NY Times Details Miller Testimony

Questions Over If Cheney's Chief Of Staff Tried To Steer Testimony





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Judith Miller Tells Her Side

The New York Times published two accounts concerning New York Times reporter Judith Miller and the CIA leak case, but instead more questions about the probe are mounting. Joie Chen reports. | Share/Embed


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(CBS/AP) New details about Judith Miller's decision to cooperate in the CIA leak probe are raising questions about whether Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff and his defense lawyer tried to steer the New York Times reporter's testimony.

The dispute arose as the newspaper on Sunday detailed three conversations that Miller had with the Cheney aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, in the summer of 2003 about Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson and Wilson's wife, covert CIA officer Valerie Plame.

The issue over the contacts between Miller, Libby and their representatives has arisen even though Libby's lawyer insists his client granted an unconditional waiver of confidentiality more than a year ago for the reporter to testify.

In urging her to cooperate with prosecutors, Libby wrote Miller while she was still in jail in September: "I believed a year ago, as now, that testimony by all will benefit all. ... The public report of every other reporter's testimony makes clear that they did not discuss Ms. Plame's name or identity with me."

One of Miller's lawyers, Robert Bennett, told CBS News correspondent Joie Chen that "it was very foolish of him to write that."

Chen reports Bennett suspects the investigation has now veered away from an indictment of the person who revealed the agent's name, but could still produce criminal charges for disclosure of classified information or perjury.

In a first-person account in the Times, Miller said that in her recent grand jury testimony, Fitzgerald asked her "whether I thought Mr. Libby had tried to shape my testimony."

Miller said she told the special counsel that Libby's letter could be perceived as an effort by Libby "to suggest that I, too, would say that we had not discussed Ms. Plame's identity." But she added that her notes of the conversations "suggested that we had discussed her job" at the CIA and not her name.

Miller wrote Plame's name in the same notebook she used when taking notes of her Libby interviews in 2003, but the reporter said she did not think she had gotten the name from Libby. She said she could not recall from whom she got the name.

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