Judith Miller - Failure To Report Source Controversy

Failure To Report Source Controversy

In July 2005, Miller was jailed for contempt of court for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury investigating a leak naming Valerie Plame as an undercover CIA officer. Miller did not write about Plame, but was reportedly in possession of evidence relevant to the leak investigation. According to a subpoena, Miller met with an unnamed government official, later revealed to be I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's Chief of Staff, on July 8, 2003, two days after former ambassador Joseph Wilson (the husband of Plame) published an Op-Ed in the Times criticizing the Bush administration for "twisting" intelligence to justify war in Iraq. Plame's CIA identity was divulged publicly in a column by conservative political commentator Robert Novak on July 14, 2003.

On July 16, 2005, The Washington Post reported that Miller could face criminal contempt charges, which could have extended her jail time six months beyond the four months then anticipated. The Post also suggested that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was particularly interested in hearing Miller's version of her encounter with Libby. Filings by Fitzgerald reportedly alleged that Miller's defiance of the court constituted a crime. On September 29, 2005, after spending 85 days in jail, Miller was released following a telephone call with Libby. He had reconfirmed the release of confidentiality which he had given her a year earlier, and which she already knew about. Under oath, Miller was questioned by Fitzgerald before a federal grand jury the following day, September 30, 2005 but was not relieved of contempt charges until after testifying again on October 12, 2005. For her second grand jury appearance, Miller produced a notebook from a previously-undisclosed meeting with Libby on June 23, 2003, several weeks before Wilson's New York Times editorial was published. According to Miller's notes from that earlier meeting, Libby disclosed that Joseph Wilson's wife was a CIA employee involved in her husband's trip to Niger. Miller's notebook from her July 8, 2003 meeting with Libby contains the name "Valerie Flame ". This reference occurred six days before Novak published Plame's name and unmasked her as a CIA operative.

Miller's grand jury account was the basis for her last article in The Times. Miller testified as a witness on January 30, 2007 at the trial of Scooter Libby, which began in January 2007 and ended with Libby's conviction on four of five counts on March 6, 2007. Libby's sentence was subsequently commuted by President George W. Bush.

The New York Times published Miller's first-person account, "My Four Hours Testifying in the Federal Grand Jury Room", on October 16, 2005. After the First Amendment claim, she was widely derided for saying that she could not remember who gave her the name "Valerie Plame" but that she was sure it didn't come from Libby. Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer testified, for example, that he was told Plame's name and CIA identity by Libby at lunch on July 7, 2003, one day before Libby's breakfast meeting with Miller.