After reading, re-reading, and partially digesting (I really can’t fully stomach it) Judy Miller’s article on her grand jury testimony, I am convinced she is still protecting the administration.

It appears to me that she is going to be a hostile witness when she testifies in Scooter Libby’s trial. Even so, if she was primarily interested in protecting Libby she could have done a better job of it. To see why, let’s start with the heart of the matter: the appearance of the words ‘Valerie Flame’ in Miller’s notes from her second meeting with Libby on July 8th, 2003.

On one page of my interview notes, for example, I wrote the name “Valerie Flame.” Yet, as I told Mr. Fitzgerald, I simply could not recall where that came from, when I wrote it or why the name was misspelled.

At first, one might think that Miller is protecting Libby against the charge that he outed Valerie Wilson by giving her the name ‘Valerie Flame’. But her testimony about their prior meeting, on June 23rd, 2003, makes it very clear that Libby had already outed Valerie Wilson by telling Miller that Wilson’s “wife works in (the) bureau.” Libby’s defense that he didn’t use the name fails for the same reason Rove’s defense vis-a-vis Cooper fails. Wilson only had one wife and her identity was easily determined.

No. Miller was protecting something or someone else. As the following account (of the same incident) makes clear, she had other sources:

Mr. Fitzgerald asked me about another entry in my notebook, where I had written the words “Valerie Flame,” clearly a reference to Ms. Plame. Mr. Fitzgerald wanted to know whether the entry was based on my conversations with Mr. Libby. I said I didn’t think so. I said I believed the information came from another source, whom I could not recall.

Mr. Fitzgerald asked if I could recall discussing the Wilson-Plame connection with other sources. I said I had, though I could not recall any by name or when those conversations occurred.

Her insistence that the Valerie Flame portion of her notes did not derive from her conversation with Libby is hard to believe. At first, it seems that she is looking to protect Libby. But her testimony about their June 23 2003 meeting, and other testimony about her July 8th meeting makes it clear that Libby’s fortunes were sunk the moment Miller agreed to testify. She had no reason to continue to cover for Libby. Let’s take a look at what she says about the June 23rd meeting at the Old Executive Office Building:

…Mr. Libby raised the subject of Mr. Wilson’s wife for the first time. I wrote in my notes, inside parentheses, “Wife works in bureau?” I told Mr. Fitzgerald that I believed this was the first time I had been told that Mr. Wilson’s wife might work for the C.I.A. The prosecutor asked me whether the word “bureau” might not mean the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Yes, I told him, normally. But Mr. Libby had been discussing the C.I.A., and therefore my impression was that he had been speaking about a particular bureau within the agency that dealt with the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. As to the question mark, I said I wasn’t sure what it meant. Maybe it meant I found the statement interesting. Maybe Mr. Libby was not certain whether Mr. Wilson’s wife actually worked there.

This testimony cuts two ways. It makes it clear that Libby brought up Wilson’s wife long before Wilson wrote his column. It makes it clear that he shared classified information with Miller. This testimony is almost certainly enough to prove several instances of perjury in Libby’s prior testimony. Yet, it still contains the elements of a defense against the charge that Libby knew Valerie Wilson was undercover. Miller asserts that it is possible that Libby wasn’t sure that Valerie worked at the CIA, let alone that she was working there with non-official cover.

This little piece of devil’s advocacy is rendered absurd by the context of the conversation. First, let’s watch how Judy described how she first heard about Wilson at the June 23rd meeting:

Mr. Libby said the vice president’s office had indeed pressed the Pentagon and the State Department for more information about reports that Iraq had renewed efforts to buy uranium. And Mr. Cheney, he said, had asked about the potential ramifications of such a purchase. But he added that the C.I.A. “took it upon itself to try and figure out more” by sending a “clandestine guy” to Niger to investigate. I told Mr. Fitzgerald that I thought “clandestine guy” was a reference to Mr. Wilson – Mr. Libby’s first reference to him in my notes…

…My notes indicate that Mr. Libby took issue with the suggestion that his boss had had anything to do with Mr. Wilson’s trip. “Veep didn’t know of Joe Wilson,” I wrote, referring to the vice president. “Veep never knew what he did or what was said. Agency did not report to us.”

Soon afterward Mr. Libby raised the subject of Mr. Wilson’s wife for the first time. I wrote in my notes, inside parentheses, “Wife works in bureau?” I told Mr. Fitzgerald that I believed this was the first time I had been told that Mr. Wilson’s wife might work for the C.I.A.

Miller acknowledged that the context of the conversation led to the indisputable conclusion that the word ‘bureau’ referred to a bureau within the CIA and not the FBI. So, there is your smoking gun. Libby could not have been confused about whether Valerie worked at the CIA. There was no reason to mention that Wilson’s wife worked there except to call up the question of nepotism. How else could it possibly be relevant? Miller was bending over backwards to give Libby the benefit of the doubt when she said he may not have been sure that Valerie worked at the CIA. She also shaded her testimony by refusing to admit that this conversation was related to Valerie’s role in her husband’s trip.

And she shaded her testimony the same way when it came to these same points in her second meeting:

At that breakfast meeting, our conversation also turned to Mr. Wilson’s wife. My notes contain a phrase inside parentheses: “Wife works at Winpac.” Mr. Fitzgerald asked what that meant. Winpac stood for Weapons Intelligence, Non-Proliferation, and Arms Control, the name of a unit within the C.I.A. that, among other things, analyzes the spread of unconventional weapons.

I said I couldn’t be certain whether I had known Ms. Plame’s identity before this meeting, and I had no clear memory of the context of our conversation that resulted in this notation. But I told the grand jury that I believed that this was the first time I had heard that Mr. Wilson’s wife worked for Winpac.

Let’s work through this piece of testimony slowly. At the first meeting, Libby told Miller that Joe Wilson went to Niger. He told her that his wife worked at the CIA. In the intervening time, Joe Wilson published his article. Now, Miller would have us believe that Libby may have only been speculating that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA, and that Miller had not ascertained (in the intervening fifteen days) whom Wilson’s wife was.

I find all of this very implausible. It was at this second meeting that Libby supplied Valerie’s division or ‘bureau’ within the CIA. Again, what possible relevance would that have? Fitzgerald asked her, and this is what she said:

Mr. Fitzgerald asked me whether Mr. Libby had mentioned nepotism. I said no. And as I told the grand jury, I did not recall – and my interview notes do not show – that Mr. Libby suggested that Ms. Plame had helped arrange her husband’s trip to Niger. My notes do suggest that our conversation about Ms. Plame was brief.

What, exactly, did she think Libby was hinting at by bringing up Wilson’s wife for a second time and providing her bureau, in the context of debunking Wilson’s article? Miller doesn’t say. Instead she attempts to minimize the significance of the exchange by noting “My notes do suggest that our conversation about Ms. Plame was brief.”

She could have stated the obvious: that Libby was raising the issue of nepotism. Why didn’t she?

Perhaps Libby wasn’t initially aware that Valerie had anything to do with sending Wilson on the trip, and his point in bringing up her job in the CIA was a part of a broader attack on the whole agency for trying to cover their asses over the failure to find WMD. Maybe he was suggesting that Wilson was biased because his wife was in the CIA, and the CIA was smearing the White House with ‘selected leaks’, and disassociating themselves from the pre-war intelligence. That is what Miller’s notes and testimony suggest.

From their first meeting:

I recall that Mr. Libby was displeased with what he described as “selective leaking” by the C.I.A. He told me that the agency was engaged in a “hedging strategy” to protect itself in case no weapons were found in Iraq. “If we find it, fine, if not, we hedged,” is how he described the strategy, my notes show.

Now, let’s look at an odd factoid about the placement of the words ‘Valerie Flame’ in Miller’s notebook.

I testified that I did not believe the name came from Mr. Libby, in part because the notation does not appear in the same part of my notebook as the interview notes from him.

and this:

Mr. Fitzgerald wanted to know whether the entry was based on my conversations with Mr. Libby. I said I didn’t think so. I said I believed the information came from another source, whom I could not recall.

Mr. Fitzgerald asked if I could recall discussing the Wilson-Plame connection with other sources. I said I had, though I could not recall any by name or when those conversations occurred.

So, let’s get two things clear. Miller says she cannot remember where, when, or who gave her the name Valerie Flame. Well, as for when she wrote it in the notebook, we know it was before Novak’s column appeared on July 14th. Otherwise, she would not have misspelled it. If Libby didn’t give it to her, she almost definitely wrote it in her notebook prior to the interview. That means that she used the fifteen days between the first interview and the second interview to find out the name of Joe Wilson’s wife. And it means that her source gave her the name orally, and that she misheard and spelled in phonetically. As Miller testified, “the information came from another source, (from) whom I could not recall.

Nevertheless, Libby provided more information at the second meeting, and once again shared classified information.

Miller had another conversation with Libby on July 12th, 2003. At this point Novak may have already penned his article, even though it would not appear in print until the 14th. Miller admits that she probably talked to sources about Wilson’s wife before the phone call with Libby:

I told Mr. Fitzgerald I believed that before this call, I might have called others about Mr. Wilson’s wife. In my notebook I had written the words “Victoria Wilson” with a box around it, another apparent reference to Ms. Plame, who is also known as Valerie Wilson.

I told Mr. Fitzgerald that I was not sure whether Mr. Libby had used this name or whether I just made a mistake in writing it on my own. Another possibility, I said, is that I gave Mr. Libby the wrong name on purpose to see whether he would correct me and confirm her identity.

This is tantalizing. But it also makes no sense. Libby had given Miller the original info on Wilson’s wife nineteen days earlier. She had the name of ‘Valerie Flame’ in her notebook for her interview 4 days earlier. And now she is still looking to have Libby confirm her identity (and still using the wrong name)? Does that make sense?

Something stinks with Miller’s testimony here. If you told me that Alexander Haig’s wife is a serial murderer it would not take me 19 days to figure out her name. And I wouldn’t need to trick the source who told me about Haig’s wife into confirming her identity.

What’s even weirder is that as late as October 2003, people were still referring to Valerie Wilson as Victoria Wilson.

In conclusion: Miller’s testimony about Libby seems slanted in many ways to protect him against the most damning conclusions, but it does nothing to exonerate him, and will probably land him in jail for perjury. At the same time, Miller is clearly using a ‘selective memory’ to protect other sources. And her testimony is clearly disingenuous, if not downright perjurious. I expect her to be declared a hostile witness in Libby’s trial.