Miller's Tale

Matt Welch | September 30, 2005

New York Times reporter Judith Miller is out of jail 12 weeks into her sentence, after Scooter Libby told her it was OK to testify about their conversation to the Grand Jury charged with figuring out which guvmint scoundrel outed CIA employee Valerie Plame, who Miller never wrote about. While debating whether to even begin wrapping your head around this Beltway game of journo-legal Twister, here's a page full o' Reason links to all things Judy.

Self-congratulation from the various Times-bots here.

Comments

|9.30.05 @ 2:38AM|#

Boy, I loved the Miller's Tale! Just chock full of deceit, treachery, ass kissing/ass burning, and people screaming about the end of the world!
And just wait until you read Chaucer's The Miller's Tale, har, har, har! Oh man, I got a million of them...

R C Dean|9.30.05 @ 10:05AM|#

Didn't the Scootster waive confidentiality months ago? What changed in the last few days that suddenly she is willing to testify?

theOneState|9.30.05 @ 10:07AM|#

Scooter's a wimp. He couldn't handle more than 12 weeks of letting an innocent reporter do jail time? I know they're probably friends and all, but this is politics. You gotta be tougher than that.

Too bad we didn't get to the part where Miller goes on a hunger strike.

|9.30.05 @ 10:08AM|#

I second RC's question. Libby's lawyer is saying that they didn't tell Miller anything this week that they didn't tell her a year ago. The "just received a waiver" line is bullshit.

Dave W.|9.30.05 @ 11:05AM|#

What changed in the last few days that suddenly she is willing to testify?

Maybe things weren't working out well with Ms. Miller's new roommate.

|9.30.05 @ 12:21PM|#

"Libby's lawyer is saying that they didn't tell Miller anything this week that they didn't tell her a year ago."

The WaPo story says that Miller thought Libby's original OK was coerced, so she kept quite until he double-dog-dare-promised-with-a-cherry-on-top that it was voluntary: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/29/AR2005092901974_pf.html

|9.30.05 @ 12:59PM|#

The very fact that we have high officials in our government that go by the name "Scooter" is pretty worrisome in my opinion.

|9.30.05 @ 1:54PM|#

"The very fact that we have high officials in our government that go by the name "Scooter" is pretty worrisome in my opinion."

The BBC World Service newsreader lady referred to him as "Scooter Libby".

Discuss amongst yourselves: Does this constitute evidence of 'anti-American' bias?

Morat|9.30.05 @ 2:01PM|#

I've seen speculation ranging from "Judy realized Fitzgerald was serious about that criminal contempt thing" to "Larry Franklin copping to espionage made her realize that 'NYT Reporter helps cover up espionage' might not be a career building headline" to "It's all a REpublican plot".

Me? I think it's some of Judy wanting out of jail and suspecting Fitzgerald will play hardball with her (the guy did go after the mob). I think she finally worked out he'd keep her in jail a very long time, going after criminal contempt.

The judge's decisions regarding her original imprionsment indicate they thought it was something fairly serious, beyond the usual "few months in jail, best selling book" sort of thing she suspected.

I have no idea what Fitzgerald has, or who he's after, or whether he'll even indict. But the fact that the espionage act just nailed somebody in the past week has to be making a few people nervous. It's a lot easier to prove than violations of IIPA, and it certainly sounds very nasty next to your name....

Not the sort of thing an enterprising reporter wants to be tied with. Going to jail to protect your source gets you all the media kudos. If you're going to jail to help cover-up espionage, not so much with the parades.

|9.30.05 @ 2:18PM|#

Q: Why is the Plame investigation taking so long?

A: The Media.

Libby's attorney gave Miller's attorney the waiver necessary for Miller to testify before the grand jury. This was a year ago. Miller held out anyway on the ignorance defense. She "didn't know" about the waiver until this past week when Libby called her, again, about it.

When does that grand jury expire? Better call her again Fitzgerald. Don't let her get on that international flight.

R C Dean|9.30.05 @ 3:33PM|#

On the news, she said (a) she got a "personal" waiver and a phone call from the Scootster, and (b) the prosecutor agreed that she would only have to testify about her conversation with the Scootster and nothing else.

Now, (a) is pure eyewash. The general waiver that Libby gave a year ago is plenty good for all purposes.

Whether (b) is a genuine concession from the prosecutor or not, I don't know. It sounds an awful lot like the scope of the subpoena, in which case (b) is eyewash, also.

The grand jury expires in about another month. It may be that her civil contempt escalates into bona fide obstruction of justice if she is still in jail and refusing to testify when the grand jury expires. Looking a felony in they eye may be what really changed her mind.