This soap opera starring Jason Giambi , Bud Selig and the trampled principle of free speech is beginning to resemble a bad, black-and-white movie.

Imagine Giambi as a captured spy who is being grilled by the secret police in some third-world country.

He squirms in his chair, sweat dripping down his face, as an interrogator looks down on him with his most menacing scowl.

“You will talk, or else!” he tells the stone-faced prisoner.

Essentially that was the message baseball’s commissioner and his management team sent to the New York Yankees’ injured designated hitter last week. They didn’t deliver it quietly, either. Selig went to the unusual lengths of issuing a news release spelling out the expectations for Giambi, who landed in hot water not for any recent actions but an interview he gave to USA Today last month about steroids.

Giambi admitted his own steroid use, saying he made a “mistake,” but the biggest mistake he actually made was implying in the interview that the use of performance-enhancing substances was such an open secret in baseball that it was common knowledge to everyone, including management.

In the USA Today interview, Giambi said “players, ownership everybody” should have apologized to fans “a long time ago” for widespread use of steroids. That was like a punch in the nose to Selig, who long has contended he did not know how widespread the use of steroids was until years after the 1998 home run chase between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa.

Selig is telling the truth. He didn’t know. It’s just not plausible that there was some massive conspiracy by executives to look the other way while Jose Canseco, McGwire, Giambi and a host of others injected themselves in the rump. Somebody would have squealed by now.

The guess here is Selig and others in leadership with MLB will be criticized for their lack of knowledge when George Mitchell’s committee releases its report later this year. Skeptics, of course, will dismiss the Mitchell report as an inside job, which essentially it is. But don’t overlook Mitchell’s integrity or the resources that are being poured into the investigation.

Lacking subpoena power, Mitchell has run into a roadblock in terms of interviewing active players. That’s why Selig is using the USA Today story as a reason to order Giambi to talk.

This isn’t going to end well for anyone, and only will make other players even more reluctant to talk. Giambi is going to wind up with a suspension, either for defying the commissioner’s orders or for what was revealed long ago in the federal steroid investigation centered in the Bay Area. The New York Yankees may try to void his contract, which calls for him to receive almost $40 million before the deal ends with a buyout of his 2009 option.

Selig’s heavy-handed position on Giambi’s cooperation tips off his seriousness in retroactively punishing offenders, no matter when they used steroids and how that knowledge is documented.

“Any admission regarding the use of illegal performance-enhancing substances, no matter how casual, must be taken seriously,” Selig said in his statement. “Discipline for wrongdoing is important …”

Selig went on to talk about the importance of cooperation, but he already had made his point. Once Mitchell issues his report, Selig’s actions and the ensuing battle with the players union will be epic.