Jailed Times Reporter
Freed
After Source Waives
Confidentiality
By DAVID JOHNSTON and
DOUGLAS JEHL, NYTimes on the Web, September 29, 2005
WASHINGTON, Sept. 29 -- Judith
Miller, the New York Times reporter who has been jailed since July 6 for
refusing to testify in the C.I.A. leak case, was released from a Virginia
detention center this afternoon after she and her lawyers reached an agreement
with a federal prosecutor to testify before a grand jury investigating the
matter, the paper's publisher and executive editor said.
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Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times
Ms. Miller
was freed after spending more than 12 weeks in jail |
Ms. Miller was freed after spending
more than 12 weeks in jail, during which she refused to cooperate with the
criminal inquiry. Her decision to testify came after she obtained what she
described as a waiver offered "voluntarily and personally" by a source who said
she was no longer bound by any pledge of confidentiality she had made to him.
She said the source had made clear that he genuinely wanted her to testify.
That source was I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff,
according to people who have been officially briefed on the case. Ms.
Miller met with Mr. Libby on July 8, 2003, and talked with him by telephone
later that week. Discussions between government officials and journalists
that week have been a central focus of the investigation.
Ms. Miller said in a statement that she expected to appear before the grand jury
on Friday. Ms. Miller was released after she and her lawyers met at the
jail with Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the prosecutor in the case, to discuss her
testimony.
The Times' publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., said in a statement that the
newspaper supported Ms. Miller's decision to testify, just as it backed her
earlier refusal to cooperate. "Judy has been unwavering in her commitment
to protect the confidentiality of her source," Mr. Sulzberger said. "We
are very pleased that she has finally received a direct and uncoerced waiver,
both by phone and in writing, releasing her from any claim of confidentiality
and enabling her to testify."
Mr. Fitzgerald has for more than a year sought testimony from Ms. Miller about
conversations she had with Mr. Libby. Her willingness to testify was based
in part on personal assurances given by Mr. Libby earlier this month that he had
no objection to her discussing their conversations with the grand jury,
according to those officials briefed on the case.
Mr. Fitzgerald's investigation has centered on the question of whether anyone in
the Bush administration illegally disclosed to the news media the identity of an
undercover C.I.A. employee, Valerie Wilson, whose name was first published in
July 2003 in a syndicated column by Robert F. Novak. A secondary focus has
been whether government officials were truthful in their testimony to
investigators and the grand jury.
Ms. Miller never wrote an article about Ms. Wilson. Mr. Fitzgerald has
said that obtaining Ms. Miller's testimony was one of the last remaining
objectives of his inquiry, and the deal with Ms. Miller suggests that the
prosecutor may soon bring the long-running investigation to an end. It is
unknown whether prosecutors will charge anyone in the Bush administration with
wrongdoing.
The agreement that led to Ms. Miller's release followed intense negotiations
between Ms. Miller; her lawyer, Robert Bennett; Mr. Libby's lawyer, Joseph Tate;
and Mr. Fitzgerald. The talks began with a telephone call from Mr. Bennett
to Mr. Tate in late August. Ms. Miller spoke with Mr. Libby by telephone
earlier this month as their lawyers listened, according to people briefed on the
matter. It was then that Mr. Libby told Ms. Miller that she had his
personal and voluntary waiver.
But the discussions were at times strained, with Mr. Libby and Mr. Tate
asserting that they communicated their voluntary waiver to Ms. Miller's lawyers
more than year ago, according to those briefed on the case. Mr. Libby
wrote to Ms. Miller in mid-September, saying that he believed her lawyers
understood that his waiver was voluntary.
Others involved in the case have said that Ms. Miller did not understand that
the waiver had been freely given and did not accept it until she had heard from
him directly.
In written statements today, Ms. Miller and executives of The New York Times did
not identify the source who had urged Ms. Miller to testify. Bill Keller,
the executive editor of The New York Times, said that Mr. Fitzgerald had assured
Ms. Miller's lawyer that "he intended to limit his grand jury interrogation so
that it would not implicate other sources of hers."
Mr. Keller said that Mr. Fitzgerald had cleared the way to an agreement by
assuring Ms. Miller and her source that he would not regard a conversation
between the two about a possible waiver as an obstruction of justice.
Ms. Miller said she believed the agreement between her lawyers and Mr.
Fitzgerald "satisfies my obligation as a reporter to keep faith with my
sources." She added: "I went to jail to preserve the time-honored
principle that a journalist must respect a promise not to reveal the identity of
a confidential source. I chose to take the consequences -- 85 days in
prison -- rather than violate that promise. The principle was more
important to uphold than my personal freedom. "
Ms. Miller said she was grateful for the "unwavering support" shown by her
husband, family and friends and by The New York Times. She said that she
would say nothing more publicly about the case until after her grand jury
testimony.
Mr. Fitzgerald declined to comment on the matter, said a spokesman, Randall
Samborn.
The case has been the most significant test in decades of whether reporters can
refuse to disclose to prosecutors their discussions with confidential sources.
Many journalists believe that those sources would refuse to provide information
if their anonymity could not be protected.
At least four other reporters are known to have provided information to Mr.
Fitzgerald, but Ms. Miller had until today refused to do so. The Supreme
Court refused in July to hear an appeal by Ms. Miller of a lower-court order
that she be jailed for contempt for her refusal to testify.
Valerie Wilson, also known as Valerie Plame, is the wife of Joseph C. Wilson IV,
a former ambassador who traveled to Niger in 2002 on behalf of the Central
Intelligence Agency to investigate claims related to Iraq's nuclear weapons
program. When Mr. Wilson emerged as a critic of the Bush administration in
July 2003, administration officials questioned his credibility. The column
by Mr. Novak said Mr. Wilson's wife, who worked for the C.I.A., had suggested
the trip.
New details about the case have emerged in recent months. Karl Rove, the
president's senior political strategist, and Mr. Libby, the chief of staff for
Vice President Dick Cheney, both discussed Ms. Wilson with reporters, according
to testimony provided by Matthew Cooper, a Time magazine reporter, and by
others. But neither of the White House officials is known to have
mentioned Ms. Wilson by name or to have mentioned her covert status at the C.I.A.
Mr. Cooper testified in August 2004 about a conversation with Mr. Libby
conducted the previous year. But Mr. Cooper had resisted a subpoena to
appear before the grand jury to discuss a conversation with Mr. Rove. Last
July, after his employer, Time-Warner, complied with a subpoena seeking Mr.
Cooper's notes from the period, Mr. Cooper agreed to testify, after seeking and
obtaining what he called a specific waiver from Mr. Rove, releasing him from a
pledge of confidentiality.
That decision left Ms. Miller alone in resisting the prosecutors' demand to
testify. Much about Ms. Miler's role in the matter remains unclear.
Mr. Keller, the newspaper's executive editor, has declined to say whether she
was assigned to report about Mr. Wilson's trip, whether she had tried to write a
story about it, or whether she ever told editors or colleagues at the newspaper
that she had obtained information about the role played by Ms. Wilson.
Under the terms in which she had been jailed, Ms. Miller faced incarceration
through the duration of the current term of the grand jury hearing the matter,
which is due to expire on Oct. 28. Had Ms. Miller continued to resist,
lawyers involved in the case believed it was highly likely that Mr. Fitzgerald
would have attempted to keep her in jail by extending the grand jury's term or
convening a new grand jury.
Ms. Miller had been housed at the Alexandria Detention Center, a county jail in
suburban Virginia. As a federal prisoner, Ms. Miller was an exceptional
case, but a spokesman for the sheriff's office, which administers the center,
said that she had been granted no special privileges.
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