Off the Record

When Norman Pearlstine, as editor in chief of Time Inc., agreed to give prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald a reporter's notes of a conversation with a "confidential source, " he was vilified for betraying the freedom of press. But in this hard-hitting inside story, Pearlstine shows that "Plamegate" was not the clear case it seemed to be and that confidentiality has become a weapon in the White House's war on the press. Watergate and the publication of the Pentagon Papers are the benchmark incidents of government malfeasance exposed by a fearless press. But, as Pearlstine explains, the press's hunger for a new Watergate has made reporters vulnerable to officials who use confidentiality to get their message out, even when it means leaking state secrets and breaking the law. Prosecutors appointed to investigate the government have investigated the press instead, while the use of unnamed sources has become common in everything from celebrity ceeklies to the so-called papers on record.