Washington – Judith Miller, the New York Times reporter who has been jailed since July 6 for refusing to testify in the CIA leak case, was released from a Virginia detention center Thursday afternoon after she and her attorneys reached an agreement to testify before a grand jury investigating the matter, the paper’s publisher and executive editor said.
Miller was freed after spending more than 12 weeks in jail, during which she refused to cooperate with the criminal inquiry.
Her decision to testify came after she obtained what she described as a waiver offered “voluntarily and personally” by a source who said she was no longer bound by any pledge of confidentiality she made to him. She said the source had made clear that he genuinely wanted her to testify.
That source was Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, according to people who have been officially briefed on the case. Miller met with Libby on July 8, 2003, and talked with him by telephone later that week. Discussions between government officials and journalists that week have been a central focus of the investigation.
Miller said she expected to appear before the grand jury today.
Miller was released after she and her attorneys met at the jail with Patrick Fitzgerald, the prosecutor in the case, to discuss her testimony.
The Times’ publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., said that the newspaper supported Miller’s decision to testify, just as it had backed her earlier refusal to cooperate.
“Judy has been unwavering in her commitment to protect the confidentiality of her source. We are very pleased that she has finally received a direct and uncoerced waiver … releasing her from any claim of confidentiality and enabling her to testify,” Sulzberger said.
Fitzgerald has for more than a year sought testimony from Miller about conversations she had with Libby.
Fitzgerald’s investigation has centered on the question of whether anyone in the Bush administration illegally disclosed to the news media the identity of an undercover CIA employee, Valerie Plame Wilson, whose name was first published in July 2003 in a syndicated column by Robert Novak.
A secondary focus has been whether government officials were truthful in their testimony to investigators and the grand jury.
Miller never wrote an article about Plame Wilson.
Fitzgerald has said that obtaining Miller’s testimony was one of the last remaining objectives of his inquiry, and the deal with Miller suggests that the prosecutor may soon bring the investigation to an end.
It is unknown whether prosecutors will charge anyone in the Bush administration with wrongdoing.
