NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Maybe Judith Miller is a really big New York Yankees or Boston Red Sox fan and she just had to watch the dramatic three-game series between the two teams this weekend.
That's how absurd this case has become.
Why else would she do this? The widely admired New York Times reporter, who had gone to prison three months ago to protect a source and act on a high journalistic principle, suddenly reversed her course and decided to testify before the grand jury in the infamous CIA leak case. She walked out of an Alexandria, Va., cell on Thursday.
On Friday, Miller, 57, testified before a grand jury, accompanied by her lawyer and Times colleagues. She had been in jail for 85 days -- since July 6 -- for refusing to testify about her conversations with some news sources.
Miller released this statement through the Times: "I'm so happy to be free and finally able to talk to you all. Recently, I heard directly from my source that I should testify before the Grand Jury.
"This was in the form of a personal letter and, most important, a telephone call to me at the jail. I concluded from this that my source genuinely wanted me to testify. These were not form waivers. They were not discussions among lawyers. They were given after the Special Counsel assured us that such communication would not be regarded as obstructing justice.
"Once I got a personal voluntary waiver, my lawyer, Mr. Bennett, approached the Special Counsel to see if my Grand Jury testimony could be limited to my communications with the source from whom I had received the personal and specific waiver. The special counsel agreed to this. This was very important to me. I served 85 days in jail because of my belief in the importance of upholding the confidential relationship journalists have with their sources. Believe me, I did not want to be in jail. But I would have stayed even longer if I had not received these two things: the personal waiver and narrow testimony."
Until people could analyze that news release, Miller's decision seemed to come out of left field. It stunned the journalism community. One high-ranking Times man told me Friday morning that he was stunned and didn't know what to make of it.
Neither, perhaps, did anyone else.
On Thursday night, Time's managing editor, Jim Kelly, attended a Magazine Publishers of America panel and didn't say a word about Miller leaving jail.
Time, of course, figures prominently in the case because the magazine, a division of Time Warner, agreed to turn over the notes of reporter Matthew Cooper to the prosecutors.
Miller spent 12 weeks in jail because she originally refused to testify in the case about her talks with a confidential source connected to exposing the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame.
Largely because the case involved The New York Times and Time magazine, two golden names in American journalism, it exploded from a legal battle to a high-profile test of freedom of the press and garnered headlines for months.
Miller agreed to testify after her source, now revealed by the Times to be Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, gave the reporter a "direct and uncoerced" release from her vow of confidentiality.
Cooper's secret source was Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff. Rove had granted Cooper a waiver and the reporter avoided a jail term.
Miller had come under fire in the media before the case ever came to light. She was castigated for writing columns that seemed to help the Bush administration rally support for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Miller's stories had supported the proposition -- now proven false -- that Saddam Hussein was housing weapons of mass destruction -- in Iraq despite massive evidence to the contrary.
In a news release issued by The New York Times, Executive Editor Bill Keller said: "At the outset, she had only a generic waiver of this obligation, 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."
Well, I guess that clears it all up, right?
If you can understand what the hell is going on in this case, you're a lot smarter than I am.
