Judy Miller Scoots From Jail

Judith Miller, the New York Times reporter who went to jail rather than reveal her source only to endure the scorn of her colleagues for supposedly not reporting critically enough on the Iraq War, has now left prison and named Scooter Libby as her source on the Plame case. Miller spent three months in jail before finally calling Dick Cheney’s longtime aide to verify that he had waived their confidentiality agreement:

After nearly three months behind bars, New York Times reporter Judith Miller was released Thursday after agreeing to testify in the investigation into the disclosure of the identity of a covert CIA officer.
Miller left the federal detention center in Alexandria, Va., after reaching an agreement with Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald. She will appear before a grand jury investigating the case Friday morning.
“My source has now voluntarily and personally released me from my promise of confidentiality regarding our conversations,” Miller said in a statement.
The Times, which supported her contention that her source should be protected, reported late Thursday that her source was Vice President
Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby.

This will probably disappoint those who anticipated that Miller went to prison to protect Karl Rove. It may not mean all that much, anyway, since we don’t know what Lewis told Miller. Miller never wrote anything for publication about Valerie Plame, which made her arrest on contempt charges so provocative. It probably will turn out that Miller passed the information to Robert Novak or to some other people in the media.
The grand jury expires on October 28th, so we may finally see some answers from Fitzgerald and his lengthy investigation. Perhaps we’ll also discover why someone who didn’t write about Valerie Plame wound up doing prison time protecting Lewis Libby.