Schmaltz Herring

There is still something fishy about Judith Miller’s release from jail. (I’m not the only one who thinks so … just about every talking head is a scratching head over the circumstances surrounding this springing.) Ms. Miller says that she needed her source’s (Lewis Libby’s) oral assurance that she was released from her pledge of confidentiality even though she had a year-old signed statement from “Scooter” to this same effect. In other words she spent 12 weeks in the hooscow because she didn’t think it was proper to call Mr. Libby for this same (redundent) oral assurance. (He was apparently supposed to call her first.) This just doesn’t ring true.

However, I believe that the key to this puzzle can be found in this morning’s NY Times news story, viz, “Ms. Miller and her lawyers said she had agreed to testify because her source had released her from any pledge of confidentiality AND BECAUSE SHE HAD RECEIVED A GUARANTEE FROM THE PROSECUTOR IN THE CASE THAT HE WOULD RESTRICT HIS QUESTIONS TO THE ONE SOURCE.” (Caps mine.)

What is this? Was there more than one source? But, even though there seems to be much more to this story, most of the news media have slavishly followed the red-herring trail laid out by the Times and its lawyer. And, on top of that, these Casandras also get to use this story to plead for more legal protections from reporters’s having to disclose confidential sources (see the lead editorial in this same issue of the Times). Unbounded hubris thy name is Punchy Sulzberger.

Will we ever find out “the rest of the story”? I doubt it. But I can dream. And in my chimera the special prosecutor calls Ms. Miller back in in about a month and asks her about these other source(s) or even other piscene events based upon new testimony from others. (“How many other sources were there?” “Did they tell you things before or after Lewis Libby did?” “What did they tell you about Valarie Wilson, etc.?” “Who are they?”) If Ms. Miller again hides behind the First Admendment (or better yet the Fifth Admendment), then we at least know the degree to which most in the “free press” are willing to engage in duplicity and slight of hand to put forward their political agenda. And Ms. Miller will again be wearing stripes.