Freed Writer Testifies in CIA Leak Probe

Miller never wrote an article on the matter.

As she stood on the courthouse steps yesterday, Miller, 57, refused to answer questions about her testimony but said she hoped her days in the Alexandria Detention Center would build support for laws to help reporters protect their confidential sources. She stressed that she was willing to testify only after Libby personally wrote her and telephoned her in jail to make it clear she was free to talk, and after Fitzgerald agreed to limit his questions to her conversations with Libby.

"I am hopeful that my very long stay in jail will serve to strengthen the bond between reporters and their sources."

Miller declined to answer questions on why she chose to accept Libby's waiver of confidentiality now. Libby's attorney, Joseph Tate, said he made it clear to Miller's lawyers a year ago that Libby was freely agreeing to allow her to testify about their conversations.

"Bear with me, I'm really tired," Miller said before her attorney Robert S. Bennett urged her to cut off questions from reporters. "I have a meal I want my husband to prepare, a dog I want to hug, and I'd like to go home to Sag Harbor."

Miller was released just before 4 p.m. Thursday after she complied with a judge's order to be interviewed by Fitzgerald and an FBI agent at the jail. Sources said the subject was similar to the questions she was asked before the grand jury. Fitzgerald's purpose was to be sure that Miller did not later contradict herself under oath.

Miller said her first "meal" outside jail was a "one-third of a martini in a gorgeous glass, along with a fruit tray," brought to her by New York Times Publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr.

Miller was ordered to jail by U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan on July 6 after she refused to testify. In court, Hogan told Miller that her source had already relieved her of her confidentiality pledge.

Friends of Miller's said Bennett, who joined her legal team earlier this year, urged giving up an absolutist position on whether to testify. Another lawyer, Floyd Abrams, had previously encouraged Miller's objections to cooperating. Bennett warned that Fitzgerald was a dogged prosecutor who was not likely to give up on Miller, the friends said, and had a good chance of convincing a judge to jail Miller for at least six more months.

But Abrams said in an interview yesterday that Fitzgerald made a recent and important compromise. The prosecutor would narrow his questions to Libby, which he had not been willing to do when Abrams approached him about the idea last year. Sources close to Miller said she had numerous government sources she wanted to protect, but Libby was the only one relevant to the Plame investigation.

In June 2004, Glenn Kessler, a Washington Post reporter, reached a similar agreement with the prosecutor to provide limited testimony that kept the substance of his conversations with Libby confidential, The Post reported at the time.

Fitzgerald declined to comment yesterday as he left the courthouse.

Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper avoided joining Miller in jail when he sought -- and received -- a personal waiver from his source on the story: White House adviser Karl Rove. Rove's attorney has said his client did nothing illegal when he told Cooper that Wilson's wife, without using her name, was in the CIA and authorized the mission to Niger. Rove also discussed the matter with Novak, according to a source familiar with Rove's account.