Fast Facts: Cases Where Reporters Were Held in Contempt

Some recent cases in which prosecutors have sought to have reporters disclose sources:

—New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper (search) have been found in civil contempt of court for refusing to reveal their sources to the prosecutor trying to find out who in the Bush administration leaked the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame.

—In Rhode Island (search), WJAR-TV reporter Jim Taricani served four months of home confinement for refusing to identify the source who gave him a copy of a videotape showing a former Providence City Hall official taking a bribe from an undercover FBI informant.

—Associated Press reporter H. Josef Hebert (search) and four other journalists have been found in contempt for refusing to identify their sources for stories on Wen Ho Lee, the nuclear scientist whose career was cut short when his name surfaced as an espionage suspect. Lee is suing the government for leaking his name to the news media late in the Clinton administration when Republicans accused the White House of ignoring China's alleged theft of U.S. nuclear secrets.

—The same prosecutor investigating the Plame leak is seeking the telephone records of New York Times reporters Miller and Philip Shenon, while investigating a leak about a planned FBI raid on the Global Relief Foundation, an Islamic charity suspected of funding terrorism.