US: An investigation into a White House intelligence leak was nearing its conclusion yesterday after a New York Times reporter, jailed for refusing to testify, identified Vice-President Dick Cheney's top aide as her principal source.
Judith Miller was released from a prison in Virginia, where she had spent 12 weeks, and appeared in a federal court in Washington yesterday to give her account of a scandal which has been hanging over the administration for two years.
According to lawyers, Ms Miller identified Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the vice-president's chief of staff, as the government official she had spoken to in July 2003 about a CIA undercover agent, Valerie Plame.
Ms Plame is the wife of an administration critic, Joseph Wilson, who accused the White House of blowing her cover in retribution for his claims that the US had fabricated allegations of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
Mr Wilson, a former ambassador, had said he was sent to Africa by the CIA to look for evidence of Iraqi uranium purchases and had found none, contrary to claims by the president.
Another journalist, Time magazine's Matt Cooper, has named Karl Rove, the president's chief political adviser, as his source for revealing Ms Plame's identity.
Mr Rove and Mr Libby, two of the most powerful behind-the-scenes figures in the administration, have said they had revealed that Mr Wilson's wife worked in the CIA and had been instrumental in sending him on the fact-finding mission. But lawyers for both officials insist that they did not break the law, as they did not provide her name and did not know that she was an undercover agent. Critics argue that identifying her as Mr Wilson's wife was tantamount to naming her.
US media reports yesterday quoted lawyers involved in the case as saying that a decision on whether to press charges could come as early as next week in the wake of Ms Miller's testimony.
The chief investigator, Patrick Fitzgerald, has said that the journalist was the main obstacle to wrapping up the case. Possible charges include the deliberate disclosure of an undercover agent's identity, perjury or obstruction of justice.
The case has cast light on the relationship between journalists and their government sources, and the confidentiality of that relationship. It has also provoked scrutiny of Ms Miller. On her release, she said that she had gone to jail to "preserve the time-honoured principle" of protecting journalistic sources and had agreed to testify only after receiving a telephone call from Mr Libby, waiving his right to confidentiality. But Mr Libby's lawyer, Joseph Tate, said that his client had signed such a waiver in late 2003, and he had assured Ms Miller's lawyer earlier last month that the waiver had not been coerced.
Jailing her in July, Judge Thomas Hogan argued that she was not defending press freedom because the government source she "alleges she is protecting" had released her from her promise of confidentiality.
Ms Miller never published a story about Ms Plame after her conversations with Mr Libby. The CIA agent's name was first published by a conservative columnist, Robert Novak. Mr Novak has not been threatened with jail and it is not clear whether he has testified to the grand jury.
The case is coming to a climax at a time when the Bush administration is mired in scandal. Last month, one of the White House's leading budget officials, David Safavian, was arrested on perjury charges. A top Republican ally in Congress, Tom DeLay, was charged on Wednesday with violating election laws, and a Pentagon analyst, Lawrence Franklin, was yesterday reported to have agreed to plead guilty in a case involving the transfer of military secrets to pro-Israel lobbyists. - (Guardian Service)