Posted on 10/15/2005 5:18:55 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON - The prosecutor in the CIA leak probe repeatedly asked New York Times reporter Judith Miller how Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff handled classified information in their discussions, and asked whether Cheney knew of their conversations.
In a first-person account released Saturday on The Times' Web site, Miller recounted her recent grand jury testimony, which focused on her conversations in 2003 with Cheney's closest aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Miller said she "didn't think" she heard covert CIA officer Valerie Plame's name from Libby. "I said I believed the information came from another source, whom I could not recall."
Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is investigating whether crimes were committed when Bush administration officials leaked the identity of Plame to reporters. Plame's covert status was exposed at a time when her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, was criticizing the Bush administration, accusing it of manipulating prewar intelligence to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.
"My interview notes show that Mr. Libby sought from the beginning, before Mr. Wilson's name became public, to insulate his boss from Mr. Wilson's charges," Miller wrote.
Miller spent 85 days in a federal jail in Virginia for refusing to cooperate with Fitzgerald's investigation. She relented when she received a personal waiver of confidentiality in September from her source. Miller then testified before the grand jury in late September and this month.
She said that in her recent testimony, Fitzgerald "asked me questions about Mr. Cheney. He asked, for example, if Mr. Libby ever indicated whether Mr. Cheney had approved of his interviews with me or was aware of them. The answer was no."
Miller also wrote: "Mr. Fitzgerald asked if I had discussed classified information with Mr. Libby. I said I believe so, but could not be sure."
The reporter said Fitzgerald asked "how Mr. Libby treated classified information. I said, 'Very carefully.'"
Fitzgerald is wrapping up his investigation and is expected to decide soon whether to seek indictments. The grand jury that has been hunting down the leakers inside the Bush administration over the past two years expires Oct. 28. President Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, testified to the panel Friday, his fourth appearance. Prosecutors warned Rove before he appeared that there was no guarantee he won't be indicted.
Rove spoke to columnist Robert Novak and Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper about Plame's identity, while Libby spoke to Miller and Cooper about Plame.
The Times reported that the same notebook Miller used to record her conversations with Libby in 2003 contains the name "Valerie Flame" — a misspelled reference to the covert CIA officer.
Fitzgerald asked Miller to explain how Valerie Plame appeared in the same notebook the reporter used in interviewing her confidential source, Libby. Miller replied that she "didn't think" she heard Plame's name from Libby.
Miller and Libby met for breakfast at a hotel near the White House on July 8, 2003, two days after The Times published an opinion piece by Wilson criticizing the Bush administration.
The notebook Miller used for that interview includes the reference to "Valerie Flame." But Miller said that name did not appear in the same portion of her notebook as the interview notes from Libby.
At the breakfast, Libby provided a detail about Wilson's wife, saying she worked in a CIA unit known as Winpac. The name stands for weapons intelligence, nonproliferation and arms control. Miller said she understood this to mean that Wilson's wife was an analyst rather than an undercover operative.
Another variant on Plame's name — "Victoria Wilson" — appears in Miller's notes of a July 12, 2003, phone call with Libby. The newspaper's account Saturday says that by the time of that phone call, Miller had called other sources about Wilson's wife.
Fitzgerald questioned Miller about a letter that Libby sent her while she was in jail. Libby assured her that he wanted her to testify, but the letter also said "the public report of every other reporter's testimony makes clear that they did not discuss Ms. Plame's name or identity with me."
Miller said she told Fitzgerald in her sworn testimony that the letter could be perceived as an effort by Libby "to suggest that I, too, would say that we had not discussed Ms. Plame's identity." But she added, "My notes suggested that we had discussed her job."
Miller's first-person account is a window into the bad relations between the White House and the CIA in 2003 stemming from the fact that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq after the U.S. invasion. Miller at the time was speaking to Libby after being assigned to write a story about the failure to find them. A number of Miller's prewar stories bolstered the Bush administration's argument for going to war by citing intelligence that Saddam Hussein had such weapons.
Miller said that in her grand jury appearances on Sept. 30 and Oct. 12, she recalled Libby's frustrations and anger in 2003 over what Libby called "selective leaking" by the CIA and other agencies in a "perverted war" with the White House over the conflict in Iraq. Libby, she said, accused the intelligence agencies of trying to distance themselves from what he recalled as unequivocal prewar assessments that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
I have said all along, they have nothing.
Along with bill clinton, hillary clinton, ted kennedy, john kerry, the British, the un, &c., &c...
Regards,
GtG
"Counsel Probed Miller..."
...and when you say 'probed'....?
Heads are gonna be exploding all over the Left when the Special Prosecuter finds no crime has been committed...
Miller did not "bolster" Bush's claims. The NYT, through Miller, had made the case that Iraq had WMD for years way before 911.
The CIA was saying it, the NYT (through Miller's reporting) was saying it....ALL were saying it.
Yet, even though all these leftists organizations were saying it throughout the 90's, it is Bush who "lied". Go figure.
This woman is an idiot. She says that "she believes" Libby told her classified info (a crime by the way)...then that he did so "very carefully."
Is she saying that he TOLD her that what he was revealing was classified? If not, how does she know the info was classified. If so, he certainly wasn't very careful, was he?
I have to respectfully disagree with you there. I think a crime, or more likely a series of crimes has been committed. Judith Miller didn't go to jail to protect Scooter Libby. That is the kind of nonsense the press folks may swallow themselves.
No, Judith Miller went to jail to avoid being asked who did give her the name, if my wager is any good. Oddly, her attorney, on several occasions, tried to arrange a "deal" that the prosecutor could not ask her about anyone other than Libby. When the prosecutor shook his head, this then convinced Miller that she needed to protect Libby!!?? The only other time I have heard of a deal like that was when Clinton's attorneys tried to extract a deal where Clinton would only be asked questions he could "cutely" lie about.
I've argued in a number of other posts and articles, that the one Judith Miller, and the rest of the New York Times is trying to protect... is Valerie Plame. Miller had a "great confidential source" who helped her in her prior research into weapons of mass distruction, nearly a year before. This source had to have access to confidential information. This source had to have a relative, like a husband, with the connections to add to the "sweetness" of the information she was providing to Miller. If so, then this source was breaking the law by revealing confidential information.
I was wrong in my initial certainty that Miller would take the fifth, once on the stand. She can suffer a bit of "Hillary's disease", and simply forget who has been passing classified information. The irony of it all is that Miller probably blew Plame's cover herself, by mixing up her poorly worded notes, shared with other investigators. Or just as likely, Plame herself realized that this was a way she could pull off a "Cindy Sheehan" and get her name in enough articles to virtually guarantee a book deal or movie rights, to salvage a lusterless career. Miller surely had something worth going to jail for several months to hide.
Afterwords, she needed a plausible reason not to have testified. "We fear that possibly this whole problem happened over a misunderstanding between Miller and Libby".
Yup. Certainly. And we also are looking for the real O.J. killer...
Do not be surprised if one or more higher ups in the New York Times were aware of the truth from the start and decided instead to use the situation to attempt to slander several high ranking Administration officials. Libby, Cheney, and Rove should sue their asses off, if a semen-stained cocktail dress appears in the way of an undestroyed note, or un-deleted email.
I also had been thinking this as a strong possibility for some time, but if we are to believe what the NYT is reporting today (a big "if," I know) then it appears that Miller was NOT personally acquainted with Valerie Plame. If she were, she would not have misstated her name (not once, but twice) as "Valerie Flame" and "Victoria Wilson."
Miller's other sources who told her about Plame might still include Wilson himself, or someone else, perhaps in CIA, who knew Plame directly.
But I am now discounting my earlier theory that Miller and Plame had been personally acquainted.
Very interesting. Do you have a link to one of the articles where you discuss this?--I'd like to read that. I've been curious about Miller's WMD-related sources prior to the Novak/Plame controversy as well. As you're probably aware her WMD sources included Scott Ritter and David Kelly. I've seen some sites suggest she also may have used Plame as a source on WMD, but nothing I've read has gotten into the specifics of her reporting the way it sounds like you've done.
Wanna bet Miller misspelled Plame's name on purpose? Just like Hillery's monkey's millspelled a campaign contribution from the American Muslim Council to the American "Museum" Council? The mispelling was intentional.
Miller's source on Plame was the same source who was all telling her about upcoming FBI raids on Al Qaeda fundraisers. Fitzgerald is investigating Plame for both Plame and the source of her tips that she gave to the Al Qaeda fundraisers.
Yeah, that occurred to me too, but I don't think when she wrote her notes that she expected the notes to be made available to a grand jury.
It also occurred to me that it might simply be chicken-scratch handwriting, that she wrote Plame but it just looks like Flame. However, when she also wrote her name as "Victoria Wilson" I have to lean against the theory that Miller knew her personally.
She could have been aware of her indirectly, through Wilson, CIA or ex-CIA.
I'm sorry everyone, but you're missing the point by parsing all the info.
As much as I share your disgust with Wilson, Plame, the MSM, etc, you have to remember, an indictment is not a conviction...you don't to "prove" anything. interpetation and application of the statute, eg was Plame a covert agent, was there intent...is all subjective. Those of you who are stuck on saying she wasnt covert are making an irrelevent argument. If Fitzgerald had concluded such, he wouldnt have wasted 2 years investigating, would he?
If you read Novak's column of August in which he discussed the case, and the stuff today, it's clear that Libby and perhaps Rove, were in fact discussing Plame(whether "naming" her or not) with the press. We can have our theories about the malfeasance of others, but it's the WH that's under investigation.
I'd be shocked if Libby and Rove were not indicted and charged. To me, that would not be the worst of it. Judging by the questionning, it looks like Fitzg was gunning for the VP. For all we know, questions were asked about W also.
I have a very bad feeling about this and hope I'm wrong.
I think the undercurrent reveals the probability that Plame and/or Wilson revealed Plames arrangement with the CIA. This would not have been illegal if she was not covert whethere it came from Libby, Rove, Wilson, or Plame. Has all of this been a ruse to discredit Bush? They would have had to know that 'crying time' was coming at some point down the road. Thus the outcry from the NYT and Richard Cohen to tell Fitzgerald to pull up stakes and go back to Chicago. I think someone is going to pay hell for trifelling with Mr.Fitzgerald. If I were him and the media had tried to manipulate the federal government, the justice dept., the FBI, CIA, media control of the citizens of the United States by a duplicitous media, I would make it my lifes work to get this made right.
Wait just a minute. This is nothing more than she said, he said. Dammit, why should we believe Miller anymore than any other official. Where is the proof. If this fool had any, they would have surfaced before now. I'm getting really pissed at believing this jacka@@ by her word alone. Are we now saying because she is a female, her word is correct? The hearings have proved nothing or it would have been settled by now. This fishing to try to find other charges is an insult.
Drudge has big news on this.
Thanks! You mean he has it up right now?--I'll go look. . .
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