The End of the Beginning?

Judith Miller, after six weeks in jail, is now free: "I am leaving jail today because my source has now voluntarily and personally released me from my promise of confidentiality regarding our conversations."

Why so late? Here's what the New York Times had to say about it:

New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller said that until recently, Miller had received "only a generic waiver" of her confidentiality promise, "and she believed she had ample reason to doubt it had been freely given."

"In recent days, several important things have changed that convinced Judy that she was released from her obligation," Keller said in a statement. He did not provide details of what those changes were.

This all seems very weird to me. If you believe the story everybody is telling, the only reason Miller was jailed for so long is because Miller's attorney, Robert Bennett, waited 80 days to call Scooter Libby's attorney to see whether a waiver of confidentiality -- signed by Libby more than a year ago -- was voluntary:

Over the Labor Day weekend, Miller's attorney, Robert Bennett, tracked Tate down in Martha's Vineyard to tell him she had not accepted the waiver as valid because "it came from lawyers."

"I assured Bennett that it was voluntary, and he asked, 'Would Scooter say that to Judy?' And I said, 'Scooter doesn't want to see Judy in jail,'" Tate said.

"My reaction was, why didn't someone call us 80 days ago?" he said of his conversation with Bennett.

Obviously, there is a lot more to this story than merely some attorney waiting 80 days to ask for a clarification. It's not like Bennett is a Bush FEMA appointee or something -- he is an attorney with an important client in a very big case. And I don't think Judith Miller, a warmongering journalist if there ever was one, would sit in jail for six weeks just waiting for her attorney to get on the ball and make the proper inquiries.

Miller obviously sat in jail all that time because she was protecting herself more than she was protecting any source. Did she somehow play an active part in outing Valerie Plame as a CIA operative? It wouldn't surprise me. Of all the cheerleading members of the press, Miller was the most active in helping Bush launch his illegal war. Why wouldn't she have also taken an active part is discrediting Ambassador Joe Wilson, one of the few people at that time who had the balls to call bullshit on BushCo's Iraq WMD nonsense.

Maybe we'll hear the real story to all this someday.


UPDATE: I may be wrong on some of the things I said above. A lot of my comments assumed that Miller's lawyer was at least competent. However, I just watched Wolf Blitzer interview him on CNN, and it appeared to me that Attorney Robert Bennett may indeed be a f*@#ing idiot.

By the way, he is also the brother of Bill Bennett. Although I wasn't aware of that, it certainly doesn't surprise me.