In Washington, D.C., a reporter faces a possible jail sentence for outing a CIA agent and refusing to reveal her source.
Thinking Pulitzer Prize and hoping to bring down a President, D.C. political columnist Rachel Armstrong writes that the President ignored the findings of a covert CIA operative when ordering air strikes against Venezuela. Rachel names the agent, Erica Van Doren, a woman whose young daughter is in Rachel's son's class at school. The government moves quickly to force Rachel to name her source. She's jailed for contempt when she refuses. She won't change her mind, and the days add up. Chaos descends on Van Doren's life as well. First Amendment versus national security, marriage and motherhood versus separation. What's the value of a principle?—<[email protected]>
Rachel Armstrong is trying to balance her life as wife to novelist Ray Armstrong and "soccer mom" to adolescent Timmy Armstrong against the want to advance her career as an investigative journalist at the national news desk of the Capital Sun-Times newspaper. Her name within the profession may become more renowned when her editor, Bonnie Benjamin, decides to print the latest explosive story on which she has been working and for which many predict she will win a Pulitzer Prize. The story is that Erica Van Doren, the wife of Ambassador Oscar Van Doren who has been critical of the current administration, is a covert CIA operative who investigated and found conclusive evidence that the Venezuelan government was not responsible for a recent assassination attempt on US President Lyman. Erica's report was ignored by the White House, the US government which proceeded to bomb strategic Venezuelan sites in retaliation. Beyond exposing Erica's role, the story is not meant to be critical of her or Ambassador Van Doren per se but rather the White House for their inappropriate and potentially illegal behavior, which the newspaper sees as being in the same league as something like Watergate. The coincidental part of the story is that the Van Dorens' daughter Alison Van Doren is Timmy's classmate, although Rachel doesn't know the Van Doren parents personally and has only seen fellow soccer mom Erica in the past from afar in their respective volunteer work at the school. Although he OKs proceeding with the story, what makes the newspaper's chief counsel Avril Aaronson nervous is that Rachel has not divulged to him or anyone else at the newspaper her primary source, although Rachel, Bonnie and her staff have verified the story through secondary sources. The issue is is that it is considered treasonous for government officials to have provided Rachel this type of information, and thus the story could be problematic if Rachel's primary source is someone in the White House or within the CIA which is most likely the case. Although the story is meant to focus on the White House's actions and behaviors, it instead results in the two women in the center being the targets. Many of Erica's colleagues believe she knows who leaked the story to Rachel, she herself being under suspicion to support the views of her husband. The government, through the FBI which hires special prosecutor Patton Dubois, is determined for Rachel to reveal her source as a measure of national security, there being precedent in a 1972 case which ruled that national security trumps Rachel's First Amendment right to protect her source. The newspaper in turn hires high powered lawyer Albert Burnside to fight Rachel's case in front of a grand jury against Dubois. Rachel, who is as determined to keep her source a secret beyond the First Amendment issue as Dubois is as determined for her to reveal the source, may not be prepared for the consequences, which could be jail time for contempt for as long as she decides to hold out.—Huggo
When reporter Rachel Armstrong writes a story that reveals the identity of a covert CIA operative, the government demands that Rachel reveal her source. She defies the special prosecutor and is thrown in jail. Meanwhile, her attorney, Albert Burnside argues her case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.—yusufpiskin
President Lyman (Scott Williamson) is shot in an assassination attempt. In retaliation, the United States bombs Venezuela, accusing that country of instigating the attack.
Rachel Armstrong (Kate Beckinsale), an ambitious reporter for the Washington D.C. paper Capital Sun-Times, is preparing to publish a report that alleges that the Lyman administration knowingly lied to Congress and the American public by blaming Venezuela for the assassination attempt, and that the Administration received a CIA report by an operative who had investigated the Venezuela connection and found that they were not at all linked to the assassination attempt.
The report also reveals that the CIA operative is Erica Van Doren (Vera Farmiga), whose daughter Alison attends the same school as Timmy (Preston Bailey), Rachel's son. Rachel refuses to tell her paper who was her original source who revealed that Van Doren was the CIA operative who traveled to Venezuela on a fact-finding mission. Rachel has the memo that Erica wrote to her boss as proof.
Rachel confronts Van Doren at a soccer match, and requests confirmation. Erica refuses to cooperate (and says she is not a CIA operative) but gives herself away by losing her temper over "irresponsible journalists". Rachel, who has no doubts about the veracity of the report, publishes her story and it becomes front-page news with the full support of editor Bonnie Benjamin (Angela Bassett) and legal counsel Avril Aaronson (Noah Wyle).
The CIA gets a whiff of the impending publication. Erica's boss Merill suspects Erica of leaking the story to Rachel, as she was angry for the white house to ignore her report in the first place. Erica and Merill decide to polygraph everyone at the agency to figure out who was the traitor who revealed her identity as a CIA operative to the press.
Because revealing a covert operative's identity is a treasonous offense if committed by a government employee, and because any individual leaking such sensitive and secret information constitutes a threat to national security, special Federal prosecutor Patton Dubois (Matt Dillon) convenes a grand jury to identify and prosecute that person. But when Dubois asks her to name the government employee who was her source, she refuses to give any answer at all. A high-profile attorney, Albert Burnside (Alan Alda), who was hired by the newspaper to defend Rachel and boasted that his personal friendship with Judge Hall (Floyd Abrams) will facilitate matters, is shocked when his client is jailed for contempt of court for failing to answer. Burnside admonishes the judge for making "a big mistake", warning "sometimes a mistake is like wearing white after Labor Day, and sometimes a mistake is invading Russia in winter".
The next morning Burnside argues for Rachel to release on bail. The judge would allow it if Rachel would at least try to talk to her source to seek permission to reveal its name. Rachel refuses and her incarceration continues.Meanwhile the CIA continues to investigate Erica as the source of the leak (despite her passing a polygraph), and this makes her angry. Erica threatens to reveal official secrets and is in turn threatened that CIA will try to turn the custody battle for her daughter, against her.
Days become weeks, weeks turn to months, and in the meantime, Van Doren is murdered in front of her home by a political fanatic with a gun (on day 228 of Rachel's imprisonment). Rachel is harassed by inmates in prison (by day 344, she is irritated and starts picking up fights with her fellow inmates over bunk assignments), but still steadfastly defends the principle of confidentiality, a position that eventually estranges her husband Ray Armstrong (David Schwimmer) who like Dubois imagines that she's protecting a government employee, alienates her young son Timmy (Preston Bailey), and costs her embattled newspaper millions of dollars in fines (Dubois convinces the court to impose a fine of $10K every day for which Rachel refuses to reveal the name of her source) and legal fees. However, Dubois is only interested in Armstrong's original source.
Armstrong pleads to Dubois that she could never give up her source as they would now be seen as responsible for the murder of Van Doren. One white house staffer comes forward and testifies to the grand jury that he was the source of the leak to Rachel. He says he was angry with Erica for her report on Venezuela. he met Rachel at a party and confirmed to her that Erica was working covertly for the CIA. But the testimony reveals that Rachel already knew that Erica was a spy, before talking to the white house staffer.
Burnside even appeals her case before the Supreme Court (day 355), arguing that without protection of sources then there is no freedom of the press, perhaps ultimately no democracy, but the court decides against him 5-4, citing the overriding concern of national security.
Eventually (Day 360), Judge Hall accepts that Armstrong will never give in and divulge her source. And so, convinced that incarcerating her can serve no useful purpose, and since she has not been convicted of any offense, decides to release her from jail. On the day she is released, Dubois has the U.S. Marshals arrest her, and charges her for obstruction of justice, and convinces her to take a deal for a shortened sentence rather than go to trial. She agrees to two years in prison, with the possibility of early parole for good behavior.
As Armstrong is taken to the prison facility, she reminisces about her time as a volunteer at Timmy's school: Once, on a field trip, she spoke to Van Doren's daughter, Alison. Alison innocently mentioned that her mother worked for "the government" and had recently gone to Venezuela on "business", thus revealing her as the original source.
