judymiller comes out

* the nyt has two big judy/ traitorgate pieces out

first there's the article: "The Miller Case: From a Name on a Pad to Jail, and Back"
a couple of paras to note from the first read:

"And when the prosecutor in the case asked her to explain how "Valerie Flame" appeared in the same notebook she used in interviewing Mr. Libby, Ms. Miller said she "didn't think" she heard it from him. "I said I believed the information came from another source, whom I could not recall,""

and

"Once Ms. Miller was jailed, her lawyers were in open conflict about whether she should stay there. She had refused to reopen communications with Mr. Libby for a year, saying she did not want to pressure a source into waiving his confidentiality. But in the end, saying "I owed it to myself" after two months of jail, she had her lawyer reach out to Mr. Libby."

and then there's judy, judy, judy herself: "My Four Hours Testifying in the Federal Grand Jury Room"
some quick snippets:

"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."

lol. that paragraph will become famous.

"I testified in Washington twice - most recently last Wednesday after finding a notebook in my office at The Times that contained my first interview with Mr. Libby. "

hmm - apparently that 'DC notebook' that isikoff mentioned doesnt exist...

"Mr. Fitzgerald told the grand jury that I was testifying as a witness and not as a subject or target of his inquiry.""

hmmm - note the odd phrasing - its not "i am not a subject/target", its "fitz told the GJ that...". judy has flipped and got herself a deal.... from memory, miller's lawyer (Bennett?) recently said that judyjudy has never been a target/subject - we'll see how that one plays out. judyjudy doesnt explain when fitz told them that. first or 2nd appearance??? that is the gazillion dollar question

" On one page of my interview notes, for example, I wrote the name "Valerie Flame." Yet, as I told Mr. Fitzgerald, I simply could not recall where that came from, when I wrote it or why the name was misspelled.
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."

ok judy - spill the beans. in which part of the notebook does it appear???

Mr. Fitzgerald asked if I could recall discussing the Wilson-Plame connection with other sources. I said I had, though I could not recall any by name or when those conversations occurred.

shorter judy: i so dont remember stuff.

Before the grand jury, Mr. Fitzgerald asked me questions about Mr. Cheney. He asked, for example, if Mr. Libby ever indicated whether Mr. Cheney had approved of his interviews with me or was aware of them. The answer was no.

if i'm not mistaken, "before the grand jury" actually means "prior to", not "in front of". cheney is toast, i hope.

Mr. Libby also sought to explain why Mr. Bush included the disputed uranium allegation in his 2003 State of the Union address, a sentence of 16 words that his administration would later retract. Mr. Libby described it as the product of a simple miscommunication between the White House and the C.I.A."

hmmm - simple miscommunication. didnt hadley (et al) keep stuffing it back in there every time it got taken out of the drafts and earlier speeches?

more to come....

(my first guess is that the important thing will be what is left out of the articles, not what is in them - and of course, judy's article is very restricted in scope - it only focuses on her testimony)