The idea of Novak, or the Times reporters, being turned into martyrs for their questionable work makes some press advocates uncomfortable. "We're not defending Novak's right to out a CIA agent or the New York Times' right to characterize Wen Ho Lee in a way the government had to apologize for," stresses Colon at the Poynter Institute. "Those journalists and news organizations have egg on their face." Rather, he and others want to defend the general right of the press corps to work without fear of being subpoenaed.

"I agree they're unattractive cases," adds Kevin Goldberg, legal counsel for the American Society of Newspaper Editors. "But it would be nice if people looked beyond that to see reporters trying to do the right thing" in protecting their sources.

George Freeman, assistant general counsel for the New York Times Co., agrees that the big picture ought to take precedence. "The ins and outs of the reporting and the outside criticism [of the Lee coverage] really doesn't have any bearing on the situation," he says. "The protection of the principle is the overriding concern."

"Reporters can't maintain their credibility unless they keep their promises to sources," notes Dalglish, at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. "A journalist's word is his bond. And if you break your word, who's going to talk to you again? The chill for those gathering information is a real threat."

The other threat is coming from the courts. Along with Jackson -- who decided in the Lee case to force journalists to cooperate -- another U.S. District Court judge, in August, ordered authors working on a book about Irish terrorism to hand over tape-recorded interviews with a suspected terrorist so they can be used in a trial in Ireland. Fearing they might lose the legal battle and that the case would become precedent setting, the journalists surrendered their tapes.

Despite the concession, Judge Richard Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in Chicago went ahead and issued a full-fledged ruling, taking aim at the press's privilege of protecting nonconfidential sources -- their refusal to share background information on people they write about. "We do not see why there needs to be special criteria merely because the possessor of the documents or other evidence sought is a journalist," Posner wrote. Two dozen media organizations quickly filed a friend-of-the-court brief, calling Posner's opinion a "stunning break from long-standing precedent" that was "far-reaching and radical."

Still, the unsettling details of the Lee and Plame controversies have opened a debate within the journalism community as to whether protecting sources always makes sense.

"Guaranteeing our sources that we won't out them is a terribly important principle," says Overholser, former ombudsman for the Washington Post. But when considering whether to maintain agreements of confidentiality, "reporters should at least take into consideration if they've been badly used. If they've been lied to, are they still going to protect their source? That's an odd ethical bond. Why protect somebody who spun you and endangered somebody's livelihood, which was certainly true in the Wen Ho Lee case." Nonetheless, Overholser concedes she's torn because if reporters do make exceptions, the courts could take that as evidence that a blanket privilege for the press is unnecessary.

Wilson, a government servant for 25 years, says he strongly defends the press's First Amendment rights. But the Lee case and the leak surrounding his wife are instances "where sources misled the press," he notes. "That's a different story. What retribution does the press take on a source who misled them? The question is, will the press allow itself to be used even more as a tool of disinformation than it already is?"

One option is voluntarily outing the source. Press advocates argue that's career suicide. But just three years ago Novak himself publicly revealed a confidential source: FBI agent Robert Hanssen. After Hanssen was arrested for espionage, Novak wrote that "in order to be honest to my readers, I must reveal" that Hanssen had been an unnamed source in prior Novak columns. Novak feels no such necessity today to reveal the identity of the sources who unmasked a CIA operative's undercover status.

But Dalglish fears that if journalists start making exceptions, the courts could soon take the privilege away altogether. "If a source behaves unethically, I think the responsibility of the reporters is to say to the source: You screwed me over. I'm never going to trust you again and don't come to me looking for favors. I'm going to keep my promise but I'm going to report the truth and the record will be clear including that the information you gave me is false."

Critics, however, argue that in the Lee case the Times never did that. In response to external criticism, the paper did go to the unusual lengths of publishing an "assessment" of its Lee coverage, in September 2000. But the defensive letter from the editors, while finding some fault with the "tone" of the paper's work, essentially stood by the Times' reporters. Jay Rosen, chairman of the Journalism Department at New York University, calls the assessment "one of the most tortured and strained notes ever to appear in the pages of the New York Times."

It was the Times' now-infamous March 6, 1999, story that set the Lee saga into motion. In retrospect it seemed to be a classic case of reporters becoming captives of their sources, to the point of not even considering alternative explanations: that is, that Lee was innocent. Although it did not name Lee (that came three days later), the 4,000-word story, "Breach at Los Alamos -- A Special Report: China Stole Nuclear Secrets for Bombs, U.S. Aides Say," made it clear Lee was the prime suspect in what the paper called a historic bout of communist espionage, and one that the Clinton administration had dragged its feet in uncovering.

At the time, the sensational story dovetailed nicely with a previous Times exposé on the alleged transfer of satellite technology to China by two U.S. defense contractors, and how the Clinton White House had granted a key launch waiver to one of the companies, Loral, simply because the chairman was a longtime contributor to the Democratic Party. Once granted that waiver, the Times asserted, Loral leaked military secrets to the People's Republic of China. Neither charge proved to be true.

Relentlessly prosecutorial in tone, the March 6 story often, in unqualified terms, referred to "the espionage," "the leak," "the theft," and "the crime" leaving readers no room for doubt. Interrogating Lee the next day at Los Alamos without an attorney present, FBI agents waved the Times article around. "You know, Wen Ho, this, it's bad," said one agent. "I mean, look at this newspaper article! I mean, 'China Stole Secrets for Bombs.' It all but says your name in here."

The Times story also quoted an anonymous source saying that the suspect, a Chinese-American Los Alamos computer scientist who failed a polygraph the previous February, "stuck out like a sore thumb." It was just one example of how the Times was misled by its sources, chief among them Trulock. Although never described as a source, the Times' March 6 story certainly mentioned Trulock positively: "In personal terms, the handling of this case is very much the story of the Energy Department intelligence official who first raised questions about the Los Alamos case, Notra Trulock."

That's one of the odd aspects about the ongoing Lee case and its search for government leakers. Because unlike the Novak controversy, which remains for now an actual whodunit, most people who follow the Lee story feel as though they know who some of the key sources in the stories were, such as Trulock. "It's one of the worst-kept secrets," says Hoffman. Yet the Times' reporters refuse to confirm that fact in court.

Journalists ordered to provide depositions, along with Gerth and Risen at the Times, are Robert Drogin of the Los Angeles Times, Josef Hebert of the Associated Press, and Pierre Thomas, formerly of CNN. None of the Lee news coverage in those outlets was nearly as accusatory as the Times' stories.

None of the journalists have answered questions about their sources, refusing to even say which government agency the sources worked for. Lee's attorney, Sun, is expected to return to court in early February to ask that the journalists be held in contempt. Attorneys for the reporters are expected to argue that Lee's legal team has not exhausted its search for the source and that more depositions from non-journalists are needed. If the judge rejects that plea, reporters would soon be brought in and cross-examined and could ultimately face jail time if they refuse to cooperate.

Meanwhile, according to news accounts, the Justice Department investigation into the Novak leak has been gaining momentum in recent weeks as well, and a grand jury may be called to hear testimony. Punctuated by the announcement on Dec. 30 that Attorney General John Ashcroft was recusing himself from the case, investigators continue to zero in on the White House as the primary source of the potentially illegal leak.

Yet the investigation remains in the early stages, with lots of scenarios still possible, including Novak's being ordered to testify. And complicating factors remain, such as Justice Department guidelines that discourage subpoenaing reporters for grand jury testimony. Also, it's not entirely clear the Plame leakers breached the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, a law that nobody has ever been prosecuted under. Some Novak supporters argue that to be guilty, the leakers would have had to know Plame's precise CIA status and then passed it along to a reporter in hopes of blowing her identity. If they simply told Novak that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and didn't consider the consequences, then it's conceivable a judge or jury would find that a crime was not committed.

Wilson notes it was the CIA itself that asked for an investigation in the first place. "I don't believe the CIA would have referred this case to the Justice Department unless it thought a crime had been committed," he says.

Quietly watching the unfolding drama are the journalists who reportedly received the same information about Plame. Should they come forward? Overholser doesn't think so. "Those six received the same information as Novak and made an admirable decision not to use it," she says. "Perhaps they questioned the import, or thought the leaker was behaving in an unsavory way. But I think their decision not to use it takes them off the playing field."

And Colon notes, it hasn't been established yet that the law was broken. "Maybe we'll find the information wasn't disclosed illegally," he says.

But what if Justice Department investigators announce tomorrow that they concluded leaking Plame's name was a crime and asked for the cooperation of anyone with relevant information? "As an editor," says Overholser, "that's when I'd call [the newspaper's] lawyer. Because then it becomes a more complicated legal matter and not simply a journalistic decision that a reporter has to make for him or herself."

Russell Weaver, a professor of law at the University of Louisville, says under those circumstances, the six journalists who know the leaker's identity would almost certainly be subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury. And because the case is being handled on a federal level, which means state-based shield laws would not protect the reporters, they would be forced to reveal the information or face jail time, says Weaver.

For press advocates, the unappealing specifics of the Plame and Lee cases remain less compelling than the larger privilege at stake. "Whether or not Novak behaved in an appropriate way, I'm not going to go there," says Dalglish. "The same thing with New York Times and the Wen Ho Lee case. But I'm perfectly comfortable defending reporters' rights to keep their source information confidential."

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