"While public attention has focused largely on the possible role of Karl Rove, President Bush's senior political adviser, a new account by reporter Judith Miller shows that Mr. Fitzgerald has been pushing just as hard to obtain evidence concerning I. Lewis Libby, Mr. Cheney's chief of staff." http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB112951057579570317.html?mod=todays_free_feature Reporter's Account Suggests Probe's Tack Prosecutor in Leak Case May Be Looking Into Possible Misconduct by Cheney's Office By JOHN D. MCKINNON , JOE HAGAN and ANNE MARIE SQUEO Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL October 17, 2005; Page A4 A New York Times reporter's account of her involvement in the Central Intelligence Agency leak case shows that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has been looking into possible misconduct by Vice President Dick Cheney's office. While public attention has focused largely on the possible role of Karl Rove, President Bush's senior political adviser, a new account by reporter Judith Miller shows that Mr. Fitzgerald has been pushing just as hard to obtain evidence concerning I. Lewis Libby, Mr. Cheney's chief of staff. [Patrick Fitzgerald] Based on her account, Mr. Libby may have played an earlier role than Mr. Rove, who testified for a fourth time Friday before a grand jury investigating whether administration officials disclosed CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity in the summer of 2003 as part of an effort to discredit her husband, retired diplomat Joseph Wilson. After a mission to Africa in 2002, Mr. Wilson had sought to undermine the administration's claims that Iraq had sought to buy materials for building nuclear weapons from other countries, such as uranium "yellowcake" from Niger. Ms. Miller's account was printed in the Times yesterday; her piece and an article by other reporters on how the paper handled the matter covered two pages. Together, the articles show both that the Bush administration has cause for concern and that there is dissension within the New York Times about Ms. Miller and whether she was adequately supervised. In the Times's story, Jill Abramson, one of two managing editors, when asked what she regretted about her paper's handling of the matter, replied: "The entire thing." In an interview yesterday, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher of the Times, said he was satisfied by his newspaper's account and "we can all hope this period is behind us." Ms. Miller's account makes clear that Mr. Fitzgerald, who also is the U.S. Attorney in Chicago, is leaving no stone unturned in the investigation. For instance, Mr. Fitzgerald asked Ms. Miller if Mr. Libby "ever indicated whether Mr. Cheney had approved of his interviews with me or was aware of them," Ms. Miller wrote. "The answer was no." A spokesman for Mr. Fitzgerald couldn't be reached to comment. Ms. Miller's article suggests that Mr. Libby discussed aspects of Ms. Plame's identity with Ms. Miller repeatedly, and that he likely revealed other classified information. The first of their three conversations occurred on June 23, 2003, at a time when Mr. Wilson was expressing his criticisms of the administration's justification for the war in Iraq to other reporters privately. It would be two weeks before he went public with his criticisms in an op-ed piece in the New York Times and a network television appearance. "Wife works in bureau?" Ms. Miller wrote in her notes from that conversation with Mr. Libby. [Judith Miller] Elsewhere in her notebooks, she wrote "Valerie Flame" and "Victoria Wilson" at various times, and "Wife works at Winpac" -- a reference to Ms. Plame's CIA office. It's not clear in every instance that Mr. Libby was the source, based on Ms. Miller's sometimes incomplete recollection. There is a specific law against revealing the identity of a covert CIA operative under certain circumstances, and it can be a crime to release classified information to people who aren't authorized to receive it. Ms. Miller says that in response to questions, she told Mr. Fitzgerald and the grand jury that she "believed" Mr. Libby had discussed classified information with her. Ms. Miller's story also raises the possibility that Mr. Libby and his lawyer sought to discourage her from telling what she knew. If true, that could constitute evidence of obstruction of justice, experts say. Ms. Miller initially refused to testify before the grand jury, contending that Mr. Libby's release of his confidentiality agreement wasn't really voluntary. She eventually went to jail for 85 days -- from early July through late September -- rather than appear. She finally reached a deal last month with Mr. Fitzgerald to testify about her discussions with Mr. Libby. She describes at least two instances that might be construed as attempts to influence her testimony. Early on in the investigation, she wrote that one of her lawyers, Floyd Abrams, said Mr. Libby's lawyer was looking for assurances that she wouldn't incriminate Mr. Libby. Mr. Libby's lawyer, Joseph Tate, told the Times that Ms. Miller's account was "outrageous." "I never once suggested that she should not testify," Mr. Tate said in an email to the Times. Mr. Tate didn't return a call from The Wall Street Journal seeking comment. Despite giving a lengthy first-person account, Ms. Miller left some pivotal questions unanswered. For instance, she didn't disclose whether she was asked by Mr. Fitzgerald in her first grand-jury appearance about meeting with Mr. Libby in June 2003. Her failure to disclose that meeting led to her second testimony before the grand jury after some of her notes were found. But neither her account nor the Times story discusses how the notes were found and what set off a search for them. In a brief telephone interview yesterday, Ms. Miller said she discovered the June 2003 notes in her office after being prompted to seek out answers to another question Mr. Fitzgerald had asked her. "There was an open question about something, and I said I would go back and look and see if there was anything in my notes that would address that question," she said yesterday. She said she found the notebook in her office. She reiterated that she couldn't recall who told her the name that she transcribed as "Valerie Flame." "I don't remember who told me the name," she said, growing agitated. "I wasn't writing a story, remember?" Asked if the other source was Mr. Rove, she replied, "I'm not going to discuss anyone else that I talked to." [Karl Rove] For Mr. Fitzgerald to successfully prosecute a case may be difficult, say legal experts. For example, Ms. Miller said she had security clearance while she was embedded in Iraq. Could Mr. Libby then argue that he thought any disclosures of classified information to her weren't an issue? Ms. Miller isn't the only witness whom prosecutors have called. In a Time magazine story in July, reporter Matthew Cooper discussed his two appearances before the grand jury in the case -- the first related to conversations with Mr. Libby and the second, Mr. Rove. In a first-person piece, he wrote that Mr. Rove told him that Mr. Wilson's wife worked at the CIA on issues related to weapons of mass destruction but didn't name her. In his testimony related to Mr. Libby, Mr. Cooper said that the vice president's adviser told him "I've heard that too" when asked if Mr. Wilson's wife sent her husband to Niger. Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus disclosed in a first-person piece that ran in July in the journalism magazine Neiman Reports that he provided a deposition to the special prosecutor, detailing a July 12, 2003, conversation with an administration official who said that Mr. Wilson's trip to Niger in February 2002 "was set up as a boondoggle by his wife, an analyst with the agency working on weapons of mass destruction." One big unknown is what columnist Robert Novak has disclosed to Mr. Fitzgerald about his sources. His was the first article, published on July 14, 2003, that named Mr. Wilson's wife, Ms. Plame, as an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction, noting that "two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger." This is the second time in just more than two years that the public has been drawn inside the workings of the New York Times. Bill Keller took over as executive editor in July 2003 following Howell Raines's ouster for his response to Jayson Blair, a reporter who repeatedly wrote fabricated stories. Times executives acknowledged in yesterday's article that they let Ms. Miller take the lead in some instances. After Mr. Keller asked Ms. Miller to stop reporting on weapons of mass destruction following her inaccurate reporting on Iraq's nuclear capabilities, Ms. Miller continued to pursue such stories. Mr. Keller told his paper "she kept kind of drifting on her own back into the national security realm." Mr. Sulzberger, whose family has a controlling stake in the company, told his paper that he let Ms. Miller and her lawyers play the lead role in deciding whether she would testify. He said he allowed Ms. Miller to keep her "hand on the wheel" because "she was the one at risk" of going to jail. Messrs. Sulzberger and Keller knew her source but didn't review Ms. Miller's notes, according to the Times, and Mr. Keller only this month learned that the name "Valerie Flame" appeared in Ms. Miller's notebook. Mr. Keller left the country late last week on a previously planned trip to Asia, the company said. Reached in Beijing, where he is visiting the paper's Asia bureau, Mr. Keller wrote in an email: "Knowing everything I know today about this case, I might have done some things differently, but I don't feel the least bit apologetic about standing up for a reporter's right to do the job." A spokeswoman for the Times said Ms. Miller was taking time off and was expected to return to the newsroom at some point. Write to John D. McKinnon at [EMAIL PROTECTED], Joe Hagan at [EMAIL PROTECTED] and Anne Marie Squeo at [EMAIL PROTECTED] Complete archives at http://www.sitbot.net/ Please let us stay on topic and be civil. OM YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS
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