Photo: Ethan Miller / Getty Images
On 30 September 2005, New York Times reporter Judith Miller is released from a federal detention facility in Alexandria, Virginia, after agreeing to testify in the investigation into the leak of the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame.
Miller had been behind bars since July 6, 2005 for refusing to reveal a confidential source and testifying before an investigating grand jury the so-called Plame Affair.
He decided to testify after the source he had been protecting, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff , sign a waiver granting you permission to speak.
The issue Plame goes back to an opinion piece July 6, 2003 for the New York Times written by former US diplomat Joseph Wilson, husband of Plame.
In it, Wilson questioned the Bush Administration’s reasons for going to war in Iraq, later that month on 14 July, the identity of undercover agent Valerie Plame was revealed in a newspaper column by Robert Novack.
Wilson’s claim that the disclosure was retaliation by the White House for his op-ed prompted an investigation in December 2003 led by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald.
Fitzgerald interviewed President George W. Bush, Vice President Cheney and other senior administration officials, along with several journalists. Although Miller had not written an article about Plame, he met with Libby shortly after Wilson’s op-ed was published, and Fitzgerald believed that Miller had information relevant to his investigation.
After 85 days in jail, Miller was released and testified before a grand jury that, prior to Novak’s column, she had several conversations with Scooter Libby in which she spoke about plame.
On November 9 of that same year, Miller announced his retirement from the Times after a career of 28 years in the newspaper.
March 6, 2007, Scooter Libby was found guilty of obstruction of justice, perjury and false statements to federal investigators in the Plame investigation.
In June, he was sentenced to 80 months in federal prison and fined $853,000. However, a month later, on July 2, President George W. Bush commuted Libby’s prison sentence before the former White House aide had served any time.
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