Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Cheney’s aide revealed as source of CIA leak — Here’s a woman who now looks as if there was no reason other than for personal publicity to go to jail. They should throw the book at her for obstruction of justice. A classic showboater looking for attention and fake martyrdom. Inexcuseable. In an era where the press is being attacked widely we don’t need this.

The case has cast light on the relationship between journalists and government sources, and the confidentiality of that relationship. It has also provoked scrutiny of Miller. She said yesterday she had gone to jail “to preserve the time-honoured principle” of protecting journalistic sources. But Mr Libby’s lawyer, Joseph Tate, said his client had signed a document waiving his right to confidentiality in late 2003 and he had assured Miller’s lawyer last month that the waiver had not been coerced. “Her lawyers were provided with a waiver that we said was voluntary, more than a year ago,” Mr Tate told the Washington Post.

Jailing Miller in July, the judge in the case, Thomas Hogan, argued she was not defending press freedom, because the government source she “alleges she is protecting” had released her from her promise of confidentiality. Cooper, the Time magazine journalist, had agreed to testify on the strength of a similar assurance, but Miller had insisted that she wanted to hear it directly from Mr Libby. The argument over the waiver raised the question of whether she had martyred herself unnecessarily.



  1. Tim says:

    Agreed. Pathetic.

  2. Dermitt says:

    She should of never been in jail? Huh, what!
    Maybe it could be turned into one of those credit card commercials.
    Dinner and a movie $90.00
    A day of shopping in New York City $1,200.00.
    85 days in the hole. Priceless!
    For everything else there is MisterKard.

  3. R Taylor says:

    It’s worth a three book deal from a major publisher. What many people fail to understand is that you have to die a usually painful death to become a martyr.

  4. Tim Westby says:

    People will do anything these days for a book advance. Sickening. You could just read it in her face and voice too during the “press conference”/photo op on the steps of the courthouse/jail/whatever. And you can’t “martyr [your]self unnecessarily’; it’s just fraud.

  5. Frank IBC says:

    It’s not clear that this was for publicity alone. PowerLine offers some alternative reasons:

    2) Miller went to jail because she didn’t want to answer questions about her tipping off a terrorist-supporting group that the FBI was about to execute a search warrant, an episode that also could have come before Fitzpatrick’s grand jury. She and her lawyer laid the blame on Libby so that the public wouldn’t learn about the other episode, which is pretty much unknown. Plausible, and consistent with what we’ve been told about her lawyer’s deal with the prosecutor–if, indeed, the terrorist tipoff was something that Fitzgerald could have pursued. I’m not sure whether that’s correct or not.

    3) The third alternative is the most sinister: Miller went to jail to protect not Libby, but another source or sources, and the prosecutor has agreed not to ask her about those other sources. If that’s true, it suggests that someone in the administration–presumably, either Karl Rove or Scooter Libby–is being set up.

  6. AB CD says:

    She only stopped after the prosecutor agreed to only ask questions about Libby. She may be protecting another source as well. Libby gave hsi assurances a year ago, and she went to jail she says because she found the assurance vague.

  7. Dermitt says:

    Systematic manipulation.
    “But pathological liars are a distinct group who systematically manipulate others, lie or use aliases for financial gain or personal pleasure, such as to get sickness benefits or to skip work. “It’s almost like a livelihood,” says Raine.” from http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8075

    To skip work or skip jail? Hmm! What to do. When I write stuff, I assume there are others trying to manipulate things because there are. The whole matter of sources seems to be blown way out of proportion. The whole story is filled with systematic manipulation on a bunch of levels. I guess everybody will have to wait for all the books to dig into the rest of the story. I’ve heard enough and I’m tired of the story. Politicians lie, reporters report lies and the public reads lies.
    How difficult is it to figure out? Use your brain.


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