Judy Miller and the damage done

The long-awaited New York Times report uncovered an internal mess that's "bigger than Jayson Blair." And it looks even worse for Scooter Libby.

By Farhad Manjoo

Oct 16, 2005 | During the past couple of weeks, the New York Times has been promising to eventually publish a thorough account of its reporter Judith Miller's run-in with federal prosecutors investigating the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity. On Sunday, the paper finally published that report. Unfortunately, the account, along with a personal firsthand account by Miller herself, raises more questions -- about Miller, the Times and the Bush administration's attempts to manipulate the press -- than it answers.

The paper's coverage provides a broad and intriguing outline of Miller's dealings with I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, and his attempts to discredit Joseph Wilson, the former ambassador who began criticizing the Bush administration's case for war in the summer of 2003.

But many details in the report are mystifying. In particular, it's unclear why the Times allowed Miller -- a reporter whose discredited work on weapons of mass destruction had recently embarrassed the paper -- to be put in charge of the Times' response to investigators looking into the Plame leak. Some revelations are astonishing: Apparently nobody at the newspaper asked to review Miller's notes in the Plame case before allowing her to defy Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor heading the case, and before the paper's management made her a high-profile symbol of press freedom in peril.

The Times account shows that senior management did not press Miller on her sources and what the sources had revealed to her about Plame, before backing her stance in public and in numerous editorials. It's hard to imagine why they didn't make sure she wasn't being used by officials in the Bush administration who may have been breaking the law. Then there's the matter of Miller's own unethical actions: The Times' report showed she lied to her editors about her involvement in the case, and maybe more disturbing, she agreed to allow Libby to hide his motives from readers by identifying him in two different ways. Why is she still working at the paper? (Unconfirmed reports say she has taken a leave of absence, but there's no word of any disciplinary action against her.)

Beyond the implications for Miller and the paper, the Times' report provides provocative new hints about what the grand jury investigating the leak of Plame's identity may be focusing on in the final weeks before it possibly hands down indictments against senior White House officials. The report does not look good for Libby. It indicates that he revealed Plame's identity to Miller, and, according to her own account, may have attempted to prevent her from telling all she knew about his role in the case to investigators. According to Miller, Fitzgerald asked her several pointed questions about Libby that indicate he may be nearing a decision on an indictment.

Here, then, are the main questions the paper's accounts raise for Libby, Miller and the New York Times.

What do we now know about Scooter Libby's involvement in the Plame case?

Even before Miller published her account, leaks from Fitzgerald's investigation indicated that Libby, like Karl Rove, took part in an effort to discredit Joseph Wilson. Miller's account underscores this fact: Both before and after Wilson went public with what he'd really seen in Africa (i.e., no sign that Saddam Hussein was looking for nuclear weapons there), Libby was telling reporters not to trust the former diplomat, and was trying to insulate Cheney and the White House from Wilson's damaging report.

In three interviews Miller conducted with Libby -- one before Wilson published his Op-Ed criticizing the administration, and two afterward -- Libby insisted that Wilson's trip was arranged by the CIA, not Bush or Cheney, who he said had no idea what Wilson had found in Africa. Over the course of the three meetings, Libby dished increasingly more dirt on Wilson and his wife: He initially told Miller that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, and then later revealed that she worked at WINPAC, a CIA unit that dealt with weapons intelligence, nonproliferation and arms control.

It's unclear if Libby mentioned Plame's undercover status during these meetings, but Miller says she assumed that Plame was not undercover. It's also not clear if Libby told Miller Plame's name. The names "Valerie Flame" and "Victoria Wilson" appear in Miller's notebooks, but Miller says Libby did not provide them and, incredibly, she says she can't remember who did.

So is Miller exonerating Libby by insisting he didn't name Plame?

Not really; indeed, it's actually of little importance whether Libby ever uttered the words "Valerie Plame" in his chats with Miller. By pointing out that Joe Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, Libby was clearly identifying Plame even if he wasn't naming her. And identifying an undercover operative to a reporter may constitute a violation of the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act, the law that many observers have long presumed the prosecutor is focusing on.

So is Scooter headed for the slammer?

We don't know. To violate the Identities Protection Act, a government official would have to be shown to have disclosed the identity of an agent that he knew was undercover. At the moment, that's the crucial bit of information missing from the public realm: Does Fitzgerald have any evidence showing that Libby knew Plame was undercover at the time he discussed her identity with Miller?

Next Page: Why Judy Miller comes off so badly

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