After three months in the clanker, New York Times Reporter Judith Miller could not remember who told her about Valerie Plames identity. She says that she exonerated Scooter Libby during her testimony this month:
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.)
As I told the grand jury, I recalled Mr. Libby’s frustration and anger about what he called “selective leaking” by the C.I.A. and other agencies to distance themselves from what he recalled as their unequivocal prewar intelligence assessments. The selective leaks trying to shift blame to the White House, he told me, were part of a “perverted war” over the war in Iraq. I testified about these conversations after spending 85 days in jail for refusing to cooperate with the grand jury inquiry. Having been summoned to testify before the grand jury, I went to jail instead, to protect my source – Mr. Libby – because he had not communicated to me his personal and voluntary permission to speak.
I testified that I did not believe the name came from Mr. Libby, in part because the notation does not appear in the same part of my notebook as the interview notes from him.
So why did she sit in the can while her husband went off to Europe? I’m confused. I bet the lefties are going batty about now.
Thank, goodness Powerline can make something out of this confusion.
