Miller as Unindicted Coconspirator?

I have a new theory on Judith Miller. Might she be named as an unindicted conspirator? ...

The NY Times says that Miller is "not yet clear of legal jeopardy," but could that jeopardy extend beyond the contempt charge for refusing to testify?

She says in her account of her testimony that she was asked about her own security clearance.  She did not recall whether her clearance would have been active at the time of the conversations with Scooter Libby.

If it was active, that might seem to give Libby an out.  He might say that he can't be guilty of revealing secret information if the recipient was authorized to receive it.

In such a scenario, Fitzgerald would have to consider Libby and Miller to be coconspirators.  He would not be looking at getting Libby for leaking secrets but at getting both Libby and Miller for conspiring to reveal secrets.

The problem for Fitzgerald with indicting Miller is that he loses her as a witness.  He may feel he needs her.  His smart move is then to threaten her with indictment and get a plea bargain.  This deal might result in her pleading to something that gets her time served plus probation, or it might involve naming her as an unindicted coconspirator.

A problem that Fitzgerald has is that he might view Miller as a liar.  Miller was very clear that she would testify about Libby but not about any other source.  Conveniently, whenever she was asked about something that she said did not come from Libby (e.g., "Valerie Flame" and "Victoria Wilson"), she could not remember the source.  Her credibility there is weak.  Giving her a deal and using her as a witness could backfire.  Fitzgerald reportedly really hates being lied to, and he might be very unhappy with giving a deal to someone who he sees as continuing to protect other potential coconspirators.

•  who did Miller tell, then?

  But under that scenario, Judy Miller would only have committed a crime if in fact she violated her security clearance by telling someone without a clearance. Clearly, she didn't publish anything, but did she tell anyone else? One of the other journalists? I don't think we've got any evidence of that at this point.

  On the other hand, the idea that a journalist could have a security clearance is really bad. Makes them a tool of the government, in some sense. If she did have such a clearance, the NYT really f'ed up.
  

  by HarlanNY on Mon Oct 17, 2005 at 12:14:38 PM PDT

  •  Conspiracy

    Miller admitted discussing Plame with others.

    by Kitty on Mon Oct 17, 2005 at 12:34:08 PM PDT

  •  She didn't need to tell anyone

    It is not true that she only committed a crime if she passed on the information to someone else.

    Conspiracy does not require that the underlying crime actually took place, though some specific conspiracy laws do require one "overt act." The legal definition states that on overt act furthering a conspiracy is "any transaction or event, even one which may be entirely innocent when considered alone, but which is knowingly committed by a conspirator in an effort to accomplish some object of the conspiracy."  For example, the Espionage Act and the general conspiracy statute require one overt act; but they do not require that the conspirators actually succeeded in accomplishing their unlawful plan.

    If an overt act furthering the conspiracy is needed, Miller may have committed such an act even by merely asking her editors if she could run the story.  She may have also committed an overt act if she followed up on Libby's lead in any way, such as talking to the mysterious sources of the "Valerie Flame" and "Victoria Wilson" names.  She may even have committed an overt act by keeping notes of her conversation with Libby.

    It is also only necessary that one member of a conspiracy commit an overt act.  If Libby committed such an act, say by talking to another reporter or by arranging for another "high level administration official" to act as a second source for Miller, Miller could be guilty.  It is not necessary that Miller ever actually had contact with these additional parties.

    by Richard Mathews on Mon Oct 17, 2005 at 03:25:09 PM PDT

•  Fitz doesn't like Miller anyway.

  The question no one is asking: If Judy has a security clearance, where, how and who got it for her?

  I was in the military and trust me, security clearances aren't handed out like candy.

  by 0hio on Mon Oct 17, 2005 at 12:28:35 PM PDT

  •  How she got her clearance

    She explained in her article,

    In my grand jury testimony, Mr. Fitzgerald repeatedly turned to the subject of how Mr. Libby handled classified information with me. He asked, for example, whether I had discussed my security status with Mr. Libby. During the Iraq war, the Pentagon had given me clearance to see secret information as part of my assignment "embedded" with a special military unit hunting for unconventional weapons.

    She does not explain more about what this clearance covered.

    by Richard Mathews on Mon Oct 17, 2005 at 03:56:13 PM PDT

•  Clearances don't work that way

  Even if you hold a security clearance, you still cannot reveal any information to someone without a need to know, and since Judy wasn't working for the Fed Gov, in an offical capacity  she had no need to know by definition.   Second I'm pretty sure that the identity of a NOC agent is classified  at least  Top-secret Compartmentalized, which somebody like Judy simply wouldn't have..

  by Magorn on Mon Oct 17, 2005 at 12:40:31 PM PDT

  •  And even a TSI clearance only clears you

    for codeword intelligence under the particular codeword of that TSI clearance (provided you also have a need to know.)

    Thus, when I had a codeword clearance that cleared me for signals intelligence, that did not clear me for codeword intelligence under other codeword programs (like for who was a NOC).

    I think people are only speculating Judith Miller might have had a Secret clearance.

    by lysias on Mon Oct 17, 2005 at 01:45:08 PM PDT

•  Easy solution. Indict Miller on conspiracy under

  the Espionage Act. She caved on her GJ testimony after a threat of extending the GJ, and her contempt, or being charged with criminal contempt. She's weak and selfish. What do you think she'll do when she's indicted for conspiracy carrying a mandatory minimum of 10 years in federal prison? She'll turn on Libby and her neocon pals in a heartbeat. If Fitz just wanted her testimony, he could have granted her limited immunity and compelled her testimony. He wants to indict her because JUDY WAS A PLAYER IN THE PLAME OUTING, doing the neocon's work for them.

  Occam's Razor applied to this situation says that Fitz will indict Cheney, Libby, Rove, Miller, Rice, Fleischer, and a few others for the obvious crime they committed - conspiracy to out a CIA NOC as a political operation against her husband, instigated and directed by Dick Cheney.
  

  by skrymir on Mon Oct 17, 2005 at 12:55:36 PM PDT