Freebird!

September 30, 2005

Remember all the heartfelt remarks about Judith Miller principled refusal to cooperate with Patrick Fitzgerald’s Plame investigation? About how Miller was taking the honorable path, choosing incarceration in order to protect a source?

Well, all of that’s over now.

New York Times reporter Judith Miller was released from jail late yesterday and is scheduled to testify this morning before a federal grand jury investigating whether any government officials illegally leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame to the media, according to lawyers involved in the case.

Miller, 57, has been jailed for contempt of court since July 6 for refusing to testify about conversations with news sources. She was released from the Alexandria Detention Center shortly after 4 p.m. yesterday after her attorney Robert S. Bennett reached an agreement on her testimony with special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald, according to two lawyers familiar with the case.

Miller had refused to testify about information she received from confidential sources. But she said she changed her mind after I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, chief of staff for Vice President Cheney, assured her in a telephone call last week that a waiver he gave prosecutors authorizing them to question reporters about their conversations with him was not coerced.

“It’s good to be free,” Miller said in a statement last night. “I went to jail to preserve the time-honored principle that a journalist must respect a promise not to reveal the identity of a confidential source. . . . I am leaving jail today because my source has now voluntarily and personally released me from my promise of confidentiality regarding our conversations relating to the Wilson-Plame matter.”

I’m glad Miller’s out and willing to testify; it means the investigation is just about over. I can’t quite figure out, however, why Miller took so long to get to this point.

Libby’s waiver was signed way back at the beginning of the probe. Miller said it wasn’t legit because it was coerced by prosecutors. Libby’s lawyers reportedly told Miller’s lawyers that the waiver was sincere over a year ago, but she apparently wasn’t convinced. She only recently sought “clarification.”

Ms. Miller authorized her lawyers to seek further clarification from Mr. Libby’s representatives in late August, after she had been in jail for more than a month. Mr. Libby wrote to Ms. Miller in mid-September saying he believed that her lawyers understood during discussions last year that his waiver was voluntary.

I’m probably missing something, but couldn’t Miller have sought “further clarification” from Libby a long time ago? Before she’d spent a month in jail?

In either case, Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney’s trusted aide, returns to the center of Plame-related attention. This is hardly a surprise; Time’s Matt Cooper identified Libby as one of his sources in August.

If I were a betting man, and I thought indictments in this case were inevitable, I’d put good money on charges being brought against Libby. He’s always been up to his ears in this scandal and Miller’s in a position to make things considerably worse for him.

Wouldn’t it be fun to flip Libby.

But since Bush will pardon him practically before the gavel hits the wooden gavel-striker thing that’s all academic.

  • The waiver business was always kabuki meant to provide a fig leaf over the real issues. Fitzgerald’s come to a deal with Miller over whatever it is, and so she comes out with this malarkey to pretend she was all along standing up for some high-minded principle. Miller and Libby’s contempt for law is exceeded only by the contempt the Times shows towards its readers as it mouths this transparent nonsense.

  • Something about this whole soap opera says – stall tactic. Libby waived off confidentiality a long time ago, and reitterated it over a month ago. I can think of no reasonable reason to wait 6 an extra weeks to get out of jail.
    OK – I can think of 2.
    Miller really really liked the food.
    Or, there were tracks to cover and stories to coordinate.

    Something smells wrong about this. I haven’t seen any pigs fly my window, so it’s kind of hard to believe anyone in this admin would own up to the leak.

  • I suspect that the real reason Miller decided to sing is that it was made very clear to her by Fitzgerald that he was going to pursue CRIMINAL contempt charges against her, and her ass was going to be in jail/prison for one hell of a long time. She decided that HER freedom was more important than any “protecting the source” horseshit that she and the New York Times has been peddling.

    One other possibility is that Fitzgerald made it clear that she would, herself, be indicted as a co-conspirator with Rove and Libby in the outing-crime itself, and then in the cover-up by protecting Rove and Libby. She took the lesser of the two evils, and by testifying before the Grand Jury is simply trying to save her own neck; her “reputation as a legitimate and respected journalist — however undeserved or tenuous it might have been — was shattered long ago….

  • Stall tactic is correct. Here’s a line from the story that I originally overlooked:

    The federal grand jury delving into the matter expires Oct. 28. Miller would have been freed at that time, but prosecutors could have pursued a criminal contempt of court charge against the reporter if she continued to defy Fitzgerald.

    Even though she is out now and will appear before the grand jury, will they have time before 10/28 to finish what needs to be done???

  • Hey little Scotty… Has Mr Libby’s security clearance been revoked yet?

    If not, why not?

    Do we have to wait until he’s convicted?

    What kind of bullshit is that? Isn’t national security supposed to be your strong suit?

  • Analytical Liberal wrote : I suspect that the real reason Miller decided to sing is that it was made very clear to her by Fitzgerald that he was going to pursue CRIMINAL contempt charges against her, and her ass was going to be in jail/prison for one hell of a long time.
    This is true plus the fact that perhaps Judy maybe thought that Mr. Fitzgerald would be placated by the stretch of time she already served and when she found that wasn’t the case she decided to spill her guts. Besides, the reason she SHOULD be in jail is her coercion with the Bush Misadministration in the leadup to the Iraq mess by putting into print the bullshit pillow talk Chalabi was feeding her and passing it off as fact in the pages of the NYT.

  • What really bothers me is that the worthless, lying, self serving bitch is going to land on her feet and still play ‘journalist’.

    She was a willing participant in a game that has killed nearly 2000 US soldiers. She was a player in a slimy game to destory intelligence capability for political payback.

    Ideally, she would roll all the way over on her dirtbag cohorts. At least we’d get to see a lot of Bushies frog marched – and her career would transition into making rightwing porn videos with Ann Coulter or something. If not that, one could hope that she will lie outrageously and get caught. Then at least the Bagdad Bitch would get what is coming to her personally.

    But no, she’ll lie, but just enough for containment. And she’ll pretend she is something other than a self serving traitor…

    God it pisses me off!
    -jjf

  • or… maybe she’s going to lie again… it wouldn’t take a stupid person to go tell the Grand Jury what they expect to hear, and leave the other parts untouched… Heck, if they don’t ask the right questions, or use the right wording, she might not even have to perjure herself…

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