Former New York Times reporter Judith Miller was on the stand at the Lewis “Scooter” Libby trial today. Miller spent 85 days in the slammer for refusing to testify to a grand jury about conversations with Libby on the subjects of former ambassador Joe Wilson, his CIA wife and the administration’s insistence that Iraq sought to buy uranium from Niger, but she ultimately cut a deal with prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald allowing her to testify to the grand jury about Libby and Libby alone.

Miller is best known to press aficianados as the reporter most likely to regurgitate unfiltered administration spin on Iraq prior to the war, and for writing the single most bizarre story on Iraq’s banned weapons programs after the invasion. The latter involved an anonymous guy in a ball cap pointing to a patch of sand where he said — not to Miller, because she wasn’t allowed close enough to talk to the guy or even describe him beyond the ball cap — that a bunch of chemicals had been buried. Miller wasn’t alone in promulgating breathless WMD stories after the invasion, but she’s the only reporter to get front page real estate for a story about some guy standing in the desert pointing at nothing.

Did I mention Miller is now a freelance reporter?

Continue reading The Punchin’ Judy Show: Team Libby comes out swinging

Former Time Magazine reporter John Dickerson had a big day at the Lewis “Scooter” Libby trial. On February 7 of last year Dickerson wrote a two-part story for Slate called “Where’s My Subpoena?” The story was his take on both why his name surfaced in connection with special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation into who blew former covert CIA operative Valerie Wilson’s cover, and why Fitzgerald hadn’t come after him with the same gusto as he did Dickerson’s former Time colleague, Matt Cooper. Dickerson, who is covering the trial for Slate, resurfaced in the splashiest possible fashion when former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer named him as one of two reporters to whom he had revealed Wilson’s identity during a presidential jaunt to Africa (NBC’s David Gregory was the other).

In a story posted after his adventure, Dickerson says Fleischer’s account is inaccurate; that Fleischer urged him to ask the CIA who sent Wilson’s husband on a trip to Niger to investigate administration claims that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from that country, but never hinted at Wilson’s identity. Unless Fitzgerald comes up with contemporaneous notes or emails from Fleischer confirming his description of the conversations, you really have to go with Dickerson, who does have notes, on this one. Aside from that, in any contest between a White House press secretary and an organically grown human, you simply have to side with your own species.

That thought has no doubt occurred to Team Libby as well, and Dickerson says he expects that he’ll finally get that subpoena he wrote about last year.

Continue reading In which John Dickerson may get his Plame subpoena after all

Tim Russert became the first press casualty of the Lewis “Scooter” Libby trial on Thursday, but most of his colleagues neglected to report it**. The host of NBC’s “Meet the Press” was identified, in evidence submitted to bolster the testimony of Dick Cheney aide Cathie Martin, as the vice president’s platform of choice to . . . → Read More: The press look away as Russert pancakes at the Libby trial

Every high profile criminal trial seems to spawn a raft of books, and the Lewis “Scooter” Libby proceeding is certain to do the same. Although the legal question at issue is whether Dick Cheney’s former top aide lied to investigators and a grand jury about his role in outing former CIA undercover operative Valerie Plame, the trial takes place in a larger context that includes the Bush administration’s conduct in selling and defending the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the role of the Washington press corps in abetting or (much more rarely) undercutting that conduct. With a witness list set to include high-ranking members of both government and the Washington journalism community, what better choice to write one of those inevitable books than a Libby juror who is a former Washington Post reporter, the author of a recent espionage-related book, and well acquainted with many of the potential witnesses on both sides of the case?

Just such a prospective juror survived the first cut in the selection process to join the 36-strong pool from which the final selections will be made. The unnamed journalist — whom the reporters at the trial know and are legally proscribed from identifying, but who probably won’t remain anonymous in the wider world for long; among the details reported in the Post story linked above are that he worked in the Post Metro section under Bob Woodward, went to grade school with New York Times columnist and D.C. citizen-from-birth Maureen Dowd (age 54), and lived across the street from Meet The Press honcho and prosecution witness Tim Russert — told attorneys for both sides that he would be skeptical about his potential for impartiality were he them, but added that while he wasn’t “making a pitch to be on this jury … I don’t lean one way or the other in finding out the truth.”

Continue reading Former reporter gets the inside track on Libby trial book