Time agrees to name confidential sources / Magazine editor cites 'duties under the law' as reason reads today's headline in the San Francisco Chronicle. Which means that Judith Miller alone faces jail in the CIA leak probe. The question is, if the judge already has the name in question, why Judith Miller?
I was interviewed by Judy Miller while she covered the NEA controversy for the NY Times. I found her reporting to be accurate, something pretty unusual. So I read her book "God Has 99 Names," an analysis of radical Islamism as a political force. It was excellent. When "Germs" came out, about the dangers of Germ warfare, her publisher permitted my website, The Idler, to run a sample chapter. The anthrax attacks after 9/11 gave that book great credibility.
So, what is the back story here? Why is Miller at the center of a controversy over Bob Novak's column?
I don't know, and she's not talking. But there may be more to this than meets the eye--the demands of the case has taken perhaps the best reporter on the CIA/Terrorism beat out of circulation--a reporter attacked by Edward Said in almost pure anti-Semitic terms.
One hopes Judy Miller will write a book about her ordeal to explain it to us, perhaps she will have some time in prison...