Bad News for Libby Too

I've read the NYT piece on the Judy Miller saga and Miller's own account of her grand jury testimony. My feelings about Miller, which was that she used this episode as a way to cover up her horrid reporting on WMDs before the Iraq war and turn herself into a press martyr, are thoroughly confirmed in both articles.

Let's remember, prior to this whole episode, here's what Miller had to say to critics of her WMD reporting in May 2004:

"You know what," she offered angrily. "I was proved fucking right. That's what
happened. People who disagreed with me were saying, 'There she goes again.' ButI
was proved fucking right."

Now listen to what Miller says in the NYT piece today, in an effort to shift focus onto her "freedom of the press" martyrdom:

Ms. Miller said she was proud of her journalism career, including her work on Al Qaeda, biological warfare and Islamic militancy. But she acknowledged serious flaws in her articles on Iraqi weapons.

"W.M.D. - I got it totally wrong," she said. "The analysts, the
experts and the journalists who covered them - we were all wrong. If your
sources are wrong, you are wrong. I did the best job that I could."

Some shift, huh?

Turning to the Libby angle, it looks like he could be in trouble on several fronts. First, Libby was definitely worried about people learning who was behind the Plame-Wilson smearing:

Mr. Fitzgerald asked about a notation I made on the first page of my notes
about this July 8 meeting, "Former Hill staffer."

My recollection, I told him, was that Mr. Libby wanted to modify our
prior understanding that I would attribute information from him to a "senior
administration official." When the subject turned to Mr. Wilson, Mr. Libby
requested that he be identified only as a "former Hill staffer." I agreed to the
new ground rules because I knew that Mr. Libby had once worked on Capitol
Hill.

Did Mr. Libby explain this request? Mr. Fitzgerald asked. No, I don't
recall, I replied. But I said I assumed Mr. Libby did not want the White House
to be seen as attacking Mr. Wilson.

Whether this alone is illegal I doubt, but it could be evidence in connection with a criminal conspiracy. Moreover, it sure sounds like Libby was trying to shape Miller's testimony:

When I was last before the grand jury, Mr. Fitzgerald posed a series of
questions about a letter I received in jail last month from Mr. Libby. The
letter, two pages long, encouraged me to testify. "Your reporting, and you, are
missed," it begins.

Mr. Fitzgerald asked me to read the final three paragraphs aloud
to the grand jury. "The public report of every other reporter's testimony makes
clear that they did not discuss Ms. Plame's name or identity with me," Mr. Libby
wrote.

The prosecutor asked my reaction to those words. I replied that this
portion of the letter had surprised me because it might be perceived as an
effort by Mr. Libby to suggest that I, too, would say we had not discussed Ms.
Plame's identity. Yet my notes suggested that we had discussed her
job.

There's also the matter of Libby's final lines to Miller:

Mr. Fitzgerald also focused on the letter's closing lines. "Out West, where you
vacation, the aspens will already be turning," Mr. Libby wrote. "They turn in
clusters, because their roots connect them."

"Because their roots connect them"? Imagine if Bill Clinton had sent a letter like that to Susan McDougal or Webb Hubbell.

And then there is this interesting passage:

Ms. Miller authorized Mr. Abrams to talk to Mr. Libby's lawyer, Joseph A.
Tate. The question was whether Mr. Libby really wanted her to testify. Mr.
Abrams passed the details of his conversation with Mr. Tate along to Ms. Miller
and to Times executives and lawyers, people involved in the internal discussion
said.

People present at the meetings said that what they heard about the
preliminary negotiations was troubling.

Mr. Abrams told Ms. Miller and the group that Mr. Tate had said she was
free to testify. Mr. Abrams said Mr. Tate also passed along some information
about Mr. Libby's grand jury testimony: that he had not told Ms. Miller the name
or undercover status of Mr. Wilson's wife.

That raised a potential conflict for Ms. Miller. Did the references in her
notes to "Valerie Flame" and "Victoria Wilson" suggest that she would have to
contradict Mr. Libby's account of their conversations? Ms. Miller said in an
interview that she concluded that Mr. Tate was sending her a message that Mr.
Libby did not want her to testify.

According to Ms. Miller, this was what Mr. Abrams told her about his
conversation with Mr. Tate: "He was pressing about what you would say. When I
wouldn't give him an assurance that you would exonerate Libby, if you were to
cooperate, he then immediately gave me this, 'Don't go there, or, we don't want
you there.' "

Mr. Abrams said: "On more than one occasion, Mr. Tate asked me for a
recitation of what Ms. Miller would say. I did not provide one."

In an e-mail message Friday, Mr. Tate called Ms. Miller's interpretation
"outrageous."

"I never once suggested that she should not testify," Mr. Tate wrote. "It
was just the opposite. I told Mr. Abrams that the waiver was
voluntary."

He added: " 'Don't go there' or 'We don't want you there' is not something
I said, would say, or ever implied or suggested."

Telling another witness about grand jury testimony is lawful as long as it
is not an attempt to influence the other witness's testimony.

"Judy believed Libby was afraid of her testimony," Mr. Keller said, noting
that he did not know the basis for the fear. "She thought Libby had reason to be
afraid of her testimony."

Hmm. I find it pretty hard to believe that Floyd Abrams would make up something like this. Obstruction of justice anyone?
- posted by Joshua @ 10:04 AM