After 85 days in jail for refusing to disclose her sources on the Valerie Plame investigation, NYT reporter Judith Miller has finally agreed to testify. We are being told (by Miller's lawyer, natch) that she agreed only because the source she was protecting, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby (and how has a man with such a silly name risen to a prominent position in the U.S. Government), has waived any right to confidentiality.
Well, I didn't get it. Everyone knew that Libby was a source on the Plame thing. Moreover, Libby also had given her the waiver over a year ago. What changed, we are told, was Libby's recent assurance to her attorney that the waiver was really voluntary.
That, frankly, is silly. Are we to believe that Robert Bennett let his client sit in the can for almost three months without picking up the phone, calling Tate, and asking if Scooter really meant it? And how was any of this secret, given that Scooter had already disclosed that he spoke with Miller about Plame? For Heaven's sake, he testified in the grand jury about his conversations with her.
So people are puzzled. Some of the more cynical think that Miller wanted to go to jail for the publicity and to prove what a First Amendment hero she was. But that doesn't sound right either. But this paragraph in the Post provides a clue:
But [Miller Attorney] Abrams said in an interview yesterday that Fitzgerald made a recent and important compromise. The prosecutor would narrow his questions to Libby, which he had not been willing to do when Abrams approached him about the idea last year. Sources close to Miller said she had numerous government sources she wanted to protect, but Libby was the only one relevant to the Plame investigation.
So there is another source (or sources), and Miller agreed to testify only after the prosecutor agreed he would limit his questioning to Scooter. The prosecutor, Fitzgerald, rolled over on this one because the Grand Jury's term was about to end (on October 16).
So if the "did Scooter really mean it about the waiver" story is bunk, then who is Miller protecting? Maybe her real source for the Plame leak (Scooter never even knew Plame's name). Maybe she was protecting herself; avoiding giving testimony about who tipped her off about a planned FBI raid on an "Islamic charity".
At any rate, we aren't going to find out what is going on by listening to what her lawyers tell us. (And a hat tip to Powerline).
