September 30, 2005
Times Reporter Testifies in Leak Case After 85 Days in Jail
By DAVID JOHNSTON and DOUGLAS JEHL
WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 - Judith Miller, the reporter for The New York Times who had been jailed since July 6 for refusing to testify in the C.I.A. leak case, testified for more than three hours today before a federal grand jury investigating the case. Then she headed home to Long Island where, she said, she was eager to have a home-cooked meal and hug her dog.
"Believe me, I did not want to be in jail," she told reporters in front of the federal courthouse here ...
September 30, 2005
Scooter's Stoolie: Judith Miller's Strange Voluntary Jail Time
By DAVE LINDORFF
Judith Miller really must have a lot of embarrassing things to hide.
She has portrayed herself as a noble journalist going to jail to protect her source's identity, and to uphold a journalistic principle.
The only problem is, her source didn't need protection. The source, VP Dick Cheney's top aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, says he told her quite clearly a year ago that she was free to discuss him and their conversation with Justice Department Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, who is leading a federal grand jury investigation into the disclosure of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity.
That is to say, Miller had no reason to refuse to testify, to face a contempt charge, and to go to jail. ...
There has been speculation for some time that Miller, who never did write a story about the Plame case, but who had been a willing propagandist for the Bush administration's pre-Iraq War campaign of scare tactics regarding alleged weapons of mass destruction in Saddam Hussein's hands, and for the cynical "hunt" for those mythical WMDs in the early days of the war and occupation, was actually more a source or at least conveyor of the Plame outing story than a reporter of it.
If so, that would make her bizarre voluntary incarceration in the federal lock-up much more understandable. It would be embarrassing, and damaging to her reputation if it turned out she was behind the Plame outing to the media, or if she had helped White House sources to spread the word to the media.
Oh, to be a fly on the wall of U.S. Attorney Fitzgerald's deposition room.
<http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff09302005.html>
Carl