From today’s Washington Post update on the Judith Miller saga:
POST: In a Sept. 15 letter, Libby tells Miller how much he admires her “principled” stand but urges her to testify about their conversations and get out of jail. “For my part, this is the rare case where this ‘source’ would be better off if you testified,” he wrote.
“You went to jail in the summer. It is fall now,” he continued. “Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them. Come back to work – and life.”
Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that Miller will tell all, perhaps as soon as this weekend. And not a moment too soon.
In a post headlined “Judith Miller and Her Times,” Jay Rosen writes:
ROSEN: In the mystifying drama of Judith Miller and her Times, I am as clueless as the next person about what’s really going down. But it seems to me we’re watching just that – the actions of Judy Miller’s New York Times. It’s kind of staggering, the way she has hijacked the institution by staging an “epic collision” between herself and the state….
Here, I believe, is the error the Times made. Civil disobedience succeeds when there is clarity in purpose, cogency in argument, and transparency in action. None of which has been apparent in Judy Miller’s epic.
This story is getting stranger and more impenetrable by the day. But now we have two moments to look forward to that might clarify things: the Times’ own coverage, possibly as soon as this weekend, possibly written by Miller herself; and special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s final report, which presumably will be issued not long after the grand jury on the Valerie Plame matter expires, on Oct. 28.
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There’s a lot of buzz going around that this goes all the way to the top, as in Bush and Cheney. I think most of it was due to something George Steph said Sunday on his ABC show. Could be just rumors, but it kinda makes sense if you think about it. In an organized, tightly run ship like the Bush White House, a decision is made to put a hit out on Wilson. They find out his wife is a CIA agent, and somewhere along the line, the decision is made to out a spy. Seems to me that making such a momentous decision like outing a spy would be a case where Karl or Scooter (or both) would have to have the Big Boys sign off on it. It makes sense–the two people fingered so far have been the top aide to Bush and the top aide to Cheney. There’s been a hugely successful effort over the years to create the perception that Bush kinda just sits there and lets everyone else tell him what to do (thereby absolving him of any shred of accountability), but I think this one went right to the top.
Hi~Libby is being disengenuous because the GWB administration was lying about the role of the administration in leaking their role in the leak right before the 04 election. One will recall that the administration’s press secretary had been denying Libby’s role based upon Libby’s own word. To now say that he didn’t care that Miller testified is expecting the public to forget last summer’s election and what he said before her testimony and before the election.