The Jailed Judy Show

by emptywheel

As we're all waiting patiently for Patrick Fitzgerald to finish his work, there are a few more details in the Judy saga.

The WaPo publishes a story today that basically verifies a claim Arianna made over a month ago--that Bolton has visited Judy in jail.

The who's who of friends, supporters and Washington and New York luminaries includes John R. Bolton, President Bush's new ambassador to the United Nations,

[snip]

Bolton's visit raised some eyebrows in Washington. A vocal defender of administration claims in 2003 that Iraq was seeking weapons of mass destruction, he could have had access to a State Department memo, parts of which were classified, that detailed Wilson's trip to Niger to determine whether Iraq was seeking uranium there and identified his wife as a covert CIA operative. Who saw or discussed the memo has been a central question for Fitzgerald.

Bolton declined through a spokesman to discuss his visit to Miller or his reasons for going. "This has nothing to do with his job here," the spokesman said. "He doesn't want to talk about it."

Wonkette has already posted an appropriately self-deprecating "you told me so" to save Arianna the trouble.

Bolton's presence, first reported by Arianna Huffington (and pooh-poohed by yours truly, to my everlasting and alcoholic shame), is either another nail in Miller's coffin or proof that Bolton has the worst image handlers in all of Washington, except maybe mine.

Other than verifying the quality of at least one of Arianna's sources, I found the article interesting for a few reasons. Obviously, there's Bolton's curious response. "This has nothing to do with his job here." So if Bolton did leak contents of the INR memo to Judy, will he be telling the judge (or Fitzgerald) that "this has nothing to do with my current job, so I'm not going to talk about it"?

The confirmation of the Bolton visit is interesting, too, in the larger context of the story. As Wonkette points out, it seems like the rich and famous have taken all of Judy's time at the expense of Judy's less illustrious friends.

She has so many A-listers wanting to make the scene that non-bold-face friends have been shoved to the back of the line.

Ellen Chesler, for example, doesn't seem to be a priority on Judy's schedule.

"She's very popular, and it's kind of hard to get on the schedule," said longtime friend Ellen Chesler, who visited Miller in early July but has not been able to get back in since. "She has to turn people away."

But I'm not so sure rich and famous is the criteria here. Consider the other visitors. Bob Dole visited, shortly before he wrote a column in support. Charles Duelfer visited, at around the same time as accusations of UN scandal started to stick to Kofi Annan. (Curiously, Richard Clarke has also visited. I've got a lot of respect for him and hope the visit only means Clarke was a Miller source back in the old days, when she did credible reporting.) Tom Brokaw visited and brought with him the publicity you'd expect. For the most part, these are rich and famous and useful visitors, people who are going to help Judy in her campaign to regain credibility.

Which means the Botlon visit may have been useful to Judy. Perhaps she's still working the UN Oil-for-Food scandal mongering, somehow, from jail? In any case, Bolton apparently did not release her from a confidentiality promise, if she ever gave him one.

I'm also struck by the list of NYT officials who have visited.

Times officials have been mainstays on the visitor list, including chairman of the New York Times company Arthur Sulzberger Jr., columnist William Safire, Editor Bill Keller and Managing Editor Jill Abramson.

We've known Keller has been a frequent visitor (how could we miss it, with all his proclamations to Saint Judy?). As an old friend of Judy's, Sulzberger's visit is not a surprise, particularly since the reputation of his rag depends on how this Judy episode comes out. But add Ambramson in there, and you've got the list of editors that Doug Jehl cast some suspicion on in a late July article. And, just as a reminder, according to Jehl, Judy was reporting to Abramson when the Plame leak went down. In other words, if the NYT has planned some response to get around any implication in the Plame Affair, they've had the opportunity to compare notes with Judy. Safire, incidentally, I'd put in the same category as Bob Dole, someone who could (and did) write a nice article on Judy.

Finally, there is this curious description (noted by Fire Dog Lake) of Judy's involvement with the Plame story.

Miller did some reporting on Wilson's claims that the government had twisted intelligence on Iraq's attempt to obtain weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the war, but never wrote a story.

We've known for some time that Judy admitted to doing some reporting on this story. This gives us some more specifics about the angle she was working on--Wilson's claims that the government had twisted intelligence. I find the description interesting, first of all, because it echos the words Wilson used in his July 6, 2003 op-ed:

Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat

This is different, notably, from what he was saying earlier in the summer, that the Administration had ignored evidence in its files that refuted the Niger claim. So this description may suggest that Judy didn't do any earlier (June) reporting, as I have suggested. (Or, I could be reading too much into this one sentence.) If this is true, though, it makes it a lot less likely that Judy was the cut-out from whom Rove and Libby learned of Plame's identity, given the timing.

In any case, this--plus something that Keller said at the CUNY journalism school inauguration--suggests I may be right about the way the NYT has avoided implication in this.

[Dean Steve] Shepard asks Keller whether it is the policy for editors to know the identity of a confidential source. “If the article is to be published, yes,” says Keller.

Cooper published an article and his editors learned the identity of his source. Miller didn't publish an article, for whatever reason (I have speculated that Judy was not allowed to write independent stories at the time, so there was no way she could write this one). So Miller's editors would not have asked Judy the identity of her source.

Sounds like a plausible enough loophole to me...

I only hope the guards at Judy's jail were very attentive during all these visits!

Comments

[DemFromCT]

The best thing about having Judy in jail is that her articles are off the Times front page. The worst thing is that we don't know why she's there.

Eventually the best thing will go away and the worst thing will likely go away, too.

[obsessed]

I'm trying to follow along with your reasoning and implied conclusions.

It sounds like you're saying that you think the NYT might yet come out of this without legal problems and not smelling much worse than they already do? Or at least they think they will?

And if so, that it's because Sulzberger, Keller, Abramson and Judy have all presumably agreed to stick to stories that say that because Judy never got close to publishing a story, she never told them who her source was? And this is a plausible enough loophole to accomplish what? Prevent Fitzgerald pressing any of those three to testify? Avoid the public perception that the NYT sat on a story that would have tipped the election? Avoid criminal charges? Anything else?

So what's in it for Judy to cover for them?

And Bolton ... it's hard to imagine him setting himself up to be scrutinized for going to see her without a compelling reason, so would you agree that either Bolton is in danger of indictment or going to see her on behalf of someone who is? Was the purpose of his visit to get stories straight, as we suspect was the purpose of the meetings with the 3 NYT honchos? Was it to threaten her? Was it to find out what she was going to do so he could work out his next move?

And Fitzgerald. If he's just calmly playing out a checkmate scenario that he's already got locked in and which can't be jeopardized by giving them more time, then all of this maneuvering on the parts of the perps is pointless, and wouldn't they have to know that? And wouldn't we at least see some indications of desperation from the "21" and the NYT? Or might he have damning evidence or devastating strategies that even the principals aren't aware of?

If Fitzgerald is still trying to work out his path to checkmate, then it's pretty scary to be giving all these resourceful crooks so much time to contemplate their own future moves.

And FINALLY, we know that Fitzgerald already knows who Judy's source is, and what he really needs from her is some other type of testimony, right?

Not too long ago it was looking like her source was almost certainly Libby, but do we now think it may have also been Bolton?

I can't take much more of this! And it's still SIX WEEKS from October 28th, and even that may not even be a significant date since Fitzgerald can extend his investigation up to another 18 months without doing anything!

[emptywheel]

No, I actually think the NYT may be at risk. But if you believe the Arianna's posts (and again, at least one of her sources has proven to be golden by this), they've only recently realized that Floyd Abrams hasn't been giving them an accurate picture of their risks. I think the operative story HAS been that Judy was not reporting on Wilson for the NYT, therefore it wasn't work for hire, therefore any materials on it belong excluseively to Judy. But for some reason, that excuse is not going to be enough once things get publicized and once Judy gets indicted with a criminal contempt charge, replete with lots of details of how she was involved.

So what would that risk be? Well, I've long suspected that someone at the NYT, probably Judy, was ready with a story identifying Wilson in late June, around June 22, which is the reason he eventually did his article. If that article was anyone's at the NYT (but especially if it was Judy), then there would be material relating to a conversation between David Shipley (who said he could get Wilson himself) and Abramson and Lelyveld and maybe some more people. In other words, contrary to Keller's suggestion that they wouldn't know the identity of Judy's source unless she published a story, they also would know the identity if they were ready to go with a story and the editorial team weighed publishing the ID story versus Wilson's op-ed.

All of which suggests, of course, that the NYT may be at no risk for Judy's July activities. But that they may be at risk for conversations regarding the op-ed in June.

I'd be honestly surprised if Bolton visited Judy to shore up stories. That would be the height of stupidity. They both have to know that Fitz can subpoena details of their conversation. But I think there's a possibility he might be "touchign base." Or, I think it possible that Bolton was just shopping a UN Oil for Food story (Duelfer's presence supports this conclusion).

Also, FWIW, I doubt this is dead time in Fitz' investigation. We know, of course, that he's interviewing Rove's employees. We also may know (courtesy of Arianna) that Judy is trying to deal. She's probably got a pretty good idea she'll be indicted on criminal contempt charges, so it DOES make a difference for her to make a deal. And the timing on that is pretty important. She went for a few months happily being the martyr. THe impending deadline has apparently made her a lot more worried.

[obsessed]

>I've long suspected that someone at the NYT, probably Judy, was ready with a story identifying Wilson in late >June, around June 22, which is the reason he eventually did his article.

I don't understand! Which Wilson do you mean when you say "story identifiying Wilson"? And When you say "which is the reason he eventually did his article", I don't get it. Wilson did his article because of ...??? Also don't get what you mean by "Shipley could get Wilson".

Sorry, I'm thick.

[obsessed]

Arianna has a list of "off-the-record" quotes attributed to Karl Rove. The 900+ "comments" are painfully stupid trash talk on both sides of the "Cindy Sheehan is a clown" comment, but check this one out:

KARL ROVE On Judy Miller And Plamegate: "Judy Miller is in jail for reasons I don't really understand..."

Is it possible that Rove doesn't have some way of knowing what's in those redacted pages? Or that he does and hasn't bothered to find out?

[emptywheel]

obsessed:

Read this post.

Short version is that Wilson was warned by a journalist in late June that another journalist was about to identify him (not Plame) in a story. I think there's a decent chance the second journalist was a NYT journalist, if for no other reason than it provides an easy explanation for why the article was never published. Needless to say, Judy would be a likely writer at the NYT--if she were allowed to write whatever she wanted, which she wasn't.

[muledriver]

Suggest changing the title of this diary to:

Soul-less on Ice