After reading the reasons New York Times reporter Judith Miller gave in deciding to get out of jail, one has to wonder if instead of spending time in jail because she refused to testify about her role in the leak of Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA operative, Miller actually was doing time for her faulty stories on Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq.
The Washington Post reported that Miller said she "served 85 days in jail because of my belief in the importance of upholding the confidential relationship journalists have with their sources."
Yet Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby gave her permission to talk and Libby's lawyer apparently told Miller's lawyer more than a year ago that she was free to talk, as well.
In addition, U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan had told Miller that "she was mistaken in her belief that she was defending a free press, stressing that the government source she alleges she is protecting had already released her from her promise of confidentiality."
Perhaps as the Post's Dan Froomkin offered as one explanation, that going to jail was Miller's way of transforming herself from a journalistic outcast (based on her gullible pre-war reporting) into a much-celebrated hero of press freedom.
Even her colleagues at the Times had to ask Was this a charade on her part for martyrdom, or a real principle?
Arriana Huffington in a Huffington Post column suggested that Miller was the source who gave the information to the White House in retribution for the New York Times running Joe Wilson's column that helped expose her faulty, administration friendly, reporting on WMD.
So why did Miller go to jail? Perhaps in a moment of enlightenment Miller decided she needed to as penance for her stories and damage to America.
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