Okay, so what crime did Judith Miller commit, exactly?

[The_Hamster_King]

@RealityChuck

So either:

1. Novak has been questioned and has given up his source. Therefore Miller’s testimony is unnecessary.

2. Novak has been questioned and has not given up his source. Then why isn’t Novak in contempt?

3. Novak has not been questioned. Why the hell not?

Can you say “selective prosecution”?

Novak has probably been questioned and given up his source. However, it appears that there were multiple leakers. The person who leaked to Miller is not necessarily the person who leaked to Novak. (Conspiracy charges, anyone?)

Also, if the special prosecutor is going for perjury charges against an administration official then he needs corraboration. To prove perjury you need multiple witnesses.

[Agent_Foxtrot]

@Pochacco

Judith Miller is protecting a person who betrayed the United States for political gain. Before you go around praising her, you should learn the facts of the grand jury investigation.

Three years ago the U.S. government sent Joe Wilson, a former ambassador, to Niger to investigate a claim that Saddam Hussein was buying uranium for WMDs. When Wilson returned he told the Bush administration the Niger uranium story was bunk, but that didn’t stop Bush from using it as one of his justifications for going to war.

After several months of being unable to convince the administration to stop using this false intelligence, Wilson went public with what he knew, writing an article for the New York Times.

One week later a conservative columnist, Robert Novak, wrote an article saying that a senior White House source had told him that Wilson was unreliable and the only reason he got Niger assignment was because his wife, Valerie Plame, had pulled strings for him at the CIA.

Valerie Plame did work for the CIA, but covertly. Novak’s article blew her cover. Since she was involved in gathering intelligence on the proliferation of WMDs this action was almost certainly harmful to the United States. It’s unknown what sort of danger this revelation put her contacts in.

Blowing the cover of a covert agent is a federal crime. The CIA requested that the Justice Department investigate. A special prosecutor (Patrick Fitzgerald) was appointed.

Judith Miller is involved because apparently the traitor (or traitors) in the White House shopped the intelligence around to several reporters before Novak decided to run with it. Miller’s testimony would help nail someone who put political advantage ahead of national security. By refusing to testify she’s in contempt of court. The moment she agrees to testify, she’ll walk free.

Judith Miller is not protecting a whistleblower. Joe Wilson is the whistleblower in this case. Judith Miller is protecting whoever tried to scare Joe Wilson into shutting up. It’s the moral equivalent of protecting the identity of a mobster running a protection racket.

Thank you for the explanation of what’s going on, Pochacco. It’s very hard to get info on this story, and I totally see it now. I formally retract my rhetoric in the OP.

Adam

[Gary_Robson]

@Agent Foxtrot

There’s no obvious threat to national security or any other reason the Bush Machine can muster for jailing her.

The “Bush Machine”? Is everything you don’t like Bush’s fault? It was Judge Thomas Hogan that jailed Miller. Was he appointed by Bush? Is Bush blackmailing him somehow?

[The_Hamster_King]

@Agent Foxtrot

It’s very hard to get info on this story … .

Yes. Frustratingly the way this story has been framed in the media makes it seem like the big news is that reporters are being forced to testify.

Uh no.

The big news is that someone in the White House broke the cover of a covert operative for political gain. The fact that Miller and Cooper are caught up in this is merely a sideshow.

[bizzwire]

Earlier on, didn’t Novak’s source waive his…uh…something, …in effect telling Novak it was OK to name names?

[Barbarian]

For the record, Miller never wrote any article about Plame, which is why her going to jail stinks.

Bob Novak wrote the original article blowing Plame’s cover, and yet there is no record of his talking to a grand jury about his sources. If a prosecutor wanted to know who blew Plame’s cover, well, there’s one obvious guy to talk to.

But you end up throwing a reporter a jail because she accepted a phone call one day, never wrote about it, and doesn’t want to talk about it? That’s called a witch hunt. It’s like throwing Ben Stein in jail because Bob Woodward didn’t want to reveal that Mark Felt was Deep Throat.