Judith Miller: What was she waiting for?

Jon Stewart, you will have to wait: Judith Miller is out of prison, for God’s sake. We reported it with a kneejerk last night, but man are there some things about it that smell funny.

For a change, there are mysteries: it takes a year to get a waiver from Scooter Libby? Are these people mentally challenged? No, they are not. Which means that one of two things happened: (1) Miller blew off Libby’s many offers to release her of responsiblity in order to make a point; or (2) Libby had privately given her very good reason to make her doubt the veracity of his public claims.

A quick note on coercion: it has to do directly with power imbalance and some sort of duress, express or implied. In this case, though, we are dealing with some of the most well-connected and powerful people in the nation. So it struck a bit of a false note to me that there was such concern that Karl Rove and Scooter Libby might somehow be the helpless, cowering victims of duress. That said, I’ve seen “Alias”; intrigue at the highest levels is not uncommon (source: “Alias”) and it takes a whistleblower near the top to really blow things apart (source: “The Insider”). Even so, these are warning bells that rang.

So. As the Times account reads, Libby’s coming on all “Dude, what’s you’re deal? I told you to go ahead and testify,” and Judy’s all “You are so full of it, you so did not.” For a change, we don’t know who to believe. And by the way, could you elaborate a bit on the whole don’t-look-at-me-I-told-Floyd-Abrams thing? You would thing the super-top lawyers in the land might have gone over the notes kind of meticulously when handing over the file. Also, the timeline in the piece invites questions; the woman is in jail. Were over a month of negotiations really necessary? God, are you people that inefficient?

Some weird things about the Times piece, too: they name Libby, “according to people who have been officially briefed on the case.” WHAT is THAT? Don’t insult our intelligence; we know you all know. Is it according to Miller? If you can’t say, why aren’t you telling us why? You are the Times and this is YOUR STORY. Why are you futzing around? Waiting for Isikoff to get to it first? Come on!

No doubt the blogosphere is exploding with speculation right now; we concur with much of Mediacrity‘s account, which deconstructs the timeline of the Miller/Libby communications with an eyebrow archly raised. Feel free to send us good, thoughtful commentary, either yours or someone else’s. Love to see it.

Fitzgerald’s Grand Jury expires on October 28th. Today is the last day of September. Something tells me next month is going to be one hell of a ride.

Okay, back to Jon Stewart. Oh, David Zinczenko, please, for the love of God, stop speaking!

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