The Plame Game - Back on Center Stage

If it weren't bad enough for the Republicans these days with DeLay indicted and Frist under SEC investigation, the Valerie Plame investigation is back in full swing with Judy Miller testifying in front of the Grand Jury today. She will confirm that it was Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, who informed her of Plame's identity.

So, now you have Karl Rove talking to Matthew Cooper about Plame's identity and then giving false testimony to the FBI. Now you have Scooter Libby giving the same information to Judy Miller.

Yeah, right, there was noooooo White House revenge game going on here. I am sorry people, but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, its a duck.

But, I am sure Libby has nothing to worry about since Bush flip-flopped on his 2003 pledge to fire anyone involed in the leak.

Times Reporter Free From Jail; She Will Testify

By DAVID JOHNSTON and DOUGLAS JEHL

Published: September 30, 2005
WASHINGTON, Sept. 29 - Judith Miller, the reporter for The New York Times who has been jailed since July 6 for refusing to testify in the C.I.A. leak case, was released Thursday from a Virginia detention center after she and her lawyers reached an agreement with a federal prosecutor in which she would testify before a grand jury investigating the case, the publisher and the executive editor of the paper said.

Ms. Miller was freed after spending more than 12 weeks in jail, during which she refused to cooperate with the inquiry. Her decision to testify was made after she had 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. Ms. Miller 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, they said.

Discussions between officials and journalists that week that may have disclosed the identity of a Central Intelligence Agency operative, Valerie Wilson, 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.

(Full Story)