WASHINGTON — Notebooks used by New York Times reporter Judith Miller during interviews with Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff contain variations of the name of an undercover CIA officer whose identity might have been illegally leaked, the newspaper reported in today's editions.
Miller, in a first-person account of her interviews with top Cheney aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and of her subsequent testimony before a federal grand jury, said she believed it was through Libby she learned that the wife of a Bush administration critic was employed by the agency. But Miller said she could not remember whether she learned the name of the undercover CIA operative from Libby. The operative was Valerie Plame.
Miller's account also indicated that the prosecutor leading the federal investigation had sought to determine what role Cheney himself had played -- if any -- in the White House's effort to discredit an outspoken critic of the justifications used to invade Iraq.
And it revealed that the prosecutor had asked whether she felt Libby was attempting to influence her testimony in a letter he sent to her last month releasing her from a confidentiality pledge. Miller said that she had been surprised by some of Libby's statements.
The disclosures provide potentially significant new details on the key developments in a federal probe that is focused on determining whether senior administration officials deliberately exposed the name of Plame in retaliation for her husband's criticism of the war.
While not identifying Libby as the source for the CIA operative's name, Miller makes it clear that the two discussed Plame's job in several conversations.
Plame's husband, former U.S. envoy Joseph C. Wilson IV, had written a July 6, 2003, op-ed piece for the New York Times that attacked the intelligence used by the administration for going to war in Iraq. Eight days later, Plame was identified in a column by Robert Novak, who disclosed her role as a CIA operative.
Miller spent 85 days in jail while refusing to reveal the name of her source, but reversed course and agreed to testify before the grand jury last month after obtaining what she described as a personal waiver from Libby.
Karl Rove, White House deputy chief of staff and Bush's top political advisor, also has testified before the grand jury. He appeared for the fourth time Friday as the 22-month probe appeared to be coming to a close.
