The New York Times' 8 page article on Judith Miller is now online. [hat tip Raw Story.] It's written by Don Van Natta, Adam Liptak and Clifford Levy.

More interesting, is Judith Miller's five page account.

Let the analysis begin. Is Scooter Libby going to be Indictment Number One? Is Dick Cheney cleared? Does Judith Miller have too many convenient lapses of memory for us to believe her, even though Fitzgerald is giving her a pass? For anyone who still thinks she is going to be indicted, please understand that her lawyers would have carefully vetted this article before they allowed her to send it in to the Times. If Miller was in jeopardy from Fitzgerald, there would have been no article.

Will Miller now retire from the Times and get that 1.2 million book deal? Or will her advance be $4 million by the time the Indictments are announced?

Update: Reactions: Arianna says Miller's account raises more questions than it answers. Armando is rocking over at Daily Kos. Jane at Firedoglakeis taking her time to analyze both articles, as will I.

Karl Rove testified for the fourth time before the grand jury today. What do you think? Will he sink or swim?

by TChris

NY Times readers deserve honest answers to questions that Public Editor Byron Calame wants to ask:

"While a multitude of issues need to be addressed," Calame wrote, "I certainly will expect The Times’s explanation to address these fundamental questions that I first posed to the key players at the paper in July: Was Ms. Miller’s contact with the source she is protecting initiated and conducted in genuine pursuit of a news article for Times readers? Why didn’t she write an article? What kinds of notes are there and who has them? Why wasn’t she exploring a voluntary waiver from the source?

Calame says he's posed these questions to "key players" at the paper since July, without response.

Fitzgerald is examining discrepancies between what Cheney, his staff (including Libby) and other White House Officals (including Karl Rove and even Ari Fleischer) told investigators and the grand jury about the leak of Valerie Plame's identity. Undoubtedly, he will also consider what Joseph Wilson has said.

Yesterday, I recapped previously reported information on the White House Iraq Group. Today I'm going back to the beginning, with background relevant to the discrepancies, dating from Cheney and Libby's involvement with CIA analysts in 2002, through the President's Africa trip in 2003 and ending with a statement by Cheney in September, 2003. The links are to the actual sources, not prior TalkLeft posts, although all have been mentioned before on TalkLeft.

The two main discrepancies that I see as still being very important are:

• Cheney and the White House deny knowing about Wilson's trip before he published his op-ed in the New York Times on July 6, 2003. They deny asking for or receiving a report on Wilson's trip. Wilson, on the other hand, tells Meet the Press that Cheney's office did ask for and receive the report on his trip. He tells Vanity Fair and writes in his book that in March, 2003, the White House began a campaign to discredit him, a plan that culminated with the disclosure of his wife's identity and CIA employment in Robert Novak's July 14, 2003 column.

Raw Story reports that Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is examining what role, if any, Vice President Dick Cheney had in the leaking Valerie Plame's identity or discrediting Joseph Wilson.

Does this mean Fitzgerald will ask for an extension of the grand jury? If he does, the grand jury would have another six months. He could also convene a new grand jury and transfer the case to it, in which case, the new term would be another 18 months. If he were to convene a new grand jury, that would be extremely fortunate for the White House and Republicans. Another 18 months to investigate could delay Indictments past the 2006 elections. [Edited to reflect difference between an extended grand jury and a new grand jury]

Ok, it's time for Bill Keller to pony up. Editor and Publisher reports:

Judith Miller's second appearance before the grand jury probing the Plame/CIA leak case on Wednesday lasted only a little more than an hour but it was enough to earn a judge's order releasing The New York Times reporter from the contempt-of-court citation that landed her in jail. The order was still in place until her testimony was complete.

Besides liberating Miller, it also means The New York Times can no longer cite that order as a roadblock to keep it from presenting a full accounting of related matters. "I am delighted that the contempt order has been lifted, and Judy is now completely free to go about her great reporting as a very principled and honorable reporter," said Robert Bennett, one of Miller's attorneys.

Update: 4:30 pm. CNN has changed the headline to "Times reporter details previously undisclosed conversation." Were they reading us blogs today? I know Atrios and War and Piece spotted it as well. And I did get an e-mail saying TalkLeft was mentioned on the CNN blog segment.

On a related note, Arianna weighs in on Miller's second grand jury appearance in Judy, Take Two.

***********
Original Post:

I have re-read this CNN article three times and cannot find a statement in it to back up the headline, "New York Times reporter disclosed conversation with second source." Maybe it's a typo that meant to read, "New York Times reporter disclosed second conversation with source."

[Warning: This is another one of those posts intended only for the seriously addicted PlameGate followers among you. While I mostly refer to TalkLeft posts in which I talk about Fitzgerald's likely concentration on the White House Iraq Group and the Defense Policy Board, I do so because in each post I support my speculation with quotes from a wide variety of news sources that I find myself returning to time and again to support the theory. Those sources are the reason to click on my prior posts, far more than my conclusions. ]

So, the latest: The Wall Street Journal (free link) reports today that Fitzgerald is widening his probe.

Judith Miller's notes of her June 23 meeting with Lewis Libby must be important. After meeting with her today, Fitzgerald has now requested she testify tomorrow before the grand jury.

This doesn't bode well for Lewis Libby.

On the other hand, it does bode well for Judith Miller. Fitzgerald couldn't let her go back to the grand jury without a target warning if he viewed her as a putative defendant. Had he given her that warning, her lawyers would have had her take the 5th, not go back in and testify.

The New York Times provides this version of her appearance tomorrow. There's one comment by Kellor that doesn't make sense.

by Last Night in Little Rock

White House denizens are complaining that Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is "very aggressive" and a "bully" as reported on CNN.com and picked up by leanleft.com.

That prosecutors are aggressive is reality and expected. Get used to it. That prosecutors are bullies depends upon which end of the subpoena one is standing.

Intrepid reporter Murray Waas breaks more news today about Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald and the grand jury investigation into the leak of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

Murray writes that Libby failed to tell FBI investigators and the grand jury about his June 23 conversation with Judith Miller. If true, I think Fitzgerald is considering a false statements or perjury charge against Libby. The false statement charge would apply to his omission when being questioned by investigators while the perjury charge would apply to his omission before the grand jury.

Murray's next revelation is that Fitzgerald is weighing whether Libby or his lawyers encouraged Judith Miller not to comply with her subpoena last year. If the grand jury believes this to be true, Libby could be looking at an obstruction of justice charge.

I like Jane Hamsher's and Empty Wheels' latest theories on RoveGate, as summed up by Mark Klieman at HuffPo, who says, and I agree, they would make a great legal novel, but I see one problem with calling Judith Miller's notes "missing" or "suddenly discovered" or concluding that Miller hid them and may be facing a perjury charge.

Go back to her subpoena. It only asked for notes and documents from July 6 to July 13. It didn't ask for notes from June 2003. From the Court of Appeals decision:

... on August 12 and August 14, grand jury subpoenas were issued to Judith Miller, seeking documents and testimony related to conversations between her and a specified government official “occurring from on or about July 6, 2003, to on or about July 13, 2003, . . . concerning Valerie Plame Wilson (whether referred to by name or by description as the wife of Ambassador Wilson) or concerning Iraqi efforts to obtain uranium.”

When Fitzgerald agreed to limit Miller's testimony to conversations with Libby about Plame, Miller turned over the notes from the requested time period, redacted to reflect only such conversations.