Posted on 10/21/2005 5:13:36 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON - The New York Times' Judith Miller belatedly gave prosecutors her notes of a key meeting in the CIA leak probe only after being shown White House records of it, and her boss declared Friday she appeared to have misled the newspaper about her role.
In a dramatic e-mail, Executive Editor Bill Keller wrote Times' employees he wished he'd more carefully interviewed Miller and had "missed what should have been significant alarm bells" that she had been the recipient of leaked information about the CIA officer at the heart of the case.
"Judy seems to have misled (Times Washington bureau chief) Phil Taubman about the extent of her involvement," Keller wrote in what he described as a lessons-learned e-mail. "This alone should have been enough to make me probe deeper."
Keller said he might have been more willing to compromise with Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald "if I had known the details of Judy's entanglement" with Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
Miller's attorney, Bob Bennett, did not immediately return calls seeking her response to Keller.
Fitzgerald is investigating the disclosure of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity.
In a sign the prosecutor may be preparing indictments, Fitzgerald's office erected a Web site Friday containing the record of the broad investigative mandate handed to him by the Justice Department at the outset of his investigation. Unlike some of his predecessors who operated under a law that has since expired, Fitzgerald is not required to write a final report, so he would not need a Web site for that purpose.
Meanwhile, two lawyers familiar with Fitzgerald's investigation told The Associated Press that Fitzgerald first learned from White House records that Miller had met as early as June 23, 2003, with Libby and discussed the CIA operative.
In her first grand jury appearance Sept. 30 after being freed from prison for refusing to testify, Miller did not mention the meeting and retrieved her notes about it only when prosecutors showed her visitor logs showing she had met with Libby in the Old Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House.
The lawyers spoke only on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing secrecy of the grand jury probe and the prosecutor's desire to keep his communications with lawyers and witnesses confidential.
One lawyer familiar with Miller's testimony said the reporter told prosecutors at first that she did not believe the June meeting would have involved Plame. Miller said that, because she had just returned from covering the Iraq war, she was probably giving Libby an update about her experiences there, the lawyer said.
However, Miller retrieved her notes and discovered they indicated that Libby had given her information about Plame at that meeting. Fitzgerald then arranged for her to return to the grand jury to testify about it, the lawyers said.
The evidence of that meeting has become important to the investigation because it indicates that Libby was passing information to reporters about Plame well before her husband, Joseph Wilson, went public with accusations that the Bush administration had twisted prewar intelligence on Iraq to exaggerate the threat it posed.
Libby and top presidential political adviser Karl Rove have emerged as central figures in the probe because they had contacts with reporters who learned Plame's identity or disclosed it in news stories.
Fitzgerald began his probe to determine whether presidential aides violated a law prohibiting the intentional disclosure of covert CIA officers, and had tried to out Plame to punish Wilson for his criticism, undercut the credibility of his allegations or silence similar critics.
But the investigation has also examined evidence of a possible coverup. Fitzgerald has made clear to defense lawyers that he could pursue charges such as false testimony, obstruction of justice, or mishandling of classified information. As those discussions have gotten more intense in recent days, the White House is increasingly wary of indictments.
AP reported earlier this week Rove testified Libby may have been his initial source of information inside the White House about Plame before he talked to reporters. Prosecutors have linked the vice president's top aide to contacts with at least three reporters in the affair. Libby met three times with Miller before Plame was outed, though she never wrote a story herself.
Conflicts between presidential aides' testimony and other evidence could result in criminal charges. The grand jury investigating the matter for the last two years is set to expire next Friday.
Keller's e-mail was designed to quell tensions inside a newsroom roiled by Miller's close connections to Libby, a key figure in the leak probe. Miller's reporting on possible weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before the invasion bolstered the Bush administration's arguments for action.
Later, after no such WMD weapons were found, she and the paper admitted some information she reported was flawed. The Bush administration likewise acknowledged some of it prewar intelligence was erroneous.
Keller said in his e-mail he believed the paper was too slow to correct the original reporting and to get to the bottom of the facts about Miller's involvement with Libby.
"If we had lanced the WMD boil earlier, we might have damped any suspicion that THIS time the paper was putting the defense of a reporter above the duty of its readers," he said.
___
On the Net:
Special Counsel: http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/iln/osc/index.html
Boy, if this ain't a novel way to drip out bad news.
The headline should be in large fonts on the front page "MILLER CAUGHT HIDING KEY EVIDENCE".
Instead, it's a minor article about a mea culpa from the editor.
New York Times reporter Judith Miller listens to other panellists speak during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on reporters' privilege legislation on Capitol Hill, October 19, 2005. Miller was jailed 85 days for refusing to testify about her conversations with Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff regarding undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
New York Times reporter Judith Miller (C) listens to Newsday reporter Patricia Hurtado while on a panel discussion during the Society of Professional Journalists national convention at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas Nevada, October 18, 2005. (Steve Marcus/Reuters)
So is thepoint of this that Judith Miller had security clearance and that she leaked classified info?
And yet the Times and Post gleefully declare that Rove and Libby, if indicted, would be charged for NOT BEING FORTHCOMING or not disclosing information, ie. doing what is now said about Miller!
And my question is also this: Why would the editor have been more compromising had he known of her "involvement" with Libby? I thought that protecting sources MEANT protecting sources! Isn't that what they had encouraged her to do? And yet we then find out he had given a waiver a year before!
The NYTimes continues to slide into the pit of fraud.
Miller didn't know why Valerie FLAME was written in her notebook. She said she didn't get it from Libby BUT she couldn't remember who. In short....She got caught hiding knowledge of Plame before Joe's article and Novak's reference to Plame, the operative!! I have no doubt that Novak meant Dem Operative. Novak and/or the Whitehouse had no reason and absolutely nothing to gain by outing her, in fact, just the opposite.
Ms. Miller, dear, your hair is looking a little flat and your makeup needs to be re-done so the shine will go away.
My wife's beauticians can hook you right up! She hired four of the best.
They'll get rid of that frizz, touch up your makeup, and give you a manicure/pedicure.
Oh, they can do white hair as well. So, sit down and shut up. You need to be beautified! At least you look better than Mother Sheehan. *BLECHT!* There ain't enough beautification in the world to help that thing.
If you want a Google GMail account, FReepmail me.
Also, please see The Backside of American History
You'll love this 187 page .pdf (1.99 MB)
Let me see if I can paraphrase here...
How about: "The Times lied ... people died"
Reminds me of Dan Rather....
Jayson Blair deja vu
She needs to lose the bangs. And it should be illegal to wear that much eyeliner under the eye, outside of a halloween party or got concert.
Whoops....that's "goth" concert.
"Journalism" is not pretty.
Fame's fleet has left the harbor.
FWIW, it's in an article by AP's John Solomon, which is about as close to a blockbuster as you're gonna get with a perennial non-starter like this story....
And it's an extremely interesting mea culpa, too. What does Bill Keller know, that he's started backing away from Judith Miller? Clearly there's more afoot here.
And the NYT suffers another black eye.... (sniff. So sad.)
And "Blinky" Matthews and the MSM keep on telling us that its Rove and Libby who are guilty of withholding information from the prosecutor
They say in this article that Libby revealed Plame's identity BEFORE Wilson wrote the op-ed. But they'll still continue to say that he revealed Plame's identity BECAUSE Wilson wrote the op-ed.
Can't have the revisionist history both ways. Either the notes on Plame from June were in there because Libby told her, or Libby outed Plame because of the op-ed in July.
It's okay. My wife's girls will hook her right up.
If you want a Google GMail account, FReepmail me.
Also, please see The Backside of American History
You'll love this 187 page .pdf (1.99 MB)
Does this guy think kicking Judith Miller to the curb will placate the liberals who work for him? Yeah, the Times' problem is that it wrote about weapons of mass destruction. Brilliant.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.