Snakey Judith Miller draws the ire of the WSWS

Judith Miller and the New York Times-accomplices in a war based on lies: "The first of Miller’s discussions with Libby took place in the Old Executive Office Building on June 23, two weeks before Wilson’s article was published. She met him again at Washington’s St. Regis Hotel on July 8, two days after the piece appeared. The third discussion took place July 12, two days before right-wing columnist Robert Novak, citing “two senior administration officials,” published a column identifying Wilson’s wife as a CIA operative and claiming it was her idea to send him to Niger.

The column touched off a political firestorm, with the CIA demanding that the Justice Department investigate. The intentional identification of a covert agent is a federal crime under the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act, a statute enacted with the aim of silencing those trying to expose US intelligence operations abroad.

There has been widespread speculation that the two unnamed officials cited by Novak are Libby and White House chief advisor Karl Rove, who has been called four times to testify before the grand jury convened by the special counsel appointed to investigate the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald.

Miller and the Times claim that the reporter’s decision last month to reverse her previous stand and testify before Fitzgerald’s panel, and thereby obtain her release from prison, was based on personal assurances given by Libby in September that he had voluntarily released her from her pledge to keep his name confidential. Libby’s lawyer, however, insists that Libby had already made such a waiver of confidentiality a year before.

The account given by Miller of her discussions with Libby and her decision first to go to jail, and then to testify, is riddled with inconsistencies. Her “personal account” reads like a series of evasions and half-truths crafted with her lawyer—establishment powerbroker Robert Bennett—to provide her with deniability."