Special Report: Judith Miller Exonerates Bush Officials

The true facts in the CIA-leak case are now becoming astonishingly clear. New York Times reporter Judith Miller's testimony, as she describes it in the Sunday edition of her paper, proves that the wrong people are under investigation. It's not really a story about Bush officials Lewis Libby and Karl Rove and their conversations with the press. Rather, it's a story about a CIA bureaucracy working to undermine the Bush administration through the media and cover up for its own mistakes.

It's now obvious that Bush officials are spending time before a grand jury and big money on lawyers for the alleged "crime" of trying to use the press to get out their side of the story. They trusted the press and got burned. Now, if the media have their way, these officials may be further punished by being indicted by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. This would be a gross miscarriage of justice.

The case has been a revealing and disappointing look into how Bush administration officials tried to work with various reporters, in order to counteract false accusations about the administration's Iraq policy that had appeared in the press. In the end, they failed. It's a failure that demonstrates the folly of trying to curry favor with the liberal press.

Journalists, by contrast, may come out of this drama with special rights. Senator Arlen Specter's Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing on Wednesday on a proposed federal media "shield law" to protect some journalists from disclosing sources to a grand jury. Miller will be the star witness. Accuracy in Media has been denied the opportunity to testify in person against the bill because of opposition from Democratic congressional staffers.

In the same way that Democrats still call the shots on Capitol Hill, despite a Republican Senate majority, the Times and other liberal media forced the Bush administration to agree to their demands for an investigation in the CIA leak case. Fitzgerald was appointed by the Bush Justice Department and administration officials have been cooperating from the start. By contrast, the Times and Miller, who just recently left jail to testify before the grand jury in the case, had been obstructing the investigation. All Miller had to do to avoid jail was to tell the truth. She now has done so, and her account of what she told the grand jury under oath turns the media version of this bizarre case completely upside down.

Most of the coverage had created the impression that the administration was out to damage or destroy an administration opponent, Joseph Wilson, by illegally identifying the identity of his wife, CIA employee Valerie Plame. Her name originally appeared in a Robert Novak column citing administration officials.

But Miller's account indicates that she was in contact with Libby after Nicholas D. Kristof, a columnist at the paper, published a claim that Wilson had been sent to Niger to investigate an Iraq-uranium link "at the behest" of Vice President Dick Cheney's office. Libby knew that was false and wanted to get the truth out. But there was much more to it than that. Libby was upset about the CIA's role in sending Wilson on the trip.

Libby was frustrated and angry, Miller testified, about "selective leaking" by the CIA and other agencies to "distance themselves from what he recalled as their unequivocal prewar intelligence assessments." Miller says Libby believed the "selective leaks" from the CIA were an attempt to "shift blame to the White House" and were part of a "perverted war" over the war in Iraq.

This is the real story of the CIA leak case. We have one or more intelligence agencies planting false stories with the press in order to damage the Bush administration. They wanted to divert attention from the fact that the CIA had gotten the facts wrong about Iraq's stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

Taking issue with the President's charge in his State of the Union address that Iraq had sought uranium from Africa, Wilson had written a column for the Times doubting that such a transaction had taken place. On other occasions Wilson said he even doubted the claim that Iraq was interested in obtaining uranium from Niger. Miller says that Libby told her that the Wilson essay "was inaccurate." Miller adds, "Mr. Libby then proceeded through a lengthy and sharp critique of Mr. Wilson and what Mr. Libby viewed as the CIA's backpedaling on the intelligence leading to war. According to my notes, he began with a chronology of what he described as credible evidence of Iraq's efforts to procure uranium. As I told Mr. Fitzgerald and the grand jury, Mr. Libby alluded to the existence of two intelligence reports about Iraq's uranium procurement efforts. One report dated from February 2002. The other indicated that Iraq was seeking a broad trade relationship with Niger in 1999, a relationship that he said Niger officials had interpreted as an effort by Iraq to obtain uranium."

What's more, Miller says, "My notes indicate that Mr. Libby told me the report on the 1999 delegation had been attributed to Joe Wilson."

In other words, Wilson was denying something that he had actually confirmed. In fact, there had been an Iraqi attempt to procure uranium from Africa. No wonder Libby was upset with Wilson's article in the Times and the CIA's role in arranging his trip. Libby had every reason to believe there was a campaign underway to undermine the Bush administration and he must have been desperate to counter it. So desperate that he would talk to Judith Miller and other reporters. That was a big mistake.

In terms of more evidence of an Iraq-uranium link, Miller says that Libby "also cited a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, produced by American intelligence agencies in October 2002, which he said had firmly concluded that Iraq was seeking uranium."

The situation was that the administration had evidence that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa, based on Wilson and other sources, and yet Wilson was using the Times and other outlets to deny it. Libby, Rove and other administration officials had every reason to conclude that Wilson was part of an effort by some in the CIA to deliberately undermine the Bush administration's Iraq policy. But other than Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, we still don't know the names of those CIA officials. They can apparently operate under the cover of anonymity, legal or otherwise. They are media "sources," now on the verge of getting more protection from the Senate under a media shield law.

Under these circumstances, it was natural, as Miller recounts, for the conversation to turn to Wilson's wife, a CIA employee who recommended him for that Africa trip. Miller says the following about Fitzgerald's line of questioning: "Mr. Fitzgerald asked me whether Mr. Libby had mentioned nepotism. I said no."

This is important because Plame's role in recommending him for the Africa trip, as documented by the Senate Intelligence Committee, possibly violated federal nepotism laws. According to Miller, Libby apparently didn't offer an opinion on that. But that gets to the heart of what was going on in the CIA. Who in the CIA was orchestrating the Wilson affair to damage the Bush administration? Is Fitzgerald investigating that?

If not, a major miscarriage of justice is underway. The media, of course, are not interested in probing Wilson and Plame, only the Bush administration. The name of the game was and still is to "get" the administration through concocted scandals. This one involved an alleged effort to smear Wilson, whose wild and reckless charges should never have been published by the Times in the first place, by going after his wife. It's also probably the case that Plame and other CIA officials are trusted "sources" for the press. So why would reporters want to scrutinize them?

It's been repeated endlessly by Miller's defenders that Miller was ordered to testify about the case but never wrote a story about it. She should have. Her story exonerates the Bush administration and it should put the focus where it belongs - on Wilson, his wife and the duplicitous bureaucrats in the CIA.

The media are now clamoring for indictments of Bush officials, with CBS Evening News anchorman Bob Schieffer saying that it would look foolish for Fitzgerald to essentially drop the case after investigating the matter for so long. This kind of media pressure may be difficult to resist. But Fitzgerald should live up to his reputation and be independent enough to understand that he, too, has been manipulated by the media in this affair and that indictments of Bush administration officials would only serve to distract attention from the real problem - an out-of-control CIA.

I agree with everything Kincaide said. What I don't understand is that Matthews, CNN,FOX,MSNBC, CBS,NBC,ABC, and all of their mouthpieces, even today, after the Miller piece is printed, come out with exactly the opposite of what Kincaide states. They say, "White HOuse braces for Upcoming Bush Administration Incictments". Never mind that the main reporter who just spent 85 days in jail went to the grand jury and exonnerated Libbey/Rove. Yet the MSM has become more frenetic in their exuberent pronouncements that Libby is going down.

And here I ask myself, "I must be a dumbass, because it looks like their allegations of Libby just fell apart, but all of the NYT, Time magazines Fineman, and all of the rest are like elk in a frenzied rut, just about the stick it to the administration. I keep reading and concluding the same thing, and they keep writing and repeating the same thing. Both are 180 degrees out of phase from one another". Who is living in fantasy land?

As I understand Miller's version of events, she said she "couldn't remember" whether Libby mentioned Plame's name. I don't see how you get a conviction out of "I can't remember" from the key witness. The MSM is salivating over nothing.

I am of the opinion that miller never had a source to begin with. I don't think novak did either. The "source" is " I do not recall". To me that is a cop out.

I think the media hounds decided to print information they THOUGHT was right and had nothing to back it up but "anonymous sources". Furthermore, I think they printed ( or were going to print) other information they knew or thought to be false in an attempt to get tuthful information.

I believe in the right to speak. However, I think accountability is needed. I for one am SICK AND TIRED of anonymous sourcing. If there is no source named, then I think the writing or the reporting needs to be in the OP ED section and NOT the NEWS section.

If anonymous sourcing is further protected, we will see MORE false reporting not more truthful reporting.

The MSM has made their bed and the last couple years have shown many people the light. Dan rather....I thank you for helping that (LOL).

I think that this whole "Rove"..."Cheney"...."White house" investigation was a HUGE DUCK MISSION that is a direct result of POOR journalism standards.

They might go to jail yet. The talk is that they could go for inconsistencies in their stories to the GJ. Can't get 'em on one thing, go for the next. How else do you justify the cost of a special prosecutor?

Miller says the following about Fitzgerald's line of questioning: "Mr. Fitzgerald asked me whether Mr. Libby had mentioned nepotism. I said no."

Very interesting comment. Wilson mentioned nepotism in his October 5 MTP interview.

RUSSERT: Was there a suggestion that this was cronyism, that it was your wife who had arranged the mission?

WILSON: I have no idea what they were trying to suggest in this. I can only assume that it was nepotism. And I can tell you that when the decision was made, which was made after a briefing and after a gaming out at the agency with the intelligence community, there was nobody in that room when we went through this that I knew.

I wonder if Wilson is the source for the "nepotism" allegaton.

Judith Miller's claim that she can't recall who first told her that Joe Wilson's wife was Valerie Plame (a.k.a. Victoria Flame) is not credible. A reporter will always remember an initial source when subsequent information received is used to confirm, deny or crosscheck against the original revelation.

Nevertheless, Miller and the Times can be believed on their GOP exoneration. They would never go to jail to obstruct an investigation so as to protect a Republican source since their whole editorial strategy has been to find and publish embarrassing material to damage or destroy the Bush administration and to suppress all contrary information on Democratic corruption, Kerry's dishonorable discharge, WMD and Iraq, Able Danger data mining, Air America and the Gloria Wiese scandal, Louis Freeh on Clinton's graft, etc.

If da glove don't fit, ya gotta acquit.

But Billy Kristol has been wetting his pants talking about "several" high level White House staffers that are going to be indicted.

Bill Kristol wants to see Rove and Libby indicted and marched off in handcuffs even more than the leftists do. Anything that harms George Bush only enhances his man, John McCain.

Kristol's ultimate wet dream - one day in mid 2007, John McCain and some of his RINO friends make a trip to the White House, to tell an embattled George Bush, facing articles of impeachment from the democrat controlled House of Representatives, that he doesn't have any support in the Senate, and that he needs to resign "for the good of the country."

Anyone that is stupid enough to talk off the record to NYT reporters needs to be fired.

Yes, this is the real long-term lesson here. I hope the reporters realize that they have cut their nose to spite their face.

One of these days, I hope to see reporters actually REPORT news, not try to create it, interpret or analyze it.

Hope it gets widely distributed It won't simply because the MSM will do NOTHING to exonerate the Bush Admin; they have only one goal: assist the Demonrats in impeachment.

Send links to the article to all your friends by e-mail. With the internet, the MSM no longer has control over distribution of news.

Send links to the article to all your friends by e-mail. With the internet, the MSM no longer has control over distribution of news.

Believe me I do. But as impossible as it sounds I still have some rellies that do not have, or refuse to use, the internet and consequently still believe EVERYTHING they see on the alphabet news networks.

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