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Judith Miller Released!!!

aps said:
Okay, Gordon, I have some articles I want you to read. I know, I know, the New York Times leans to the left (okay, is totally left), but I think it explains the waiver issue. Tell me what you think of it. I will post the articles in two, separate posts. I have highlighted the parts I think address your concerns:

Judith Miller Leaves Jail

After nearly three months in jail, Judith Miller was released on Thursday. No newspaper reporter has ever spent so much time in custody to defend the right to protect confidential sources. She is a Times colleague, and our chief reaction is relief that she is finally free.

The turning point came when Ms. Miller's source spoke to her on the phone and urged her to testify before a grand jury about their conversations relating to Valerie Wilson, an undercover C.I.A. agent whose identity was revealed by the columnist Robert Novak. A grand jury is investigating whether any government official broke the law by leaking that story. Ms. Miller testified yesterday.

Reporters are not given the luxury of choosing the circumstances under which they take a stand on their right to guarantee confidentiality to their sources. The case that enveloped Ms. Miller was not a situation in which a whistleblower came forth, under promises of anonymity, to offer information that would protect the public from wrongdoing. Instead, the questions involved the murky world of Washington politics, where reporters and government officials talk and trade information. But reporters do not get to limit themselves to working with saintly and heroic figures. While The Times and other news organizations have made enormous efforts to restrict references to unnamed sources, it is impossible to report on what happens in any administration - particularly one as secretive as this - if journalists talk only to people who are willing to be quoted by name.

The saga began when the C.I.A. asked Mrs. Wilson's husband, Joseph, a retired ambassador, to look into claims by the Bush administration that Iraq had been acquiring material for nuclear weapons from Niger. Mr. Wilson published an Op-Ed article in The New York Times debunking those claims. Later, Mr. Novak published a column linking Mr. Wilson's assignment to his wife's job and revealing that Mrs. Wilson was a C.I.A. operative. Since then, there have been questions about whether members of the Bush administration leaked the information to try to punish Mr. Wilson or undercut his credibility.

When Ms. Miller was subpoenaed by the grand jury investigating the case, she declined to testify about any conversations she had under guarantees of confidentiality. She did that even though the Bush administration had required every government employee who might have been involved to sign a waiver of any confidentiality agreement they had with reporters. Ms. Miller believed that a waiver that government employees were forced to sign or risk being fired was by its nature coercive. She was obviously right. Her source's lawyer admitted as much to Floyd Abrams, Ms. Miller's lawyer.

Why, then, did she agree to testify yesterday? Could Ms. Miller have gotten the permission earlier? Why didn't she just pick up the phone and ask?

When a journalist guarantees confidentiality, it means that he or she is willing to go to jail rather than disclose the source's identity. We also believe it means that the journalist will not try to coerce the source into granting a waiver to that promise - even if her back is against the wall. If Ms. Miller's source had wanted to release her from her promise, he could have held a press conference and identified himself. And obviously, he could have picked up the phone. Ms. Miller believed - and we agree - that it was not her place to try to hound him into telling her that she did not need to keep her promise.


Some journalists feel that when it comes to government employees, no waiver short of a public statement can be judged to be freely granted. We believe the person in the best position to judge when a source is sincerely waiving promises of confidentiality is the reporter who made the guarantee. We have confidence that Judith Miller's conversation with her source gave her the assurances she needed. She has won the right to that confidence with three months' stay in a tough jail.

The important lesson from her travails is the need for a federal shield law that would resolve such issues in the future. Judith Miller's rights would have been protected by state shield laws, including laws in New York and Washington D.C., which provide total protection. It is humiliating to realize that the rest of the world has been watching the federal government jail a reporter for doing her job.

Forty-nine states and the District of Columbia provide reporters limited or full protection from testifying about confidential sources. No state attorney general has ever said a case was abandoned or a trial sabotaged by a reporter's guarantee of confidentiality to a source.

It would be easy to extend such a shield to the federal courts. A law has even been written - a bipartisan bill languishing in Congress that would protect this vital tool of a free press while providing an exception in case of an immediate and demonstrable threat to national security.

We hope the sight of Judith Miller finally gaining her freedom will help spur Congressional leaders to take this one simple action to keep the First Amendment's promise of a free press.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/01/opinion/01sat1.html

Please??? One phone call to Libby's office would have been considered "hounding"? If this article would only stick with the first paragraph we would only have to know why ONE SIMPLE PHONE CALL would have been considered "hounding" Mr. Libby. Isn't this a New York Times word?

Why, if all the White House Staffers that were involved had given waivers should Scooter Libby call a press conference? Shouldn't he talk to the reporter? And, if there were other waivers and, if he had given a waiver and knew it was freely given, why should he call Judith Miller? Here is the New York Times saying she had to ignore the waiver when one simple phone call would have told her or her attorney everything they needed to know to keep her out of jail. This is rediculous to believe that Libby could even know that she didn't believe his waiver was freely given just because the White House ordered everyone to cooperate. I can imagine what the New York Times or you would say if they hadn't cooperated, sheesh.

Look at the last paragraph. There is already a "free press". Who are these people trying to kid? Scooter Libby threatens a free press? She has a waiver and her attorney won't even seek clarification from Libby's office for fear of "hounding"? Please. This is the same bull the New York Times has spouted for over a year. She went to jail on principle while all involved on the White House Staff provided written waivers on orders from their boss. If she thought the waiver was coerced, why not have her attorney call Libby's office for clarification.

You repeat and I repeat and she goes to jail for what? I say she either went to jail because she wanted the publicity or her attorney didn't do his simple job. She knew the source was Libby. She could have told her attorney to call all that had given waivers and make sure they were given freely as Libby says his was. That way even her attorney wouldn't have known the source WAS Libby.

This is the New York Times trying to say they and Judith Miller are protecting the Bill of Rights when that wasn't necessary at all. Now that she is going to testify, there is no smudge on Libby. So why did she go to jail? I say she never had to.
:duel :cool:
 
Well, Gordon, it makes perfect sense to me. Obviously, we will not see eye-to-eye on this issue.
 
aps said:
Well, Gordon, it makes perfect sense to me. Obviously, we will not see eye-to-eye on this issue.

I answered your second section post.

I am not interested in seeing eye to eye with you since you obviously are partisan on this issue. I could care less if Libby, Rove or Miller go to jail. What I do care about is facts, investigation and outcome. Since we won't see "eye to eye" I am willing to await the outcome and be satisfied with that. I doubt you will be because you want that guilt. I want justice for any Republican or Democrat or citizen that breaks the law. Nothing more, nothing less.
:duel :cool:
 
gordontravels said:
I answered your second section post.

I am not interested in seeing eye to eye with you since you obviously are partisan on this issue. I could care less if Libby, Rove or Miller go to jail. What I do care about is facts, investigation and outcome. Since we won't see "eye to eye" I am willing to await the outcome and be satisfied with that. I doubt you will be because you want that guilt. I want justice for any Republican or Democrat or citizen that breaks the law. Nothing more, nothing less.
:duel :cool:

Get off your soap box, Gordon. And by the way, the phrase is "I could NOT care less."
 
aps said:
Get off your soap box, Gordon. And by the way, the phrase is "I could NOT care less."

I appreciate your help here because as you know, I believe "clarification" is very important. I'll await the outcome and bid you adieu. :duel :cool:
 
aps said:
Get off your soap box, Gordon. And by the way, the phrase is "I could NOT care less."

This is debate aps and regardless of your characterizations I respect your opinions even as I strongly object to them at times. I stand for the debate where all sides can be spoken and heard or read.

I see the argument turn to me on my "soap box". I won't take that direction with my debate. I will stand by my words on the issue and how I either agree with you or disagree. At the least, I do seek to care.
:duel :cool:
 
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