My Four Hours Testifying in the Federal Grand Jury Room - Judith Miller

[DoYouEverWonder]

Published: October 16, 2005

In July 2003, Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador, created a firestorm by publishing an essay in The New York Times that accused the Bush administration of using faulty intelligence to justify the war in Iraq. The administration, he charged, ignored findings of a secret mission he had undertaken for the Central Intelligence Agency - findings, he said, that undermined claims that Iraq was seeking uranium for a nuclear bomb.

It was the first time Mr. Wilson had gone public with his criticisms of the White House. Yet he had already become a focus of significant scrutiny at the highest levels of the Bush administration.

Almost two weeks earlier, in an interview with me on June 23, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, discussed Mr. Wilson's activities and placed blame for intelligence failures on the C.I.A. In later conversations with me, on July 8 and July 12, Mr. Libby, who is Mr. Cheney's top aide, played down the importance of Mr. Wilson's mission and questioned his performance.

My notes indicate that well before Mr. Wilson published his critique, Mr. Libby told me that Mr. Wilson's wife may have worked on unconventional weapons at the C.I.A.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/16/national/16miller.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1129417232-RVFIKJt/TGG8ZpXr6VvIQA

[cry baby]

1. Why should anyone believe her now? We know whe is a liar! nt

[frankly_fedup2]

2. Come on Judith, you've been pro war along with Bush's other

chronies and paid reporters like Armstrong. I wonder sometimes just how much money you got paid?

[Skink]

3. This will be part of the movie...

[DoYouEverWonder]

6. I just splattered my screen

reading the ending of this piece of self serving drivel.


In answer, I told the grand jury about my last encounter with Mr. Libby. It came in August 2003, shortly after I attended a conference on national security issues held in Aspen, Colo. After the conference, I traveled to Jackson Hole, Wyo. At a rodeo one afternoon, a man in jeans, a cowboy hat and sunglasses approached me. He asked me how the Aspen conference had gone. I had no idea who he was.

"Judy," he said. "It's Scooter Libby."

[grasswire]

12. Is this the same crowd that foisted the MEMO on Rather?

Didn't that happen at a cattle sale out west somewhere?

[DoYouEverWonder]

4. She mentions that she lives

in Sag Harbor, so she probably makes quite a bit. Plus she's got some old sugar daddy that she married.

[bluestateguy]

5. This woman is turning into a real drama queen

She's starting to remind me of Leona Helmsley. Oooooh!!! She had to spend 85 days at a Club Fed prison, where she could get out anytime she wanted to by just cooperating and obeying the law. She's such a victim! Oh please, spare me, I'm about to go have my dinner. I'm more concerned about all the non-violent drug offenders who get warehoused for years at a time for possession of a little bag of weed. Most of them don't have pricey NYC-DC lawyers or the mouthpiece of a New York Times column from which to defend themselves.

[Hissyspit]

7. self-delete

[rocktivity]

8. And we should believe everything she's written because...?

:shrug:
rocknation

[aaronbees]

9. What a pathetic piece of PR spin...

from Miller. Where's the corresponding NY Times piece called, "My four hours dissecting Judith Miller in the Federal Grand Jury Room" written by Fitzgerald?

[Athame]

44. Wouldn't you love to know Fitzgerald's reaction to this?

There's the book deal I am waiting for.

[aaronbees]

47. Exactly...

It would be great. I'm hoping we'll see the first chapter shortly ;)

[mcg]

10. Counsel Probed Miller on Classified Info

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051015/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/cia_leak_investigation

WASHINGTON - The prosecutor in the CIA leak probe repeatedly asked New York Times reporter Judith Miller how Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff handled classified information in their discussions, and even asked whether Cheney knew of their conversations.

[mallard]

45. Re: can't remember source who ok'd her to testify?

"I said I believed the information came from another source, whom I could not recall."


Must have been one of those pointless conversations where you forget who you're talking to because of passing irrelevance.

This makes no sense except as the 'confusion' strategy?

[IndianaGreen]

11. DU rules prevent me from saying what I really would like to see happen

to this neocon propagandist.

Her self-serving "account" of events is as despicable as her reporting about WMD in Iraq.

[snippy]

13. Her article about her testimony may be more truthful than her testimony.

Fitzgerald told told her and the grand jury that she was only a witness and not a subject or target of the investigation. It would be risky for her to publish lies about what she testified to because that could get Fitzgerald wondering about whether she was attempting to obstruct justice.

I think her account of her testimony probably is more truthful than her testimony, especially her testimony about what she could not recall. But Fitzgerald may not need her testimony on those matters, he may have evidence from other sources.

Given the questions Fitzgerald asked and what Miller did testify to, it looks like Fitzgerald certainly will indict Libby, probably on more than one count, and was trying to get evidence against Cheney. According to Miller's account she did not provide any evidence against Cheney, but Fitzgerald would not have asked questions about Cheney's possible involvement without a reason. Maybe he has other evidence from a witness other than Miller.

I can hardly wait until Indictment Day.

[NashVegas]

14. So ... Who Gave Joe Wilson Up as a Source?

Wilson had been used as an anonymous source by the Times prior to his published July account.

How did Libby get Wilson's name?

[IndianaGreen]

15. I wouldn't be surprised if Judy Miller is the one that alerted Libby

that the Times was going to publish a piece by Joe Wilson.

Miller is total scum!

[Garbo 2004]

27. Not hard to connect the dots. Wilson's 2002 Niger trip wasn't secret

from the Administration. Wilson met with the US Ambassador to Niger (who'd been telling DC the Niger claims were bunk). Briefed the State Dept African Affairs section when he got back, according to his own account. The proposal that he even go to Niger was discussed at a 2002 meeting at the CIA with reps of different agencies (remember the State Dept memo Fitz was so interested in included notes from State Dept rep at that meeting who mistakenly claimed that Wilson's wife sent him as I recall).

Notably, after the Niger claim was mentioned in the State of the Union, Wilson himself had been trying to get word to the Administration that their info was wrong so they could retract it. Indirectly to Condi, for example according to Wilson, who in effect blew him off. So in Spring 2003 when the Niger claim is bunk story is coming out in the press all they didn't have far to look for the source. Wilson was told the WH crew had met in March to do a "work up" on him. So by May when Kristof writes an article citing a former US Ambassador who went to Niger, the Administration had known for months that Wilson was the source debunking their Niger claims.

[aquart]

16. This was my favorite part...

Other than how she never mentions WHY she was called back again or treats it as different from the first time:

"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."

So Judy flat out admits she conspired with the White House to conceal their attempts to control and misdirect information. Judy, honey, it's NEWS when the White House wants to do something. And you agreed to lie about it.

[jazzjunkysue]

17. And that's Libby: Obstructing justice a.k.a coverup. Ding ding ding!

We have a winner!!!

[Moochy]

18. Former Hill Staffer ... well he was also a college student.

Why not identify him as a "college student"?

"So bascially I agreed with the obfuscation of his identity because being the consummate insider whore that I am, it's all gravy."

[jasmeel]

19. Counsel Probed Miller on Classified Info

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051016/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/cia_leak_investigation

WASHINGTON - The prosecutor in the
CIA leak probe repeatedly asked New York Times reporter Judith Miller how Vice President
Dick Cheney's chief of staff handled classified information in their discussions, and asked whether Cheney knew of their conversations.

In a first-person account released Saturday on The Times' Web site, Miller recounted her recent grand jury testimony, which focused on her conversations in 2003 with Cheney's closest aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Miller said she "didn't think" she heard covert CIA officer Valerie Plame's name from Libby. "I said I believed the information came from another source, whom I could not recall."

Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is investigating whether crimes were committed when Bush administration officials leaked the identity of Plame to reporters. Plame's covert status was exposed at a time when her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, was criticizing the Bush administration, accusing it of manipulating prewar intelligence to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.

"My interview notes show that Mr. Libby sought from the beginning, before Mr. Wilson's name became public, to insulate his boss from Mr. Wilson's charges," Miller wrote.>snip

Sounds like Miller's still trying to protect Scooter-not sure...

[Halliburton]

20. she tried but it looks like she wasn't too successful

Her testimony contradict Libby's quite a bit and she did not give him a defense for the Espionage Act. She did do her damnedest to protect him from the IIPA though. What a liar. She belongs in jail.

[dogman]

21. Hope she's indicted too.

She is lying.

[jasmeel]

22. Indict everyone in the * admin. I bet there's evidence on them

all.

[longship]

23. Liar!

"I said I believed the information came from another source, whom I could not recall."

Bullshit! A reporter's job is to *remember* precisely this kind of thing. For christ sakes, she's a Pulitzer winning reporter. She's lying here. A whopper. Fitz ought to know that.

[PurityOfEssence]

38. Her whole article is one big "I couldn't recall"

What fucking credibility as a journalist can she possibly claim when over and over she can't remember even obvious details? She remembers less than Ronald Reagan did about Iran Contra.

Even if she wasn't an obvious propagandist and liar, the endless inability to remember anything short of her name is ridiculous. Why should her word stand for anything if she can't remember important elements of her interviews?

[tularetom]

24. heh-heh heh-heh

You just said "probed" heh-heh heh-heh.

[thebigidea]

25. good to know the liberal media thinks its ok to lie about secret sources

i'll keep that in mind whenever I see"an unnamed Senate aid" or "former strategist" in the Times...

[ahimsa]

26. Is she making a direct link between Kelly & Libby?

"Early in my grand jury testimony, Mr. Fitzgerald asked me to describe my history with Mr. Libby and explain how I came to interview him in 2003.

I said I had known Mr. Libby indirectly through my work as a co-author of "Germs," a book on biological weapons published in September 2001. Mr. Libby had assisted one of my co-authors, and the first time I met Mr. Libby he asked for an inscribed copy of "Germs."

[ahimsa]

28. Never mind

I thought Kelly was one of her co-authors.

[lovuian]

29. Miller still distorting the truth and thats Lying!!!

is all their defense is that they spelled her name wrong and that they never identified her as Valerie PLAME but as Wilson's wife and Valerie Flame!!!

is that all their defense is???

Oh how sad!!!



"Almost two weeks earlier, in an interview with me on June 23, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, discussed Mr. Wilson's activities and placed blame for intelligence failures on the C.I.A. In later conversations with me, on July 8 and July 12, Mr. Libby, who is Mr. Cheney's top aide, played down the importance of Mr. Wilson's mission and questioned his performance.

My notes indicate that well before Mr. Wilson published his critique, Mr. Libby told me that Mr. Wilson's wife may have worked on unconventional weapons at the C.I.A.

My notes do not show that Mr. Libby identified Mr. Wilson's wife by name. Nor do they show that he described Valerie Wilson as a covert agent or "operative," as the conservative columnist Robert D. Novak first described her in a syndicated column published on July 14, 2003. (Mr. Novak used her maiden name, Valerie Plame."

[Rose Siding]

30. What a smelly load.

All this tells us, is that, yes, she is a made woman.

Consider her rhetoric. She represents Joe's NYT column as "attacking the administration". Then, scoot has a favor to ask: While the WH is organizing an ATTACK on Wilson, will you please make it look like it came from somewhere else? -You know, sort of help us hide as we deliver our own ATTACK:

snip>
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.

Made. Woman.

[MGKrebs]

31. How con-veeenient!

I can't remember who gave me Ms. Wilson's name, but I am pretty sure is wasn't Libby.

Uh, well, yes, it IS in the same notebook as my Libby interview notes, but not in the same PART of the notebook.

Right.

edit to add this gem: "My interview notes show that Mr. Libby sought from the beginning, before Mr. Wilson's name became public, to insulate his boss from Mr. Wilson's charges."

[existentialist]

32. I started reading the same statement on truthout.org

I got as far as where she stated that Libby was telling her that George Tenet had said that he had never heard of Wilson.

The Director of the CIA never having heard of the former chargé d'affaires to Iraq under G.H.W.Bush's administration?

Right. Uh, sure . . .

The last possible shreds of credibility were gone, and I didn't force myself to read any further.

One of the standard jury instructions advises the jurors that if they believe that a witness has clearly lied on any one point, they may, if they wish, disregard that witness's testimony on all points. I thought that it applied. I had read enough.


(I was challenged on Joseph Wilson's having been ambassador to Iraq, so I checked. I guess technically he was not, but he was pretty close to it. Close enough that the statement by Judith Miller is absurd.):


"For 23 years, from 1976 to 1998, I was a career foreign service officer and ambassador. In 1990, as chargé d'affaires in Baghdad, I was the last American diplomat to meet with Saddam Hussein. (I was also a forceful advocate for his removal from Kuwait.) After Iraq, I was President George H. W. Bush's ambassador to Gabon and São Tomé and Príncipe; under President Bill Clinton, I helped direct Africa policy for the National Security Council."

Joseph Wilson

[NashVegas]

33. He Was Not an Embassador to Iraq

But to some African country, IIRC. Ghana?

[existentialist]

34. No, I believe that he was also chargé d'affaires to Iraq.

I had originally posted ambassador, and that was incorrect--but close.


(So I checked.)

What I found with a quick google search:


"For 23 years, from 1976 to 1998, I was a career foreign service officer and ambassador. In 1990, as chargé d'affaires in Baghdad, I was the last American diplomat to meet with Saddam Hussein. (I was also a forceful advocate for his removal from Kuwait.) After Iraq, I was President George H. W. Bush's ambassador to Gabon and São Tomé and Príncipe; under President Bill Clinton, I helped direct Africa policy for the National Security Council."

(Joseph Wilson)

[PurityOfEssence]

35. total LIAR: CIA's "unequivocal prewar intelligence assessments"

The CIA went out of its way over and over again to stop the administration from talking about the nuclear threat. They specifically cited speeches by Bush, Cheney and Rice and requested--in very shrill terms--that references to a nuclear program of Saddam's be stricken from future screeds. THEY WERE VERY CONSISTENT about not endorsing claims of an Iraqi nuclear program, and they went out of their way to keep intimations to this effect from being used.

She is a liar. She is a willing tool of the neocons. She is more in love of Israel than the United States. She has sinned against the soul of her profession, and played the victim for all it's worth.

The core of her argument is a thoroughly transparent lie: the CIA was not completely behind this fraud. The CIA was so reticent about supporting this hoax that the White House and the Pentagon had to form their own "intelligence" groups to counteract the inconvenient foot-dragging from career analysts.

She's the worst kind of liar. She's narcissistic, egocentric and so deeply selfish that she'd lie, cheat and steal from anyone who got in the way of her narrow personal goals. Her propagandizing for these people was not an act of someone who was misled, she knowingly lied to her own country under the guise of professional propriety and she did it repeatedly.

Of the many scoundrels in public life these days, she ranks very high. She should be given no quarter. She knew she was lying and distorting to sucker her countrymen into a war, and she continues with her deep moral ugliness. She should be hounded to an embarrassing public excoriation, and the sooner the better.

[mistertrickster]

36. She says Libby didn't tell her Plame's name but she can't remember

who did.

Wow, that's either one lame lie or one bad reporter, take your pick.

Like so many that support the Bush administration, it comes down to lying and / or incompetence . . .

[MADem]

43. Who mumbles when he talks??? Why, BIG TIME DICK does

She wrote VALERIE FLAME...if I was a betting type, I will bet that came from Dick's mumbling lips to her ears...and because he was a BIG TIME guy, she was afraid to do the normal thing, ask for the spelling, like a GOOD REPORTER might do.

She forgot, all right--she forgot, to stay alive.

[chaz4jazz]

37. Cheney aide gave Times reporter details in CIA case

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The notebook used by New York Times reporter Judith Miller for an interview with Vice President
Dick Cheney's chief of staff contained a name virtually identical to covert operative Valerie Plame's, the Times reported on Saturday.
ADVERTISEMENT

But Miller, whose notebook for the July 2003 interview with Cheney chief of staff Lewis Libby contained the name "Valerie Flame," told federal prosecutors she did not think Libby was the source of that information and that she could not recall who was.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051016/pl_nm/bush_leak_dc

[NVMojo]

39. Libby was worried that the CIA was going to stick it to the Bushco

for going to invasion on faulty weak intelligence? Then why didn't Bushco wait till they had all they needed in the first place ...

this says it all...


Bush Feared 'Looking Weak' on Iraq

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2005/101405.html

[NVMojo]

40. if this isn't a manipulative pull to intimacy/complicity, I'll eat my hat.

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."

How did I interpret that? Mr. Fitzgerald asked.

In answer, I told the grand jury about my last encounter with Mr. Libby. It came in August 2003, shortly after I attended a conference on national security issues held in Aspen, Colo. After the conference, I traveled to Jackson Hole, Wyo. At a rodeo one afternoon, a man in jeans, a cowboy hat and sunglasses approached me. He asked me how the Aspen conference had gone. I had no idea who he was.

"Judy," he said. "It's Scooter Libby."

...in other words, you are one with me in Aspen and other things with connected roots ...almost seductive if you ask me ...

[DoYouEverWonder]

46. Funny that Judith couldn't recognize Scooter in 08/03

when at the start of the article she says she had meetings and encounters with him in June and July?

This 'crack' reporter can't even keep her own story straight between the first paragraph and the last.

[Karmakaze]

41. People seem to have missed the importance of this...

My notes indicate that well before Mr. Wilson published his critique, Mr. Libby told me that Mr. Wilson's wife may have worked on unconventional weapons at the C.I.A.

Read that twice!

She has directly testified that BEFORE Wilson published his July 6 article, Libby had ALREADY outed Plame to her!

That KILLS the Bush defence that it was a reaction to the article, because the article had not yet been written. The NAME doesn't matter Libby IDENTIFIED ("Wilson's wife") a covert agent BEFORE there was any reason to do so.

Now if Libby did NOT tell the Grand Jury this, then he can be had for MORE than one charge - The Espionage Act, the Inteligence Agents Identity Protection Act, perjury, obstruction of justice, and possibly conspiracy. All for an act that occured BEFORE Wilson had gone public.

On edit: And dont forget Libby did not pluck this information out of thin air - he had to have been told by someone what Plame's job was, so they can pressure Libby to reveal who that was, or charge him with ANOTHER count of obstruction of justice.

[1932]

42. What's the significance of blowing Plame cover/attacking Wilson cred'b'ty

BEFORE Wilson criticized the administration?

Had Wilson been telling friends that he was going to write the story (were the anticipating something that was coming down the pipe)?

Or were they orchestrating the Niger thing from the beginning as a diversion (that is backfiring because it was criminal to out Plame)? Was it a planned set up -- some kind of rope-a-dope or mcguffin -- meant to ensure that Democrats would be swinging at Iraq as the primary campaign progressed? I always thought the media focus on that story was so out of character with everythign else they did. They constantly helped Bush build up for the war, but then made a big deal about Niger throughout the primary season which kept the focus on Iraq -- which is similar to the way that the ANG story unfolded. The forged documents distracted from the fact that they were reproductions of real documents. With Niger, the forged documents allowed Bush to pass the buck in a limited way on to others.

[Karmakaze]

48. Perhaps outing Plame WAS the point?

Perhaps Wilson was merely a convenient excuse to kill the CIA's WMD department? The department most likely to have been proving the Bush cabal wrong?

[WinkyDink]

49. Yes, this is clearly the raison d'etre.

Wilson was a side-issue, to denigrate VP as "Wilson's wife".
Part of the package to downplay her vital knowledge and hence danger to the entire---the ENTIRE---PNAC agenda.

Frankly, I'm surprised she wasn't found a suicide somehwere.

[DoYouEverWonder]

50. That was probably one of the reasons why Wilson went public

so early in the game. If you make enough noise in public, they are less likely to try to do away with you because it would be too obvious.

Someone asked Wilson if he was concerned about his safety, and he replied that they were probably more worried if he even stubbed his toe at this point.