Judy Miller's nobility has eluded me throughout this saga - i've never been clear on who she was standing up for...
unless he's completely lying (always a possibility), Libby's lawyer says he notified the NYT's legal counsel over a year ago that Libby was waiving source protection. so, one has to wonder what has prompted the NYT to grant her editorial martyrdom since her imprisonment. in fact, when she was ordered to jail, the judge
"told her she was mistaken in her belief that she was defending a free press, stressing that the government source she 'alleges she is protecting' had released her from her promise of confidentiality."
at any rate, this is the question of the day around the media world. from the
WaPo's political blog:
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So what was Miller doing in jail? Was it all just a misunderstanding? The most charitable explanation for Miller is that she somehow concluded that Libby wanted her to keep quiet, even while he was publicly -- and privately -- saying otherwise. The least charitable explanation is that going to jail was Miller's way of transforming herself from a journalistic outcast (based on her gullible pre-war reporting) into a much-celebrated hero of press freedom.
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the latter theory makes more sense than the former: Miller was the NYT's chief water carrier on the WMD stories, basically buying everything Ahmed Chalabi was selling prior to the war, and reporting it as news. she has obviously since proved to be guilty of some very poor journalism - perhaps she thinks martyrdom is the way to redemption?
edit: or perhaps there's a clue here:
Quote:
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As part of the deal, Fitzgerald agreed in advance that he would limit Miller's testimony to her communications with her source "and that was very important to me," Miller added.
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very important because she knows things about this matter, outside of her conversations with Libby, that she did not want to testify about?