Contempt Roundup

CONTEMPT ROUNDUP….Which journalists have testified before the grand jury investigating the Valerie Plame case? Hard to say. But here’s the best summary I can come up with:

• Matthew Cooper of Time magazine has been subpoenaed, has refused to testify, and has been held in contempt. The contempt order is currently on appeal.

• Tim Russert of Meet the Press has been subpoenaed, but NBC made him availably only “under an agreement where he was not required to appear before the grand jury and was not asked questions that would have required him ‘to disclose information provided to him in confidence.’”

  However, aside from this limited questioning, NBC apparently plans to fight the subpoena.

• Walter Pincus of the Washington Post was served with a subpoena on Monday. The Post intends to fight it.

• “The Washington Post and the New York newspaper Newsday said last week that their reporters were asked to sit for questions in connection with the investigation but that they had not been formally subpoenaed.”

  These two reporters are presumably Glenn Kessler (of the Post) and Knut Royce (of Newsday)

• Robert Novak’s status is unknown. His lawyer has declined to comment.

That’s all I can find for now. But one thing stands out pretty clearly: we now know that at least five reporters have been either subpoenaed or questioned in some way by federal prosecutors. Given that, what are the odds that Novak, the central figure in all this, hasn’t been? Add to that the fact that (a) he refuses to comment about the investigation and (b) he isn’t being charged with contempt, and the most likely conclusion is that he squealed.

Or so it seems to me. It probably won’t be much longer until we find out for sure.