WASHINGTON – The Fourth Estate lost another high-profile legal battle yesterday, as a federal appeals court upheld contempt citations against four reporters for refusing to divulge their sources for stories about a nuclear scientist once suspected of espionage, Wen Ho Lee.

A three-judge appeals court panel ruled unanimously that Lee was entitled to the journalists’ testimony in connection with a lawsuit he brought against the government, claiming that unnamed officials illegally leaked information about him to the press.

“The information Lee is seeking goes to the heart of his case,” Judge David Sentelle wrote.

Attorneys for the reporters had argued that Lee should take more depositions in an effort to find the leakers, but Judge Sentelle said evidence suggested “that the deponents on whom Lee focused were in fact the sources of the leaks and were denying it.”

Judge Sentelle was dismissive of the journalists’ argument that forcing them to disclose their sources would hamper free expression. “No such threat exists here,” the judge wrote.

The appeals court upheld the contempt order against H. Josef Hebert of the Associated Press, James Risen of the New York Times, Robert Drogin of the Los Angeles Times, and Pierre Thomas, an ABC News reporter who worked for CNN at the time of the Lee investigation. The court lifted the contempt citation against another New York Times reporter, Jeff Gerth, because of ambiguities in the questions he was asked.

The ruling yesterday came on the heels of the Supreme Court’s announcement Monday that it will not consider a similar case involving two other reporters, Judith Miller of the New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine. They have been ordered jailed because of their refusal to answer questions in a grand jury investigation into a leak of the identity of a CIA operative, Valerie Plame.

“This hasn’t been a good couple of days for journalists,” said an attorney for Messrs. Hebert and Drogin, Lee Levine. “I definitely think there is something going on here.”

“It’s been kind of demoralizing,” said the executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Lucy Dalglish. “I think it’s very reminiscent of the way things were in the early 1970s,” she said.

While Ms. Miller and Mr. Cooper face the very real prospect of jail time, at the moment the only sanction facing the reporters in the Lee case is a fine of $500 a day. The judge handling the suit, Thomas Jackson, has suspended the fines while the reporters’ appeal is pending.

The Associated Press said yesterday that it plans to ask the full 10-judge bench of the appeals court to take up the dispute.

“No criminal case is at stake here. Journalists should not be forced to identify sources to help support Wen Ho Lee’s view that the government mishandled his case,” said the president and CEO of the Associated Press, Thomas Curley.

The publisher of the New York Times, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., described the appeals court’s ruling as an assault on the First Amendment. “This is yet another blow to journalists’ ability to report on how the government operates. It goes to the heart of the First Amendment and the free flow of information to the public,” he said in a statement.

Lee’s attorney, Brian Sun, did not return calls seeking comment for this story. Lee was never charged with spying, but he pleaded guilty to a felony charge of mishandling nuclear secrets.

Ms. Dalglish said she doubts that either the jail time or the fines will persuade any of the journalists to identify their sources. “Unless somebody is convinced their source really wants them to speak, I don’t think you’re going to see that happening,” she said.

Senator Dodd of Connecticut has introduced a federal “shield law” that would allow reporters to keep their sources secret in many instances. Most states have such protections, but there is no federal statute creating a legal privilege for journalists.

Ms. Dalglish said the string of legal defeats should encourage reporters to step up their efforts to pass the measure. “I hope this gives greater cohesiveness to the journalistic community as we go up to Congress,” she said.

A former federal prosecutor said he sees no concerted effort to pursue journalists more aggressively. “I don’t think judges, prosecutors, and trial attorneys have gotten together and have said, ‘Let’s go after reporters,'” said Randall Eliason, who now teaches law at American and George Washington universities in Washington, D.C. “Where the leak itself is a crime, you’ve got to be able to ask reporters themselves where the leak came from.”

In a 1972 case, Branzburg v. Hayes, the Supreme Court rejected a newspaper reporter’s claim that he should not be required to appear before a grand jury investigating a drug laboratory. However, no majority opinion was filed in the case, and in the years that followed, many courts interpreted the Supreme Court’s holding to allow reporters to resist questioning in civil cases and even in criminal cases in many circumstances.

In 2003, those interpretations in favor of a federal reporters privilege came under attack by a judge on the 7th Circuit Appeals Court, Richard Posner. Judge Posner said that the other courts had either ignored Branzburg or engaged in a contorted reading of it.

In the ruling yesterday, Judge Sentelle grudgingly applied his court’s precedents granting some protection to journalists, but he hinted that he shares Judge Posner’s view that the earlier rulings went too far.

“A notion that seemed, as recently as five years ago, to be almost universally accepted, except in an extraordinary case, now seems to be the subject of a great deal of controversy,” said Mr. Levine, the lawyer for Messrs. Hebert and Drogin. “Something has changed. I’m not sure what it is.”

Ms. Dalglish conceded that the proposed reporters’ privilege law is troubling because it requires someone in government to determine who is and isn’t acting as a journalist, but she said those concerns must now take a backseat. “Does it make me nervous to have Congress making those decisions? Yeah, it does. But it makes me more nervous to have a bunch of journalists going to jail,” she said.

The appeals court’s opinion yesterday was joined by Judge Judith Rogers, an appointee of President Clinton, and by Judge A. Raymond Randolph, who was appointed by President George H.W. Bush. Judge Sentelle is an appointee of President Reagan.