Ostensibly, the pressure should be on the Bush administration itself, which deliberately – and illegally – leaked the identity of a CIA field operative, apparently as a form of revenge against her husband, the diplomat Joseph Wilson, who conducted an investigation and wrote a report undermining the administration’s case for war against Iraq. Instead, however, the special prosecutor’s attempt to pinpoint the identity of the leaker or leakers has focused on two reporters told about the CIA operative in 2002. Both Mr Cooper of Time and Judith Miller of The New York Times have come under relentless pressure to give up the names of their sources, although neither was the first to identify the CIA operative as Mr Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame.

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