Reading Judy, Part One

by emptywheel

Because I was away watching the aspens turn (no, really, and they do turn in clusters!), I never really had a chance to do a thorough reading of Judy's explanation of her involvement in the Plame Affair. But now that I've laid out what I suspect Libby was trying to get her to testify to before the grand jury, I want to go back and look at what she said--or what she said she said and what we ought to take from that. And what it means for Fitzgerald's case(s). I should say right away that I agree with Digby and Douglas McCollam: Judy's not telling us the truth here, she telling Libby what lies she told.

I should warn you though. Some of this analysis steers dangerously close to the kind of tedium for which I was awarded a PhD. If tedium turns you off, skip the "Narrative Voice" section and just pretend the rest of it makes sense. Don't say you weren't warned!

General Comments

Before looking at Judy's account, we should review several details of it revealed by the Observer (which seems to have an even better pipeline of Judy-leaks than Arianna). Judy seems to have been stuck between the changing nature of her testimony, the demands of the NYT, and the counsel of her editor. Multiple rumors say she only wrote the piece after a screaming confrontation with and an ultimatum from Bill Keller.

Getting the Miller piece into the Sunday Times was an ordeal of delays, spats, roadblocks—and ultimately a blown deadline that kept the package out of 270,000 copies of the paper. Multiple sources recounted a newsroom rumor that Ms. Miller had only produced her own first-person piece under an ultimatum from Mr. Keller.

Yet according to Judy (in a comment again pitching herself as the martyr for the first amendment), her lawyers advised her not to write it. Good advice--she should have followed it.

Her lawyers, she said, “were strongly advising” her not to talk. “I did it anyway,” Ms. Miller said, “because I believed the reader should know what I told the grand jury and what I was asked by Mr. Fitzgerald. I did it despite the concern of some of my lawyers.

She did not begin writing her account--nor would she grant the team doing the NYT's big story on this an interview--until after she finished testifying a second time (not that I blame her--she was still being held in contempt, after all). And she did not write the story on her own.

Ms. Miller’s own account of her grand-jury testimony about the leaking of C.I.A. operative Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity was actually co-written with investigative reporter David Barstow, who is perceived in the newsroom as one of Ms. Miller’s allies. Mr. Barstow didn’t receive a byline or any other mention of his work in the paper.

Finally, Judy had her lawyers at Skadden Arps (that is Bill Bennett, but not Floyd Abrams) review the article. Hmmm. If Bennett let her publish this piece, perhaps he wasn't giving her great advice after all.

Narrative Voice

One more comment before I look at Judy's general story and then her account of each of the meetings. Judy (with the help of David Barstow, apparently) conspicuously uses an odd mix of narrative voices in this piece.

• Third person narration, where she describes an event or fact with the purported stance of objectivity and omniscience. Mind you, I'm not saying it is objective, as my example will make clear. But it uses a constructed distance from the subject (and includes things like the who what why when) that we have been trained to connect with objectivity. This is the typical reportorial voice. As an example, Judy says, "In July 2003, Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador, created a firestorm by publishing an essay in The New York Times that accused the Bush administration of using faulty intelligence to justify the war in Iraq." Judy makes it appear that the "fact" that Wilson "created a firestorm" is beyond question; perhaps it is, but some might quibble with the choice of "firestorm." Judy uses this voice to describe the background to her conversations with Libby.

• First person narration, where she describes her own actions or thoughts from an obviously involved perspective. For example, she says, "Without both agreements, I would not have testified and would still be in jail." This is the narrative voice we might have expected her to use exclusively in this piece. But she didn't--she rarely uses a strict first-person voice to describe her testimony.

There are three primary ways she describes her notes and testimony:

• Third person narration of her notes, where she describes "objectively" what her notes say. For example, she says, "My notes do not show that Mr. Libby identified Mr. Wilson's wife by name." She uses this voice at the beginning of her piece to support some assertions about Libby says. The use of this voice is remarkable because rather than choosing to assert a fact directly, "Mr. Libby did not identify Mr. Wilson's wife by name," she tells us what her notes say, "My notes don't say he identified her by name." I think Judy uses this voice to imply something's true even though she knows it to be false. She uses this voice, I suspect, to make a technical denial on central issues relating to Libby's case.

• Direct discourse, where she quotes directly from her notes using quotation marks. For example, "'Veep didn't know of Wilson,' I wrote, referring to the vice president, 'Veep never knew what he did or what was said. Agency did not report to us.'" In at least some cases, Judy quotes directly to relay what Libby has instructed her to say, rather than what Libby asserts to be true (as when he asks her to call him a "former Hill staffer"). I will argue this is true in all the cases where Judy uses direct discourse to describe her notes.

• Indirect discourse, where she describes what she said or her notes say, without quotation marks. For example, "I said I had known Libby indirectly through my work as a co-author of 'Germs'" or "According to my interview notes, Mr. Libby told me that the resulting cable--based on Mr. Wilson's fact-finding mission, as it turned out--barely made it out of the bowels of the CIA." I think these two cases of indirect discourse serve two different purposes. In the latter case--where she describes what her notes say--she is providing Libby with a good idea of what her notes say, while not asserting a fact directly; she seems to be hedging, leaving open the possibility that her notes are wrong or some such thing. The former case--where she describes what she said directly--seems to be her way of telling Libby  what story she told, whether or not it is true.
  

Okay, enough with the tedium. Let's look at what Judy said.

Introduction

Before describing any of the individual meetings, Judy provides an introduction to her conversations with Libby and an overview of what she seems to believe her testimony said. Significantly, in her summary she never says Libby told of Plame's name or covert status. In fact, she doesn't say what Libby told her or not directly. Rather, she describes all the evidence in terms of what the notes say or don't say.

My notes indicate that well before Mr. Wilson published his critique, Mr. Libby told me that Mr. Wilson's wife may have worked on unconventional weapons at the C.I.A.
My notes do not show that Mr. Libby identified Mr. Wilson's wife by name. Nor do they show that he described Valerie Wilson as a covert agent or "operative," as the conservative columnist Robert D. Novak first described her in a syndicated column published on July 14, 2003. (Mr. Novak used her maiden name, Valerie Plame.)

See how she does this? Judy never denies that Libby told her of Plame's name and covert status. She asserts only that her notes don't say he said so. It is perfectly plausible that Libby did tell her these things, and she parsed her story to give the impression that he didn't.

She does something similar with testimony on Cheney and classified information. First, she describes what kind of information Fitzgerald was looking for:

Patrick J. Fitzgerald, asked me whether Mr. Libby had shared classified information with me during our several encounters before Mr. Novak's article. He also asked whether I thought Mr. Libby had tried to shape my testimony through a letter he sent to me in jail last month. And Mr. Fitzgerald asked whether Mr. Cheney had known what his chief aide was doing and saying.

Judy responded, again, with a description of what her notes say, not a summary of what Libby said.

My interview notes show that Mr. Libby sought from the beginning, before Mr. Wilson's name became public, to insulate his boss from Mr. Wilson's charges. According to my notes, he told me at our June meeting that Mr. Cheney did not know of Mr. Wilson, much less know that Mr. Wilson had traveled to Niger, in West Africa, to verify reports that Iraq was seeking to acquire uranium for a weapons program.

Judy doesn't get around to describing her response to the classified information question until her narrative of the second meeting. At that point, she resorts to a mix of indirect speech and first person forgetfulness to suggest Libby hadn't shared classified documents with her.

Mr. Fitzgerald asked me to examine a series of documents. Though I could not identify them with certainty, I said that some seemed familiar, and that they might be excerpts from the National Intelligence Estimate of Iraq's weapons. Mr. Fitzgerald asked whether Mr. Libby had shown any of the documents to me. I said no, I didn't think so. I thought I remembered him at one point reading from a piece of paper he pulled from his pocket.

What a remarkable mix of memory and forgetfulness, huh? She could recognize the NIE right off the bat (but not "with certainty"). But she couldn't recall whether Libby had shown her anything beyond reading that piece of paper in his pocket. Judy gives Libby a clear idea of what kind of information on Dick Fitzgerald is looking for, and which documents he believes Libby has leaked. But she still covers for Dick and Libby.

The June 23 Meeting

Things get interesting when Judy narrates the June 23 meeting. Think of the importance of getting this right, for Judy. As I suggest here, Libby may have instructed Judy not to testify about June 23 at all. And by all accounts, she didn't at first. It wasn't until Fitzgerald jogged her memory by showing her the log for the Old Executive Office Building that she decided she ought to testify about this meeting. And I can imagine this meeting was a good deal less friendly than the first one.

Judy pulls what I believe is a sleight of hand in this description, when she describes how she came to be interviewing Libby on June 23 in the first place. She  prefaces that description by relating one of Fitzgerald's questions.

Early in my grand jury testimony, Mr. Fitzgerald asked me to describe my history with Mr. Libby and explain how I came to interview him in 2003.

Now, this is not a big deal. But I'm willing to bet some money that Fitzgerald asked Judy to explain her relationship with Libby at her first grand jury testimony ... that is, when she was talking about her July 8 and 12 meetings. But she presents it as relating to information she was asked only at her second grand jury appearance, when she testified about the June meeting. And note the date--how did Judy come to interview him in 2003, not July 2003, which is probably what she originally answered.

In any case, Judy doesn't provide us, at least, with a description of what led up to the meeting (I imagine Fitzgerald demanded details about who set up the meeting, which Judy doesn't provide). She says simply--using that suspicious indirect discourse again--that she met him through a co-author of her book Germs back in 2001 (Is this a lie, a safe story she wants Libby to know about? Is she hiding an earlier meeting at some place like Aspen?). Then she jumps immediately to their meeting in June 2003, the best explanation for which she provides as:

I arrived at the Old Executive Office Building to interview Mr. Libby, who was known to be an avid consumer of prewar intelligence assessments, which were already coming under fierce criticism.

What a weird statement. I mean, I followed the OSP and their stovepiping organization pretty closely. But I would never have said Libby "was known to be an avid consumer of prewar intelligence assessments." It doesn't surprise me in the least, but I don't think it was reported regularly. Perhaps Judy is revealing what we all suspect--that Libby was one of her primary sources about prewar intelligence assessments. And that, in trying to fulfill the task I suspect Joseph Lelyveld had set for her--to figure out why the intelligence behind her stories was so consistently wrong--she went back to the source.

Judy then goes on to relate--using direct discourse--what Libby said to her during that meeting. Now, I said earlier that I think all of the times Judy uses direct discourse, she is actually relating what Libby told her to say--but knew was incorrect--rather than what Libby told her as the truth. The other examples are all pretty clearly misinformation: Valerie Flame. Victoria Wilson. And Libby the "former Hill staffer." The last of these, even Judy admitted was Libby explicitly asking her to mislead.

And the stuff Judy recounts as Libby's honest portrayal just doesn't pass the sniff test. Mostly, that's because Libby spins what we know to be the truth as lies, pretending that claims that Cheney (these are Judy's words) "embraced skimpy intelligence ... while ignoring evidence to the contrary" was (and these are Libby's) "'highly distorted'." The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), under a lot of pressure from Cheney, would beg to differ--and that's even before we get to Phase II of their investigation! Most interesting is that Libby used precisely the same formulation to describe CIA actions relating to Wilson's trip, as Tenet would in his mea culpa. The CIA "took it upon itself to try and figure out more." Tenet says they did so "on their own initiative." It appears that everything Judy wrote in her notes was talking points which Libby (and presumably Judy, although who knows how credulous she really is?) knew to be false.

So consider the implications, if I'm right. That means that all of the following direct discourse statements are simply the story Libby wanted Judy to write, not his depiction of reality:

"Was the intell slanted?"

The CIA was guilty of "selective leaking."

Their strategy was, "if we find [WMDs], fine, if not, we hedged."

Reports of Cheney embracing skimpy intelligence were "highly distorted."

The CIA "took it upon itself to try and find out more" by sending "a clandestine guy" to investigate.

"Veep didn't know of Joe Wilson ... Veep never knew what he did or what was said. Agency did not report to us."

"Wife works in bureau?"

"No briefer came in and said, 'You got it wrong, Mr. President,'"

Now, assuming this is the story Libby was asking Judy to write, this doesn't necessarily mean all these statements are false. But they may very well be denials of the truth--such as claims that Cheney didn't know of Wilson. And, even more interestingly, claims that no one briefed the President and told him he got it wrong. Did those events actually happen and Libby was just trying to get Judy to deny them in print?

One more note, about how Libby appears to have wanted Judy to refer to Wilson and Plame. First, he apparently wanted Judy to refer to Wilson as "clandestine guy." Now, Wilson did go to Niger on another trip for the CIA in 1999. Was Libby planning on using this trip to make the claim that Wilson was himself a spy?

And, at least given the direct discourse, it appears that Libby just wanted Judy to raise the suspicion that Plame worked at CIA, not present it as verified fact, since she writes it with a question mark. But then look at how Judy describes what Libby actually told her, with respect to Plame's status. This time, she doesn't use direct discourse, she uses first person narrative to describe why she was sure Libby was talking about the CIA when she used the word bureau.

But Mr. Libby had been discussing the C.I.A., and therefore my impression was that he had been speaking about a particular bureau within the agency that dealt with the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

Now, the "particular bureau within the agency that dealt with the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons" could be one of two divisions within the CIA. It could be WINPAC. But it's not until the notes of their next meeting that Judy wrote "wife works at winpac," again as direct discourse (and therefore, I'm suggesting, she was recording the disinformation Libby wanted disseminated rather than what he knew to be true). But this first reference--the bureau that dealt with WMDs--could just as easily be Counter-Proliferation, the unit we know to be Plame's primary assignment at the agency. In fact, given the extensive experience of both Libby and Judy with issues of intelligence and counter-proliferation, it is simply not credible that Libby raised such a bureau but didn't specify, to Judy, which it was (or that Judy didn't ask). Plus, we know Dick had told Libby that Plame worked at Counter-Proliferation a few weeks earlier, on June 12. This seems to suggest that--on June 23--Scooter Libby outed Valerie Plame as an employee of the CIA's Counter-Proliferation. Which would mean, given the background of Libby and Judy, he for all intents and purposes outed her as a spy. Sure, as she says earlier in this article, her notes don't say he described her as a covert agent. But her story suggests strongly that he did.

One final note about timing. Judy titles this section, "The First Libby Meeting," implying that this is the first time she spoke with Libby about Wilson. She refers to the other two meetings as the second and third interview. But she never says the June 23 meeting was the first interview. She describes something as the first entry in her reporter's notebook from this interview. And she resorts to indirect discourse again to suggest this was the first she heard of Plame:

I told Mr. Fitzgerald that I believed this was the first time I had been told that Mr. Wilson's wife might work for the C.I.A.

But she never says directly, "I first interviewed Scooter Libby on June 23." Which, given that her rationale for claiming that Libby didn't give her the name Valerie Flame is because it appeared at a different place in her interview notes, is somewhat suspect. I've got no reason to believe they met earlier. But I've got my suspicions.

I've gone way out on a limb (well, a short limb) to speculate that Judy's not telling the truth. But it's not clear that Fitzgerald believes her either. Here's (PDF) what Fitzgerald included from Judy's testimony about the June 23 meeting.

On or about June 23, 2003, LIBBY met with New York Times reporter Judith Miller. During this meeting LIBBY was critical of the CIA, and disparaged what he termed “selective leaking” by the CIA concerning intelligence matters. In discussing the CIA’s handling of Wilson’s trip to Niger, LIBBY informed her that Wilson’s wife might work at a bureau of the CIA. (6)

Fitzgerald limits his reference to this meeting to the bare minimum. He uses the direct discourse of Libby's claim about the CIA to establish the Libby's animosity against the CIA. But his only reference to Plame is indecisive--"Wilson's wife might work" at CIA.

Gosh, it'd sure be nice if the NYT were telling the full truth about Judy's involvement in the Plame outing, wouldn't it?

[Coming soon! What Judy says she said about her July meetings with Libby!]

Comments

[mamayaga]

Don't worry about boring us with the discussion about narrative voices -- there are plenty of us PhD types in your audience who eat it up. The weirdness of Judy's distancing via "My notes said" has been noted in a number of discussions about that article, but this is the first I've seen that suggests it is a "tell", like the "of course" that betrays when Bush is lying. That voice of Judy's also has a flavor of lawyerly parsing that conveys the strong impression that a whole lotta truth is being withheld.

[emptywheel]

mamayaga:

That lawyerly comment is interesting, since we know Bennett reviewed this. It would suggest Bennett willfully helped Judy minimize the legal jeopardy of telegraphing what she said. I'll suggest in my next installment why that may be true.

And trust me, I realize my readers are damned smart. I just try to keep that PhD crap under the hat--who'd have thought it'd come in useful!

[Madame Rick]

emptywheel - your PhD efforts were well worth it! Thanks for taking the time to study the tangled web we weave when we practice to deceive...Mata Hari Miller and Ad-Libby are no match for your talents!

[whenwego]

This is great! So the NYT allows its pages to be used for collusion in a national security case. And, note that Judy still works there, with full support of management. How patriotic of NYT management!

[KdmFromPhila]

The use of indirect discourse (e.g. "According to my interview notes") is really weird from a "journalist" but is undoubtedly a device to protect herself: if Fitz presses her on contradictions, she can always say "I quoted my notes, but I must have made a mistake in transciption" or something like that. That raises a question: to waht extent was the attempt to protect herself (if I'm right) a tacit admission that there were other witnesses to or other materials from the meeting between Judy and Scooter? And how well acquainted is Fitz with them?

[marky]

Emptywheel, is your Ph.D in a relevant area? In other words, did you study a lot of rats? :)

[John Lopresti]

Since we are educational, I had a mentor attempt to direct mine toward a century XV monk who every day wrote a complete recension of the prior morn's matin. The process was to depict how church scribes actually grew the language in an enclave somewhere in southern Europe. I think there were no aspens, though, keeping all this autumnally colorful in our sandy streambanks. I find your insight understanding EW: that Lelyveld being accomplished, saw as you have, and numerous others, including likely Judy M herself, that there was a disconnect in the information quanta coming her way, and she had the experience to recognize that as well, and perhaps pursue some surfactants during the interviews and meetings which would provide a better substrate for linear declarative sentences. The counterbalancing article published that same day in NYT, authored from the management's perspective had the same reworked lexis as Judy M's. I trust you read the ombudsman's equally foreshortened editing of the reader responses and Judy M's sidebar on the ombudsman's site which was a lot more first person and delved into office assignment policies in fairly undigested terms. Placing those three items in print so quickly following her second post-jail appearance before the Grand Jury, was predictably going to provide opportunity for proficient text analysis. EW I noted last nite now Sen. Kennedy's blog is linking to The Next Hurrah; congratulations.

[emptywheel]

marky

No, not rats. Fiction--rife with ideological discourse--that appeared in newspapers. May not be much good in the business world. But perfect training to expose Judy's lies.

[&y]

Good article, emptywheel. Thank you for all your hard work and excellent writing.

I'm especially happy to see you believe--as I do--that that list of direct discourse statements is simply what Libby told her to say at the time. A million apologies for the excessive length of what I'm about to copy-paste into this comment box, but I wrote it "for the drawer" awhile back and suddenly feel like sharing.

:

LIBBY -- Right. The sixteen words and that Judis article. Was the intelligence slanted? Here's how we're going to handle that. Above all, we emphasize CIA. It's all about them and their--oh, how should I put it?--selective leaking on the subject.

JUDY -- ... T-I-V-E L-E-A-K-I-N-G. Selective leaking, got it.

LIBBY -- We make it clear they're playing a hedging game--trying to have it both ways. You know, "If we find WMD, fine, if not, we hedged." So the first order of business is to expose this CIA hedging strategy.

JUDY -- ... -T-E-G-Y. OK. Hedging strategy. Got it. Next?

LIBBY -- Next, we have to get the Vice President out of the stories and throw this goddamn crap about embracing skimpy intelligence back in CIA's face. Because right now, the only story is theirs and it's been highly distorted. That crap about "at the behest of the Vice President's office?"

JUDY -- Yeah...

LIBBY -- We're shutting that talk down cold. The story we're going with is that those reports are distorted. CIA took it upon itself to look into this. So they sent some clandestine guy--that's Karl's wording, by the way--write it down.

JUDY -- -T-I-N-E G-U-Y. Sent by the CIA.

LIBBY -- On their own initiative. Hammer that point. This story is not about the Vice President: (1) he did not know about Joseph Wilson; (2) he never knew what Wilson did or what he said; (3) the CIA never reported to our office about what he did. This was CIA's baby. The Vice President was, as they say, "out of the loop"--but, obviously, don't write "out of the loop," just that we never got a report.

JUDY -- -E-P-O-R-T. Got it. Looks good. I've got: selective CIA leaking, hedging strategy, took it upon itself, Veep never knew anything about Wilson.... Any other bullet points?

LIBBY -- Just one more... and, for now, we're not running with this, but I thought you should know.

JUDY -- Should I write it down?

LIBBY -- If you want, but be careful. And make sure to note for yourself that we're not running with this ... yet. It's just backup--put it in parentheses or something.

JUDY -- No problem. Ready.

LIBBY -- The thing is, if Wilson doesn't shut up about all this soon, we'll probably have to go nuclear on him. Because we can't have everybody and his brother yapping to the press about this sort of stuff.

JUDY -- [Grinning stupidly] Not everybody, no.

LIBBY -- So if push comes to shove, we're working out a way to leak the information that, well, those people at CIA? The ones who "took it upon themselves" to send Wilson? It was actually one person and that person was Wilson's wife. She's the one who suggested him for the trip. It was "at her behest."

JUDY -- She's CIA?

LIBBY -- Counterproliferation. She suggested sending Wilson on the trip. But, again, we're not leaking this yet--it could lead to trouble if we don't do it right. If we do decide to go nuclear, Karl's thinking the way it should work it is basically the same way we put the forgeries out there in the first place--leak bits of the story all over town...

JUDY -- ... Counting on reporters--instead of foreign intelligence services--to protect their sources and methods.

LIBBY -- Exactly. Same game plan. And, god forbid, if things ever get ugly--which they wont--it should be pretty damned hard for investigators to figure out who learned what from whom when. I mean, the Brits still haven't figured it all out--there's no way Tim Russert's ever going to put two and two together.

JUDY -- And since the CIA will never confirm or deny anything, we can pretty much say whatever we want.

LIBBY -- Exactly. Karl is good. Just like with the documents, it's a guaranteed one-sided story.

JUDY -- Our story. I like it. But for now, not a word about Wilson's wife. I put it in parentheses with a question mark.

LIBBY -- [Tents his fingers] Excellent.

[emptywheel]

&y

That's hysterical, and probably pretty close to the mark! I thought about doing a little scenario myself, but couldn't have done such a nice job...

[pollyusa]

EW

Thought you might want the html version of the Libby Indictment.

Here is the Fitz Press Conference as well in case you don't have it.

Polly

[depressed (formerly obsessed)]

More great work! I really hope Fitz is reading these, and I would sure love to be a fly on the wall in the room where Judy reads them. As for the disclaimer, I actually found this one easier to grasp than some of the others. The posts that are harder to follow are the ones that assume I have a photographic memory of all the facts. I need periodic extra summational sentences that restate the obvious (what's obvious to you) and put the new theories into the context of the larger goal of dragging all of the BushCo schemes into the light of day.

[emptywheel]

Thank you polly, that is helpful. My computer is having some difficulties, so the PDF is darn near killing me.

[lukery]

great work again EW.

speaking of using odd voices, i thought this formulation was very odd: "Mr. Fitzgerald told the grand jury that I was testifying as a witness and not as a subject or target of his inquiry."

i imagine that a 'natural' formulation of this sentence would be "i am neither target/subject" or "Fitz told me that i wasnt" - but instead she says that 'fitz told the GJ that i was testifying as a witness...'

2 things jump out at me - firstly she reported what he told the GJ, rather than simply stating it as fact, and secondly, she added that she was 'testifying as a witness' - not simply that she is 'just a witness'

i dont know what to make of it - other than the possibility that she was previously a subject or target and/or perhaps has already taken a plea deal?

in fact, the full paragraph is "I testified in Washington twice - most recently last Wednesday after finding a notebook in my office at The Times that contained my first interview with Mr. Libby. Mr. Fitzgerald told the grand jury that I was testifying as a witness and not as a subject or target of his inquiry." - its not obvious whether fitz made that statement in the 1st or 2nd appearance - and it almost appears as tho that confusion is deliberate.

any thoughts?

[QuickSilver]

Emptywheel, this may seem like a bone-headed question, but why on earth did Judy cough up that June 23rd notebook? I just don’t get it, because that notebook is nothing but trouble for her. Why did she 'discover' these notes?

Do you think Fitz KNEW she had notes of this meeting?

I’m nursing a few theories about this, but I really don’t buy the received wisdom (which I’ve never seen questioned) that Judy realized she was in serious legal jeopardy, and needed to show notes to lock in a story against Libby's. Sure, she was trying to relieve her contempt of court, and by 'finding' the notebook, she showed that she could be cooperative. (After all, Fitz could have sent her immediately back to jail, right?)

But how do we square that with the idea that after surrendering her June 23rd notes, she didn't testify truthfully about them? By lying about or misrepresenting the notebook's contents, Judy opened herself up to new legal jeopardy (not to mention public ridicule).

So why couldn't Judy simply have "lost" that June 23rd notebook? Why couldn't she have just said, "Yes, I met Libby in June, but I took no notes" or "I just can't find them"? To my mind, that would have been a perfectly believable excuse, particularly if she had no formal story assignment. So what compelled her to find and surrender the notebook?

One possibility is that someone at the New York Times could independently confirm that Judy met Libby on or around June 23rd, in the context of writing a story. But I doubt this meeting was known to anyone supervising Judy at the NYT (including Lelyveld). Remember, both Judy and Libby went into the grand jury room confident that Fitz couldn’t possibly know about June 23rd.

A second possibility – and your compelling Novak column a couple days ago really made me start to wonder -- is that someone else was present on June 23rd who remembered Judy taking notes. That person could be Novak or could be someone else (another government official? another conservative journalist?). Both Libby and Judy were ignorant of the fact this person 'flipped.'

Another possibility is that Judy Miller took notes at the June 23rd meeting, and had that notebook in hand (or even showed it to someone) as she spread around the misinformation contained therein. Fitz knew this, and therefore knew about some sort of notebook. I've a hunch that Fitz knew the notebook had “Valerie Flame” and “Victoria Wilson” in it, too. Miller was obviously questioned on this matter in detail. (So why didn't she just tear those pages out?)

Still another possibility is that the notebook was discovered by someone else a long time ago, in whatever New York Times bureau (Manhattan? Washington?) where Judy stashed it, and that a copy was made and the original returned until Judy was willing to 'discover' it. In this scenario, Fitz has known about its contents a long while. Could the FBI or some other agency have penetrated the Times sanctum earlier in their investigation?

I a mere Watson to your Sherlock, and it’s perfectly possible I’m missing something really obvious here! So please tell me: what compelled Judy to turn over that notebook?

[emptywheel]

lukery

I've always interpreted that to mean she was not then in legal jeopardy but Fitz was not promising her she wouldn't become in legal jeopardy. She was a witness so long as she (somewhat) satisfied him on the 12th. But if he finds anything else, she'll be a target.

quicksilver

I still lean toward the NYT evidence of that meeting. I'd be willing to bet a bit that she DID try to talk Lelyveld into writing a story, in June and not July. They're just too silent a the NYT not to be hiding such a story.

And keep in mind, she was supposed to be writing as a team. So William Broad and David Johnston (the other two guys on the team) almost certainly have a good idea what she was working on--and what kind of notes she might have.

Or, there's the possibility that Karl or Ari or someone else who has flipped told Fitz about the meeting--and the notes.

I wonder seriously, after having written this, if there isn't a still earlier meeting.

[blythetdm]

I've always thought that the reason Judy reported her testimony by quoting from her notes was to let Libby know which part of her testimony was supported by contemporaneous written evidence. With that information, Libby could try to adjust his story according to Judy's notes. (Lots of luck, Scooter.) Inconsistencies between his testimony and hers for any portion of their meetings not covered by Judy's notes could then could be attributed to poor memory.

[emptywheel]

Good point blythetdm

Remember that Rove was called back to testify before Judy's testimony, but did so afterwards. So she might have thought he could get a second shot as well.

[StacyB]

Excellent information and it makes perfect sense. I remember reading that Judy was considered an unofficial member of the White House Iraq Group- quite an honor- I would think that that fraternity expects loyalty, don't you and as soon as I saw that letter from Libby to judy in jail, about the Aspens and "they turn in clusters because their roots connect them" it seemed to me that was likely code for "we stick together" or something along those lines with respect to her pending testimony- and apparently as has been reported, that thought was in Fitzgerald's mind also.

The thought of miller getting off scott free in all of this is just sickening.

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