences: “[t]he
loss of vital human intelligence which our policymakers need,
the great cost to the American taxpayer of replacing intelligence
resources lost due to such disclosures, and the greatly increased
 29

risk of harm which continuing disclosures force intelligence
officers and sources to endure.” S. Rep. No. 97-201, at 10-11
(1981), reprinted in 1982 U.S.C.C.A.N. 145, 154-55.
The leak of Plame’s apparent employment, moreover, had
marginal news value. To be sure, insofar as Plame’s CIA
relationship may have helped explain her husband’s selection for
the Niger trip, that information could bear on her husband’s
credibility and thus contribute to public debate over the
president’s “sixteen words.” Compared to the damage of
undermining covert intelligence-gathering, however, this slight
news value cannot, in my view, justify privileging the leaker’s
identity.
Turning now to the classified material, I agree with the
special counsel that ex parte review presents no due process
difficulty. To be sure, grand jury secrecy is not absolute. As
Rule 6(e) itself provides, courts may “authorize disclosure . . .
of a grand jury matter . . . preliminarily to or in connection with
a judicial proceeding.” Fed. R. Crim. P. 6(e)(3)(E). In addition,
as the reporters point out, even apart from United States v.
Dinsio, 468 F.2d 1392 (9th Cir. 1973), now superceded by
United States v. Mara, 410 U.S. 19 (1973), see majority op. at
19 (citing In re Braughton, 520 F.2d 765, 767 (9th Cir. 1975)),
the Second and Ninth Circuits have held that due process
requires an “uninhibited adversary hearing” in civil contempt
proceedings, see United States v. Alter, 482 F.2d 1016, 1024
(9th Cir. 1973) (internal quotation marks omitted); In the Matter
of Kitchen, 706 F.2d 1266, 1272 (2d Cir. 1983) (internal
quotation marks omitted), including “the right to confront all the
government’s evidence, both documentary and testimonial,
unless particular and compelling reasons peculiar to the grand
jury function require some curtailment of [that] right,” Kitchen,
706 F.2d at 1272.
In this circuit, however, we have approved the use of “in
camera, ex parte proceedings to determine the propriety of a
 30

grand jury subpoena or the existence of a crime-fraud exception
to the attorney-client privilege when such proceedings are
necessary to ensure the secrecy of ongoing grand jury
proceedings.” In re Sealed Case No. 98-3077, 151 F.3d 1059,
1075 (D.C. Cir. 1998) (per curiam). Just as due process poses
no barrier to forcing an attorney to testify based on the court’s
examination of evidence, unseen by the lawyer, that the client
sought legal advice in pursuit of a crime, neither does it preclude
compulsion of a reporter’s testimony based on a comparable
review of evidence, likewise unseen by the reporter, that a
source engaged in a harmful leak. In fact, appellants’ protests
notwithstanding, ex parte review protects their interests, as it
allows the government to present—and the court to demand—a
far more extensive showing than would otherwise be possible
given the need for grand jury secrecy discussed in the court’s
opinion, see majority op. at 17-18.
That said, without benefit of the adversarial process, we
must take care to ensure that the special counsel has met his
burden of demonstrating that the information is both critical and
unobtainable from any other source. Having carefully
scrutinized his voluminous classified filings, I believe that he
has.
With respect to Miller, the special counsel seeks evidence
regarding two exchanges with I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice
President Cheney’s Chief of Staff and National Security
Adviser: first, an in-person meeting in Washington, D.C. on
July 8, 2003, and second, a telephone conversation on July 12,
2003. Before the grand jury, Libby testified that although he
had previously learned about Wilson’s wife’s employment, he
had forgotten it by July 8 and recalled no discussion of Wilson
during his meeting with Miller. (I-105, 134-35, 279.) As to the
July 12 conversation, Libby stated, “I said to her that, that I
didn’t know if it was true, but that reporters had told us that the
ambassador’s wife works at the CIA, that I didn’t know
 31

anything about it.” (I-208.) Because other testimony and
evidence raises doubts about Libby’s claims, the special counsel
believes Miller’s testimony is “essential to determining whether
Libby is guilty of crimes, including perjury, false statements and
the improper disclosure of national defense information.”
(8/27/04 Aff. at 28; see also id. at 1-2.)
The special counsel’s argument is persuasive. As Libby
admits, in mid-June 2003, when reports first appeared about the
Niger trip, the vice president informed Libby “in an off sort of
curiosity sort of fashion” that the Niger envoy’s wife worked at
the CIA’s counterproliferation division. (I-50-55, 245-46.) In
addition, handwritten notes by Libby’s CIA briefer indicate that
Libby referred to “Joe Wilson” and “Valerie Wilson” in a
conversation on June 14. (8/27/04 Aff. at 12.) Nevertheless,
Libby maintains that he believed he was learning about Wilson’s
wife’s identity for the first time when he spoke with NBC
Washington Bureau Chief Tim Russert on July 10 or 11
regarding coverage of the Niger issue by MSNBC correspondent
Chris Matthews. (I-162-69; 8/27/04 Aff. at 9-10.) According to
Libby, Russert told him, “[D]id you know that Ambassador
Wilson’s wife works at the CIA? . . . [A]ll the reporters know
it.” (I-166.) Claiming to have been “a little taken aback by
that,” Libby testified, “I said, no, I don’t know that intentionally
because I didn’t want him to take anything I was saying as in
any way confirming what he said, because at that point in time
I did not recall that I had ever known, and I thought this is
something that he was telling me that I was first learning.” (I-
166.)
Russert recalls this conversation very differently. In his
deposition, describing Plame’s employment as a fact that would
have been “[v]ery” significant to him—one he would have
discussed with NBC management and potentially sought to
broadcast—Russert stated, “I have no recollection of knowing
that [Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA], so it was impossible for
 32

me to have [told Libby] that.” (I-43, 32.) Asked to describe his
“reaction” to Novak’s July 14 column, Russert said, “Wow.
When I read that—it was the first time I knew who Joe Wilson’s
wife was and that she was a CIA operative. . . . [I]t was news to
me.” (I-433.)
Also contrary to Libby’s testimony, it appears that Libby
discussed Plame’s employment on several occasions before July
10. (See 8/27/04 Aff. at 11-12.) For example, then-White
House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer recalls that over lunch on
July 7, the day before Libby’s meeting with Miller, Libby told
him, “[T]he Vice-President did not send Ambassador Wilson to
Niger . . . the CIA sent Ambassador Wilson to Niger. . . . [H]e
was sent by his wife. . . . [S]he works in . . . the
Counterproliferation area of the CIA.” (II-545-47.) Describing
the lunch as “kind of weird” (II-590-91), and noting that Libby
typically “operated in a very closed-lip fashion” (II-592),
Fleischer recalled that Libby “added something along the lines
of, you know, this is hush-hush, nobody knows about this. This
is on the q.t.” (II-546-47.) Though Libby remembers the lunch
meeting, and even says he thanked Fleischer for making a
statement about the Niger issue, he denies discussing Wilson’s
wife. (I-108-09, 156, 226-27.)
As to the July 12 conversation, Libby testified that while
flying back from an event in Norfolk on Air Force Two, Vice
President Cheney dictated several statements relating to the
sixteen words controversy, some to be given to reporters on-the-
record, others on background and deep background. (I-193-
201.) After landing, Libby called several journalists, including
Cooper and Miller. (I-202-03.) As Libby tells it, Cooper, whom
he reached first, asked him why Wilson claimed Cheney had
ordered the trip, to which Libby responded, “[Y]ou know, off-
the-record, reporters are telling us that Ambassador Wilson’s
wife works at the CIA and I don’t know if it’s true. . . . [W]e
don’t know Mr. Wilson, we didn’t know anything about his
 33

mission, so I don’t know if it’s true. But if it’s true, it may
explain how he knows some people at the Agency and maybe he
got some bad skinny, you know, some bad information.” (I-
203-06.) According to Libby, Miller, too, said something that
“triggered” him to mention that “reporters had told us that the
ambassador’s wife works at the CIA.” (I-207-09.)
In contrast, in a deposition limited to Cooper’s contacts
with Libby (see II-32-33, 107), Cooper said that he (Cooper)
asked Libby “something along the lines of what do you know
about Wilson’s wife being involved in, you know, sending him
on this mission?” (II-53.) According to Cooper, Libby
responded, “[Y]eah, I’ve heard that too” (II-54), which Cooper
took as confirmation (II-81-91). Also, though Libby now claims
not to remember Cheney telling him to discuss Plame’s
employment, he told the FBI during a preliminary interview that
it was “possible” that he received such instructions. (I-201,
391.) Perhaps indicating the issue was on Cheney’s mind, the
vice president’s copy of Wilson’s op-ed, which Cheney cut out
and kept on his desk, carries the following handwritten note:
“[H]ad they done this sort of thing before[,] send an
ambassador to answer a question? [D]o we ordinarily send
people out pro bono to work for us? [O]r did his wife send him
on a junket?” (I-308-12.)
Given the evidence contradicting Libby’s testimony, the
special counsel appears already to have at least circumstantial
grounds for a perjury charge, if nothing else. Miller’s
testimony, however, could settle the matter. If Libby mentioned
Plame during the July 8 meeting—and Miller’s responses to the
documentary subpoena suggest she has notes from that
conversation (see 8/27/04 Aff. at 19-20)—then Libby’s version
of events would be demonstrably false, since the conversation
occurred before he spoke to Russert. Even if he first mentioned
Plame on July 12, as he claims, inconsistencies between his
recollection and Miller’s could reinforce suspicions of perjury.
 34

What’s more, if Libby mentioned Plame’s covert status in either
conversation, charges under the Intelligence Identities Protection
Act, 50 U.S.C. § 421, currently off the table for lack of evidence
(see 8/27/04 Aff. at 28 & n.15), might become viable. Thus,
because Miller may provide key corroboration or contradiction
of Libby’s claims—evidence obviously available from no other
source—the special counsel has made a compelling showing that
the subpoenas directed at Miller are vital to an accurate
assessment of Libby’s conduct.
Regarding Cooper, the special counsel has demonstrated
that his testimony is essential to charging decisions regarding
White House adviser Karl Rove. (See 9/27/04 Aff. at 22-23).
Although uncontradicted testimony indicates that Novak first
learned Wilson’s wife’s place of employment during a meeting
on July 8 with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage (see
8/27/04 Aff. at 18), Novak said in grand jury testimony that he
confirmed Plame’s employment with Rove (II-153-54), a
longstanding source for his columns (II-121-22). According to
Novak, when he “brought up” Wilson’s wife, “Mr. Rove said,
oh, you know about that too” (II-154) and promised to seek
declassification of portions of a CIA report regarding the Niger
trip, which Rove said “wasn’t an impressive piece of work or a
very definitive piece of work” (II-158). In an October 2003
column describing his sources, Novak identified Armitage’s
comment as an “offhand revelation” from “a senior
administration official” who was “no partisan gunslinger.” (II-
20.) He referred to Rove simply as “another official” who said,
“Oh, you know about it.” (II-20, 209-11.)
Upon reading Novak’s October column, Armitage
recognized himself as Novak’s source and, as he told the grand
jury, “went ballistic.” (II-859-60.) He contacted Secretary of
State Colin Powell to offer his resignation (II-862-64) and spoke
the next day with FBI and Justice Department officials
investigating the leak (II-878-79). “I was very unhappy at
 35

myself,” Armitage testified, “because I had let the President
down, I’d let the Secretary down, and frankly, I’d let
Ambassador and Mrs. Wilson down. In my view inadvertently,
but that’s for others to judge.” (II-860.)
* * * * *[REDACTED] * * * *
36
 37

In any event, as with the Miller subpoenas, the
evidence sought from Cooper appears essential to accurate
understanding of events and could obviously provide
information unavailable elsewhere. Thus, again, the special
counsel has shown that this evidence is crucial to accurate
decision-making by the grand jury.
 38

As to the leaks’ harmfulness, although the record omits
specifics about Plame’s work, it appears to confirm, as alleged
in the public record and reported in the press, that she worked
for the CIA in some unusual capacity relating to
counterproliferation. Addressing deficiencies of proof regarding
the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, the special counsel
refers to Plame as “a person whose identity the CIA was making
specific efforts to conceal and who had carried out covert work
overseas within the last 5 years”—representations I trust the
special counsel would not make without support. (8/27/04 Aff.
at 28 n.15.) In addition, Libby said that Plame worked in the
CIA’s counterproliferation division (I-53-55, 245-46), and
Armitage’s testimony identifies a document referring to Plame
as a “WMD managerial-type,” wording Armitage considered
“strange,” though he “assumed she was another analyst” (II-
783-84, 809, 815-16). Most telling of all, Harlow, the CIA
spokesperson, though confirming Plame’s employment, asked
Novak to withhold her name, stating that “although it is very
unlikely that she will ever be on another overseas mission . . . it
might be embarrassing if she goes on foreign travel on her own”
(II-168-69), a statement that strongly implies Plame was covert
at least at some point. While another case might require more
specific evidence that a leak harmed national security, this
showing suffices here, given the information’s extremely slight
news value and the lack of any serious dispute regarding
Plame’s employment.
Finally, while it is true that on the current record the special
counsel’s strongest charges are for perjury and false statements
rather than security-related crimes, that fact does not alter the
privilege analysis. Insofar as false testimony may have impaired
the special counsel’s identification of culprits, perjury in this
context is itself a crime with national security implications.
What’s more, because the charges contemplated here relate to
false denials of responsibility for Plame’s exposure, prosecuting
perjury or false statements would be tantamount to punishing the
 39

leak. Thus, given the compelling showing of need and
exhaustion, plus the sharply tilted balance between harm and
news value, the special counsel may overcome the reporters’
qualified privilege, even if his only purpose—at least at this
stage of his investigation—is to shore up perjury charges against
leading suspects such as Libby and Rove.
In sum, based on an exhaustive investigation, the special
counsel has established the need for Miller’s and Cooper’s
testimony. Thus, considering the gravity of the suspected crime
and the low value of the leaked information, no privilege bars
the subpoenas.
One last point. In concluding that no privilege applies in
this case, I have assigned no importance to the fact that neither
Cooper nor Miller, perhaps recognizing the irresponsible (and
quite possibly illegal) nature of the leaks at issue, revealed
Plame’s employment, though Cooper wrote about it after
Novak’s column appeared. Contrary to the reporters’ view, this
apparent self-restraint spares Miller and Cooper no obligation to
testify. Narrowly drawn limitations on the public’s right to
evidence, testimonial privileges apply “only where necessary to
achieve [their] purpose,” Fisher v. United States, 425 U.S. 391,
403 (1976), and in this case the privilege’s purpose is to promote
dissemination of useful information. It thus makes no difference
how these reporters responded to the information they received,
any more than it matters whether an attorney drops a client who
seeks criminal advice (communication subject to the crime-fraud
exception) or a psychotherapist seeks to dissuade homicidal
plans revealed during counseling (information Jaffee suggested
would not be privileged, see 518 U.S. at 18 n.19). In all such
cases, because the communication is unworthy of protection,
recipients’ reactions are irrelevant to whether their testimony
may be compelled in an investigation of the source.
Indeed, Cooper’s own Time.com article illustrates this
point. True, his story revealed a suspicious confluence of leaks,
 40

contributing to the outcry that led to this investigation. Yet the
article had that effect precisely because the leaked
information—Plame’s covert status—lacked significant news
value. In essence, seeking protection for sources whose
nefariousness he himself exposed, Cooper asks us to protect
criminal leaks so that he can write about the crime. The greater
public interest lies in preventing the leak to begin with. Had
Cooper based his report on leaks about the leaks—say, from a
whistleblower who revealed the plot against Wilson—the
situation would be different. Because in that case the source
would not have revealed the name of a covert agent, but instead
revealed the fact that others had done so, the balance of news
value and harm would shift in favor of protecting the
whistleblower. Yet it appears Cooper relied on the Plame leaks
themselves, drawing the inference of sinister motive on his own.
Accordingly, his story itself makes the case for punishing the
leakers. While requiring Cooper to testify may discourage
future leaks, discouraging leaks of this kind is precisely what the
public interest requires.

IV.
I conclude, as I began, with the tensions at work in this
case. Here, two reporters and a news magazine, informants to
the public, seek to keep a grand jury uninformed. Representing
two equally fundamental principles—rule of law and free
speech—the special counsel and the reporters both aim to
facilitate fully informed and accurate decision-making by those
they serve: the grand jury and the electorate. To this court falls
the task of balancing the two sides’ concerns.
As James Madison explained, “[A] people who mean to be
their own Governors must arm themselves with the power which
knowledge gives.” See In re Lindsey, 148 F.3d 1100, 1109
(D.C. Cir. 1998) (quoting Letter from James Madison to W.T.
Barry (Aug. 4, 1822), in 9 The Writings of James Madison 103
 41

(Gaillard Hunt ed., 1910)). Consistent with that maxim, “[a]
free press is indispensable to the workings of our democratic
society,” Associated Press v. United States, 326 U.S. 1, 28
(1945) (Frankfurter, J., concurring), and because confidential
sources are essential to the workings of the press—a practical
reality that virtually all states and the federal government now
acknowledge—I believe that “reason and experience” compel
recognition of a privilege for reporters’ sources. That said,
because “[l]iberty can only be exercised in a system of law
which safeguards order,” Cox v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 559, 574
(1965), the privilege must give way to imperatives of law
enforcement in exceptional cases.
Were the leak at issue in this case less harmful to national
security or more vital to public debate, or had the special
counsel failed to demonstrate the grand jury’s need for the
reporters’ evidence, I might have supported the motion to quash.
Because identifying appellants’ sources instead appears essential
to remedying a serious breach of public trust, I join in affirming
the district court’s orders compelling their testimony.