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Judy is being more cooperative with the Wall Street Journal than she is the New York Times (part of the job hunt?) She gave them a phoner and cleared up some of the outstanding questions that the Times pieces did not:

In a brief telephone interview yesterday, Ms. Miller said she discovered the June 2003 notes in her office after being prompted to seek out answers to another question Mr. Fitzgerald had asked her. "There was an open question about something, and I said I would go back and look and see if there was anything in my notes that would address that question," she said yesterday.

Yeah, like "how does wearing an orange jumpsuit for the next twenty-five years strike you?"

She said she found the notebook in her office. She reiterated that she couldn't recall who told her the name that she transcribed as "Valerie Flame." "I don't remember who told me the name," she said, growing agitated. "I wasn't writing a story, remember?" Asked if the other source was Mr. Rove, she replied, "I'm not going to discuss anyone else that I talked to."

Well that's enlightening. Judy's a bitch, even on the job hunt. But it answers the question we all wanted to know the answer to -- to which set of notes, the June or July ones, was the "Valerie Flame" note attached?

Since we now know it's the June ones, we also know Judy punked Bennett, who made his deal with Fitzgerald to limit her testimony to only Libby under false pretenses, i.e., that she had no other sources.

DAMN I bet Bennett was hacked about that one.

But here's another enlightening moment from the WSJ:

Mr. Keller left the country late last week on a previously planned trip to Asia, the company said. Reached in Beijing, where he is visiting the paper's Asia bureau, Mr. Keller wrote in an email: "Knowing everything I know today about this case, I might have done some things differently, but I don't feel the least bit apologetic about standing up for a reporter's right to do the job."

But -- Judy just said she "wasn't writing a story." What "job" was she doing exactly, Bill?

Keller might think twice about rushing back. Because I did not even think about this at the time, but reader Andy brought it to my attention. In yesterday's NYT piece it says:

But Mr. Sulzberger and the paper's executive editor, Bill Keller, knew few details about Ms. Miller's conversations with her confidential source other than his name. They did not review Ms. Miller's notes. Mr. Keller said he learned about the "Valerie Flame" notation only this month. Mr. Sulzberger was told about it by Times reporters on Thursday.

Okay, Thursday was the 13th, the Times first published the fact that Judy found another notebook on October 8, so that makes Sulzberger Bang Bang the Idiot Boy. But as Andy notes, if Judy only found those notes a week ago, how could Keller know about the "Valerie Flame" notation "this month," which could mean weeks ago? We may only be parsing words here, but that sure is an odd way to describe last week.

I hear real estate is cheap in Shanghai.

posted by Jane Hamsher @ 10/16/2005 10:25:00 PM