Judith Miller Has Been Dragged Into The Plame Matter

by Steve

This is interesting. After a court tried to force Tim Russert and Time Magazine's Matthew Cooper to reveal who told them about Valerie Plame's day job at the CIA, Russert and his NBC attorneys dealt with the order by providing limited testimony of an unknown nature. Cooper on the other hand refused to reveal his White House source to the Grand Jury, was promptly hit with a contempt of court order from the bench, and is fighting possible jail time on appeal as I write this. It was thought that the official who called both of them was none other than Cheney's Chief of Staff Scooter Libby, who has since denied it was him.

But something seems to have come out of the Russert testimony/interview, because guess who was subpoenaed to testify now? None other than the NYT's Judith Miller. Knowing how close Miller was to Ahmad Chalabi, who was close to Cheney and Rummy, this may get interesting.

Kevin Drum, over at the Political Animal blog for the Washington Monthly, says the Grand Jury has subpoenaed four journalists to testify for this investigation, who are:

-Matthew Cooper (Time magazine)
-Tim Russert (Meet the Press)
-Walter Pincus (Washington Post)
-Judith Miller (New York Times)

Drum also says that Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post has been interviewed. The name that is missing of course is Bob Novak, who wrote the column that revealed Plame's identity in the first place. It seems obvious that Patrick Fitzgerald, the special counsel on this case, is building his case with Novak as one of the eventual targets. When Fitzgerald has enough collected from these journalists, they'll subpoena Novak and try to make him talk before the Grand Jury about who from the White House feed him Plame's identity. And then Bob will have to decide between washing his career down the toilet to protect this White House, or continuing to maintain his lifestyle by throwing Bush overboard.