Former New York Times reporter Judith Miller said Friday she thinks a pardon of ex-Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff Scooter Libby is "long overdue," as she's become persuaded over the years that her testimony about his being the source of her article outing a CIA covert operative was made based on false information and that he was made a "scapegoat."
"Ever since I got out of jail and began trying to look into the details of the Scooter Libby case, I became persuaded my testimony had been made in error and that he, in fact, had done nothing wrong," Miller told Fox News' "America's Newsroom" co-host Bill Hemmer.
"I decided to go back and correct the record in my own book, which I did, and when Scooter Libby was given his law license back a year and a half ago, the judge specifically cited my testimony, the recantation of my testimony as one of the factors in his decision."
Reports indicate that President Donald Trump could pardon Libby as soon as today, and Miller questioned why the case is suddenly on his radar.
"I think they mentioned the case because Victoria Toensing is Scooter Libby's lawyer right now," said Miller. "I'm sure she took the opportunity to say there is an injustice here that needs to be corrected."
Toensing and her husband, Joseph diGenova had been under consideration to represent Trump regarding special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, but pulled out because of other conflicts.
In her 2015 book, "The Story: A Reporter's Journey," Miller said Libby was convicted of obstruction of justice and perjury through testimony that had been manipulated, and because crucial evidence had been withheld in his 2007 trial.
She wrote that after she reviewed her notes, she determined that she had not asked Libby about if the CIA agent, Valerie Plame Wilson, worked for the CIA, but instead asked if she worked for the State Department.
Wilson's name was outed after her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, had written an opinion piece for The New York Times criticizing President George W. Bush's administration for its role in the Iraq War.
"Here is the real bottom line of this investigation," said Miller. "This was the beginning of the criminalization of our politics and political differences over the war in Iraq. What happened was basically the government was looking for a scapegoat for why the war was going badly, the decision on the war."
The left was saying that lies led to the war, said Miller, but she didn't believe that was true as a reporter.
"Scooter Libby took the fall for that," she said Friday. "He was the scapegoat. He was the person upon whom we could blame the war. He worked for Dick Cheney who had promoted the war. So he was a convenient target of opportunity."
The trial against Libby should never have been brought, she added, as the general counsel of the CIA had concluded that national security or Wilson were not harmed in when the name was leaked.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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