PLAME UPDATE….Here’s a couple of interesting tidbits about New York Times reporter Judith Miller, Judge Thomas Hogan, and the rest of the cast in the Valerie Plame case. First, Mark Kleiman points us toward this paragraph from the Washington Post’s account of today’s hearings:
“This is not a case of a whistle-blower” revealing secret information to Miller about “dangers at a nuclear power plant,” Hogan said. “It’s a case in which the information she was given and her potential use of it was a crime….This is very different than a whistle-blower outing government misconduct.”
In other words, Hogan thinks the outing of Valerie Plame was a crime. Conservative apologists for Robert Novak should take note.
(This doesn’t surprise me, either. I’m not happy with Fitzgerald’s overly promiscuous habit of subpoenaing reporters, but he’s got a reputation as a straight shooter and I don’t think he’d waste two years of his life if he hadn’t concluded that a crime was committed. He would have wrapped this up long ago if he didn’t think he could make a case.)
Second, Josh Marshall reminds us that this isn’t the first time Fitzgerald has tangled with Judith Miller:
A little more than a year ago, I reported [that] Fitzgerald had been investigating three Islamic charities accused of supporting terrorism….But just before his investigators could swoop in with warrants, two of the charities in question got wind of what was coming and, apparently, were able to destroy a good deal of evidence.
What tipped them off were calls from two reporters at the New York Times who’d been leaked information about the investigation by folks at the White House. One of those two reporters was Judy Miller.
Josh has some speculation on what this could mean. “Weird coincidence” is one of the possibilities, but it’s not the one at the top of his list.
