Miller and Libby met to discuss Plame

[Quixote1818]

The Meeting
Scooter Libby and Judy Miller met on July 8, 2003, two days after Joe Wilson published his column. And Patrick Fitzgerald is very interested.
By Murray Waas
Web Exclusive: 08.06.05

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I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, has told federal investigators that he met with New York Times reporter Judith Miller on July 8, 2003, and discussed CIA operative Valerie Plame, according to legal sources familiar with Libby's account.

The meeting between Libby and Miller has been a central focus of the investigation by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald as to whether any Bush administration official broke the law by unmasking Plame's identity or relied on classified information to discredit former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, according to sources close to the case as well as documents filed in federal court by Fitzgerald.

The meeting took place in Washington, D.C., six days before columnist Robert Novak wrote his now-infamous column unmasking Plame as a "CIA operative." Although little noticed at the time, Novak's column would cause the appointment of a special prosecutor, ultimately place in potential legal jeopardy senior advisers to the president of the United States, and lead to the jailing of a New York Times reporter.

The meeting between Libby and Miller also occurred during a week of intense activity by Libby and White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove aimed at discrediting Plame's husband, Wilson, who on July 6, 2003, had gone public in a New York Times opinion piece with allegations that the Bush administration was misrepresenting intelligence information to make the case to go to war with Iraq.

continued at:


http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=10077

[joemurphy]

1. Interesting revelation.

There was a prior report in Newsday the Miller met with "an unnamed administration official" and a later report that that person was
Libby. This gives even more detail. The fact that Libby may have shown Miller a document at the meeting containing classified information is new stuff (for me anyway).

This article also contains a lot of detail about Miller's stance on the waiver. Miller isn't accepting Libby's original "general" waiver as freely given (i.e., asserting it may have coerced). But Libby's never withdrawn it. Judge Hogan has never recognized the need for a "specific" waiver. It was partly for this reason that Hogan jailed Miller for contemp.

The article is also instructive because it clearly reveals that Libby apparently has not given Miller a "specific" waiver.

I wonder if Miller has even asked Libby for one. Somehow I doubt it.

[Quixote1818]

2. It kind of makes Libby look like a scum bag

nt

[joemurphy]

3. Well, of course Libby IS a scum bag. :-) But so's Miller

Rove is too. Supposedly Rove, like Libby, signed a general waiver.
Also like Libby, Rove never signed a "specific" waiver allowing Cooper to testify either. Luskin, Rove's attorny, in one of the major blunder's he's committed in representing Rove, went public early with talking points claiming Rove wanted justice done, wass cooperating with the grand jury and had even issued a waiver applicable to any journalists he had talked to. After saying that, Rove would be hard pressed to claim that his waiver was involuntary and had been coerced. Thus,wWhen it came time for Cooper to either talk or be jailed, Cooper, on the advice of his attorneys, treated Luskin's statements as the "specific" waiver that he needed from Rove and proceeded to sing like a bird to the grand jury.

All this crap about the need for "voluntary waivers" etc. from the press, under the instant circumstances, is a lot of hooey.

It is arguable that Rove and Libby, who are paid public servants and were acting within the course and scope of their employment when they originally talked to the press off the record, were agents for the American people -- their true principal. Under this view, and under theories of agency law, it the American people, as the principal, that has the right to decide whether Rove and Libby's communications should be kept anonymous by journalists. Since the people have never insisted upon journalistic silence -- and Rove and Libby's boss, George W. Bush, the chief executive officer of the nation and arguable spokesman for the American people, has always maintained that he has wanted to give Fitz 100% cooperation and wants the facts behind any leaks exposed, then there is no need for journalists like Miller to continue to treat Rove and Libby's communications as anonymous.

Thus, Miller should talk for all kinds of reasons. There is no reporter-source privilege recognized by law; there is no reporter/source privilege because Rove and Libby arguably had no right to assert one; and there is no privilege because even they had that right, their principal (i.e., either George W. Bush or the American people -- take your pick) has never authorized them to insist on the privilege being asserted. Add to all this the fact that Miller has presented no evidence that the "general" waivers that Rove and Libby signed were involuntarily executed and you come to the conclusion that Miller is without right not to cooperate with the grand jury.

If she persists in not talking, Fitz should just go ahead and prosecute her for criminal contempt. What does he have to lose? If she is put away in jail for a couple more years for violating the criminal law, she'll talk. I guarantee it.