Miller Asked About June Meeting During First Grand Jury Visit
Posted on Thu Oct 20, 2005 at 05:00:37 PM EST
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Murray Waas breaks more news about Judith Miller, which is confirmed by her lawyer Robert Bennett.
Miller was asked about the June Meeting with Libby during her first grand jury appearance, and didn't recall it until Fitzgerald showed her secret service logs showing she had been at the White House Annex that day.
When a prosecutor first questioned Miller during her initial grand jury appearance on September 30, 2005 sources said, she did not bring up the June 23 meeting in recounting her various contacts with Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Cheney. Pressed by prosecutors who then brought up the specific date of the meeting, Miller testified that she still could not recall the June meeting with Libby, in which they discussed a controversial CIA-sponsored mission to Africa by former Ambassador Joe Wilson, or the fact that his wife, Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA.
When a prosecutor presented Miller with copies of the White House-complex visitation logs, she said such a meeting was possible.
After she left the grand jury she looked for and found her notes of the meeting, and her lawyer called Fitzgerald.
Bob Bennett, an attorney for Miller, confirmed in an interview that Miller's October 12 testimony "corrected" her earlier statements to the grand jury regarding the June 23 meeting. Bennett declined to provide specifics of anything Miller said during either of her grand jury appearances, except to say: "We went back on the second occasion to provide those additional notes that were found, and correct the grand jury testimony reflecting on the June 23 meeting."
So, is Miller now in trouble? Probably not. She's helped him too much. As a legal expert Waas consulted put it:
....even if Fitzgerald were to conclude that Miller had "a feigned memory loss," the special prosecutor was unlikely to "make an issue out of this because he got what he wanted from her," and might still be dependant upon her as a witness during a potential trial.
It's interesting that Miller left this out of her five page New York Times article last Sunday. Waas recaps:
In her personal account in The Times, Miller said only that she discovered the notes on the June 23 meeting between her first and second grand jury appearances. But neither her personal account nor the staff-written article reported that Miller initially failed to disclose the meeting in her testimony or that she was shown the Secret Service visitation logs.
Miller devoted two sentences to the circumstances surrounding her grand jury testimony on the June 23 meeting and notes. "I testified in Washington twice," she wrote, "most recently last Wednesday after finding a notebook in my office at the Times that contained my first interview with Mr. Libby. Mr. Fitzgerald told the grand jury that I was testifying as a witness and not as a subject or target of his inquiry."
This is the meeting where she and Libby first discussed that Joseph Wilson's wife worked for the CIA:
Miller testified in her second grand jury appearance that it was during this June 23 meeting that she and Libby first discussed Plame's CIA employment. Miller's notes of that meeting contained the notation, regarding Wilson, "Wife works in bureau?
What a convenient memory lapse.
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