A, NOT THE:

The Meeting: Scooter Libby and Judy Miller met on July 8, 2003, two days after Joe Wilson published his column. And Patrick Fitzgerald is very interested. (Murray Waas, 08.06.05, American Prospect)

I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, has told federal investigators that he met with New York Times reporter Judith Miller on July 8, 2003, and discussed CIA operative Valerie Plame, according to legal sources familiar with Libby's account. [...]

The new disclosure that Miller and Libby met on July 8, 2003, raises questions regarding claims by President Bush that he and everyone in his administration have done everything possible to assist Fitzgerald's grand-jury probe. Sources close to the investigation, and private attorneys representing clients embroiled in the federal probe, said that Libby's failure to produce a personal waiver may have played a significant role in Miller’s decision not to testify about her conversations with Libby, including the one on July 8, 2003.

Libby signed a more generalized waiver during the early course of the investigation granting journalists the right to testify about their conversations with him if they wished to do so. At least two reporters -- Walter Pincus of The Washington Post and Tim Russert of NBC -- have testified about their conversations with Libby. [...]

Just how crucial Miller's testimony -- most notably her meeting with Libby -- might be to concluding Fitzgerald's investigation is best underscored in part by a filing in federal court last March that his investigation had been "for all practical purposes complete" as long as six months earlier, except for the potential testimony of Miller and Time magazine correspondent Matthew Cooper.

The investigation had become “stalled,” Fitzgerald asserted, almost entirely by the refusal of Miller and Cooper to testify. Declaring that “[t]he public's right to have this investigation concluded diligently should be delayed no further," Fitzgerald sought the jailing on civil contempt of court charges of both Miller and Cooper.

So the investigation is over and no one's been charged. Ms Miller has a waiver to testify about what Mr. Libby told her. And even if he told her Ms Plame worked at CIA he didn't violate the law. Yet the Left continues to expend hope and energy on this?

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 7, 2005 12:00 AM