Thursday, July 28, 2005
Libby & Rove's Surprising Alibi?
I'm not sure if this was Arianna's intent, but this contribution to the Rove-Plame story is a real eye-opener. She states that the hot rumor going around The Times is that Miller was outraged at Joseph Wilson getting a prime op-ed spot to attack the administration's Niger/pre-war intelligence argument. Arianna asserts that Miller may have felt that her reporting was being implicitly attacked in Wilson's piece:
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The idea that intelligence was being fixed goes to the heart of Miller's credibility. So she calls her friends in the intelligence community and asks, Who is this guy? She finds out he's married to a CIA agent. She then passes on the info about Mrs. Wilson to Scooter Libby (Newsday has identified a meeting Miller had on July 8 in Washington with an "unnamed government official"). Maybe Miller tells Rove too -- or Libby does. The White House hatchet men turn around and tell Novak and Cooper. The story gets out.Now, if Rove and Libby were not honest with the grand jury, they could still face legal complications. However, the explanation that has been circulated from the Rove camp -- that he learned Plame's status from a media source -- would, in the scenario Arianna outlines, be true. Now, what happened after that is, of course, what prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is trying to ascertain. But, it would be quite ironic if, after all this, Miller's role could actually produce evidence exculpatory of administration officials.
