New York Times reporter Judy Miller has just been released from the Alexandria, Va., jail where she has been held since July 6 for refusing to testify before the grand jury investigating the outing of Valerie Plame.
The Times says Miller was released after she and her lawyers reached an agreement with federal prosecutors that will result in her testifying. Miller told the Times that the deal was reached after she was assured, "voluntarily and personally," by a source that she was no longer bound by a promise of confidentiality she had made to him.
Sources close to the case told the Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer that the man who gave Miller the release was Scooter Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. As has been reported previously, the Times says, without attribution, that Miller met with Libby on July 8, 2003 -- the same day that Karl Rove confirmed Plame's identity for Robert Novak and six days before Novak published a column outing Plame.
This isn't the first time that Libby's name has come up in the context of the Plame investigation, of course. Time's Matthew Cooper says that Libby confirmed Plame's identity for him on July 13, 2003.
Miller told the Times that her source -- she's not saying publicly that it's Libby yet -- actively wants her to testify before the grand jury. She expects do so Friday, she said.
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