Miller's Involvement: Possible explanation from Sydney Blumenthal?

Is it possible that Miller was about to do a story discrediting Wilson and his Niger claims as a pre-emptive strike against Wilson for her buddies in the White House? But Wilson trumped her with his op-ed?

I was just reading Sydney Blumenthal’s story, Who will be indicted, and when?, over at Salon. Two comments struck me as important, see below…

The Times, meanwhile, has subordinated its news coverage to her legal defense, withholding reportage on what she has told the grand jury, though the Times promises a full account. Will it include her colleagues’ recollections of how livid she was that the Times published Wilson’s Op-Ed?

Why would she be livid? Perhaps her previously debunked reporting that got her into trouble with the NY Times was exacerbated by the op-ed by Wilson and only served to make her look even worse? OR was she scooped (so to speak) by Joe Wilson himself, on a story she’d been working on to cover the exact same issue only from a different (and more White House friendly) perspective?

It’s entirely possible she was given Plame’s status on background but never had any intention of revealing the name in her article. She then could very well have been the one to spread Plame’s name to other reporters, but Libby ultimately gave her the name first.

In the meantime, someone gives Joe Wilson the heads up that the White House is out to discredit him and he then pushes ahead with his op-ed to stay one step ahead of them. His op-ed gets published to the extreme chagrin of Judith Miller, who was tapped to “break” the story herself.

The next quote relates to something Bob Woodward said:

For his part, Bob Woodward, who has written two books describing in detail events from the perspective of the Bush administration, supported the White House version of the Niger incident by charging in July 2004 that “there were reasonable grounds to discredit Wilson.”

And now we are back to the smear campaign against Joe Wilson, who just happens to be the real whistleblower in this entire sordid affair. It’s this aspect of the case that I have always thought Fitzgerald was digging into, and the WHIG was behind it all.

Thoughts?

FYI, all bolding is mine.