by Mike Lawson
She remembered the shit storm that had erupted in 2003 when that CIA agent Valerie Plame had her cover blown by Scooter Libby—or whoever the hell it really was. A couple of reporters were jailed for contempt for refusing to reveal their sources and one, a gal named Judith Miller who worked for the New York Times, spent almost three months in jail for refusing to give up a source. Whitmore didn’t know all the details regarding Plame, or what Miller had done; all she knew was that the leak investigation had gone on for months, had involved a gaggle of politicians and prominent journalists, and they came damn close to getting the vice president before it was all over.
And all that ruckus just for naming a spy—not for getting one killed.
She was in a world of trouble.
“Ms. Whitmore,” the judge asked, “do you understand that I’m going to place you in jail for contempt and that you’ll remain there until you agree to cooperate?”
Whitmore looked up at the judge’s glowering face and then glanced over at a guy from the LA Times she knew. He didn’t look the least bit sympathetic; he looked like he was having a ball. The little prick.
“Ms. Whitmore, do you understand me?” the judge repeated.
She looked back at the judge, directly into his beady eyes, and tilted her chin defiantly. “Yeah, I understand,” she said. And then, for the benefit of all the media present, she added, “And you can lock me up forever. I’ll never give up a source.”
One of the journalists sitting behind her cheered, and she figured that whoever he was he had to be very young. The rest of the journalists all let out little groans as they wrote down the hackneyed, self-serving quote they would be forced to include in their stories.
Actually, she was petrified of going to jail. She had three addictions: nicotine, alcohol, and pain medication. She’d been taking painkillers ever since she sprained her back five years ago, and at work she went outside every half hour to smoke. And at night, every night, she drank half a bottle of cheap scotch. Jail was going to be a living hell—and the government was going to do everything it could to make it so.
But she would endure it, by God, she would.
This was the best thing that had happened to her in twenty years.