Can you explain what you mean? What did Judy Miller do here that was so wrong?

She protected -- and, indeed, still looks to be protecting -- people she knew were trying to discredit Wilson, even though they were possibly breaking the law, and even though she seems to have had no legal or ethical basis for doing so.

But doesn't Miller insist she was only upholding press freedoms in her willingness to go to jail to avoid testifying?

Yes. And there have been many valiant defenses of her stance.

But the record now indicates that for more than a year -- from August 2004, when she was first subpoenaed in the case, until Sept. 29, 2005, when she was released from jail -- she made only minimal efforts to convince Libby to free her from her agreement with him, even though, in the end, he appeared to have been willing to do so all along. In that time, she kept information from her bosses at the Times -- who say they let her lead the paper's handling of the affair -- as well as from the special prosecutor and, most important, from her readers. And she's still keeping information from her readers.

What do you mean? Didn't she tell all in these accounts?

No. As the Times report makes clear, Miller stonewalled the reporting team working on this case. Or, as the paper put it, "Ms. Miller generally would not discuss her interactions with editors, elaborate on the written account of her grand jury testimony or allow reporters to review her notes." And that's despite the fact that on Wednesday Judge Thomas Hogan lifted his contempt order, and Miller appears to be in no legal jeopardy in the case.

One Times staffer who spoke to Salon said her relative lack of cooperation with her colleagues is likely to continue to rankle the newsroom, even now that the story has been told. There doesn't seem to be any sound journalistic reason for her selective silence; as Jay Rosen, the NYU journalism professor and blogger writes, "What principle of confidentiality extends to 'interactions with editors?'"

Then there is the unbelievable fact that Miller cannot recall the most key detail in this incident, the source for Plame's name. Discussions with some at the Times indicated that this would be the hardest pill to swallow for people there: Either Miller is lying, they said, or she's sloppy to the point of ineffectiveness in her reporting. Neither scenario speaks for her continued employment as a star reporter.

So should Miller be fired? Will she be?

In its report on Miller, the paper suggested that Miller would return to the newsroom after taking a short break, but two staffers who spoke to Salon doubted that Miller would ever come back. Jay Rosen agreed, telling Salon: "I can't imagine she's still there in a month or even in a couple of weeks. We don't know how that's going to end, but I don't suspect she'll ever write another piece for the New York Times."

If she is fired, Rosen and others see two immediate causes for termination. One, she appears to have lied to Philip Taubman, the Times Washington bureau chief, when he asked her in the fall of 2003 whether any administration officials had disclosed Plame's identity to her. Miller said no -- even though Libby had discussed Plame's identity with her.

Second, Rosen notes, Miller agreed to identify Libby in her reporting as a "former Hill staffer" only because he wanted to mislead the public into thinking that the White House was not attacking Wilson. Miller's agreement violates the Times' current policy on confidential sources, which states: "It should go without saying that The Times is truthful. We do not dissemble about our sources." (This policy was adopted after Miller's interview with Libby, but its basic premise -- don't lie about sources -- was in effect in the summer of 2003.)

"If I were going to sum up the sordidness of Judy Miller in one detail," says Rosen, "it would be this incident. If you look at that anecdote carefully, you have to ask yourself, How far away from her mind are the readers? The readers aren't even in her universe. She's so far gone into this world of secrets and hidden information that representing readers is only a technicality to her."

But if Judy Miller was so sordid, why did the Times go to bat for her?

Because they didn't know, and didn't ask about, all the sordid details. As the Times account makes clear, bosses at the paper -- publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and executive editor Bill Keller -- did not press Miller for her full story. They let her, in the words of Sulzberger, drive the car.

There is likely to be a newsroom uproar about this arrangement, some at the paper said. Why was this reporter -- whose WMD reporting should have warned bosses at the paper about her judgment -- allowed to lead the New York Times in a fight with the government without anyone having reviewed all of her dealings and deal making with Libby, and everything in her notes?

Some at the paper suggest that this was all about Miller. As a journalist whose reporting on terrorism at the paper had been praised (and, along with a team of Times reporters, awarded a Pulitzer), she was seen by the hierarchy as someone to trust and protect. But the Times' odd stance in this case -- its decision to fight the government blind, without even reading Miller's notes -- also had to do with its absolutist ideology on confidential sources, Rosen says. "Part of the big principled fight they were engaged in demanded that they not ask Miller too much about her sources, just as they don't want the prosecutor to ask about her sources," he says. In this case, though, fighting the principle without knowing the facts led the paper astray. It was a failure, says Rosen (as well as some at the paper), of management.

But if managers failed, will they be punished?

Staffers at the paper tamped down any suggestion that Keller's job is now in trouble, as was that of his predecessor, Howell Raines, after the Jayson Blair scandal broke. Raines was a tremendously polarizing figure in the newsroom, and the Blair affair provided a convenient opportunity for the staff to revolt against his leadership. Keller, meanwhile, is generally well liked and respected, and few hold him responsible for this debacle.

The job of the publisher is another story. The Times account indicates that Sulzberger was most determined to fight on Miller's behalf both in the courtroom and on the paper's editorial page, yet at the same time was ignorant of key details in Miller's reporting on the case. (He only learned last Thursday, for instance, from the Times' own reporters, of the "Valerie Flame" note tucked in Miller's "lost" notebook.)

None of the staffers who spoke to Salon suggested that Sulzberger should be replaced. And in any case, that decision would not be up to anyone in the newsroom -- the Times is a public company, and ultimately Wall Street, the Times' board of directors and the Sulzberger family, which controls the company, will have the final say over his job.

But beyond personnel, what does the story do to the long-term reputation of the paper?

It's unclear. Obviously it doesn't help. But at the moment, as some staffers at the paper said, much of the outcome of this case depends on the larger outcome of the leak inquiry. If it results in indictments that stick, Miller won't be seen as an obstruction to the prosecution, and the Times may therefore make it out OK. On the other hand, if Fitzgerald does not indict Bush administration officials, the Times may be blamed.

Yet observers outside the newspaper were less sanguine. Greg Mitchell, who edits Editor & Publisher, writes, "Miller did far more damage to her newspaper than did Jayson Blair, and that's not even counting her WMD reporting, which hurt and embarrassed the paper in other ways."

Jay Rosen concurs. "There's no question," he says, "this is bigger than Jayson Blair." The paper will be assessing how much bigger in the days and weeks to come.

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