Plot
President Lyman is shot in an assassination attempt. In retaliation, the United States bombs Venezuela, accusing that country of instigating the attack.
Rachel Armstrong, 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, whose daughter Alison attends the same school as Timmy, Rachel's son. Rachel confronts Van Doren at a soccer match, and requests confirmation. Erica refuses to cooperate 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 and legal counsel Avril Aaronson.
Because revealing a covert operative's identity is a treasonous offence 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 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, who was hired by the newspaper to defend Rachel and boasted that his personal friendship with Judge Hall will facilitate matters, is shocked when his client is jailed for contempt of court for failing to answer. Burnside admonishes the prosecutor 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".
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. Rachel is aggressed by inmates in prison, but still steadfastly defends the principle of confidentiality, a position that eventually estranges her husband Ray, who like Dubois imagines that she's protecting a government employee, alienates her young son Timmy, and costs her embattled newspaper millions of dollars in fines 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. Burnside even appeals her case before the Supreme Court, 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, 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.
