Open Thread on Judith Miller
Posted on Mon Jul 18, 2005 at 08:59:05 AM EST
Tags: (all tags)
I'm working today, so here's a theory I received by e-mail from a criminal defense attorney in Florida on why Judith Miller has chosen jail. What do you all think of it?
I'm totally convinced that Judy Miller is in jail not because of her assertion of the 1st Amendment privilege, but because she wants to avoid asserting her 5th Amendment privilege. The reporter’s privilege arguments are convenient cover for her right now.
I believe the NYT is loudly supporting her fiction that she is a 1st Amendment heroine to try to cover for their horrendous mistake (mistake or cover up?) of not “throwing her under the bus” when it was revealed that she was nothing but a propagandist for the administration on WMD in the run up to war when they were forced to apologize for their coverage of Iraq.
Now, while I believe they (NYT) do know or suspect that she has some substantive criminal liability to hide (recall the split in the joint defense with Time when Time decided to accept the waivers but Judy did not and Time got new counsel), the NYT is still stuck with having to explain publicly Judy’s refusal to testify, even with waivers, to preserve their “reputation” as a credible newspaper, rather than the house organ of the Cheney Administration in the march to war. 
So, they make all this noise about the 1st amendment as a distraction when really, I believe, Judy has some kind of underlying conspiratorial criminal liability that she and NYT can’t afford to have revealed. Her role in this entire matter is just too incestuous with the administration and particularly with the personnel deeply involved in this leak.
Look at her special embedding, her acting like she’s directing operations in Iraq, her extraordinary access to the administration; look at the fact that she never wrote about Plame. Why not? Did she give the info to Novak and Cooper so it couldn’t be traced back to her or further traced back to Cheney?
Maybe, the true facts are that Cheney’s staff leaked to Judy who leaked to Rove who leaked to Novak and Cooper (I don’t buy Novak/Rove’s story for a minute that Novak already had the info. I think that’s a post hoc story they concocted when Novak got his immunity—which you know he did, probably right away from Ashcroft before Fitzgerald came on the scene.)
Is that kind of scenario—assisting someone in the administration to disseminate the disclosure of a CIA operative--- enough to hold her criminally responsible as a co-conspirator, accessory? I think it might be, and that’s what she’s protecting by spending 4 months in jail working on a book and hoping it goes away or in another direction while she sits tight.
But, I think after her 4 months in jail, Fitzgerald will give her another subpoena and she’ll face a criminal contempt charge and then she’ll have to “take 5” or give up what she knows. But until then, I can’t get enough of this soap opera/parlor game.
Xymphora also has an interesting take on Miller and Cheney, etc.
What if Cheney or Libby found out about Plame (possibly from the memo referred to here, but it could have come from anywhere), and, rather than tell Rove directly, told Miller? There seems to be a Cheney-Miller connection, as evidenced by the fact that the Miller aluminum tubes story was immediately followed by Cheney using it in his build-up to war.
(And thanks to Michelle at Mandarin Design for making these red quotes for me. If you're a blogger, go on over there and check out all the free stuff avalable for text tricks and graphics.)
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