Judith Miller in severance talks

New York Times Reporter Miller
Is in Talks Over Her Job Status

Move Follows Public Break
With the Newspaper;
Severance Package Discussed
By JOE HAGAN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
October 26, 2005; Page B3

New York Times reporter Judith Miller has begun discussing her future employment options with the newspaper, including the possibility of a severance package, a lawyer familiar with the matter, said yesterday.

The discussion about her future comes several days after the public rupture of the relationship between the Times and Ms. Miller, a 28-year veteran of the paper. Both the editor and the publisher of the Times have expressed regret for their unequivocal support for Ms. Miller when she spent 85 days in jail for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury investigating the unmasking of a Central Intelligence Agency operative.


The negotiations began with a face-to-face meeting Monday morning between Ms. Miller and the publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., said the lawyer familiar with the situation. A spokeswoman for the New York Times declined to comment. Ms. Miller didn't return calls.

Mr. Sulzberger and New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller both indicated they wished they had known more about the circumstances that led Ms. Miller to go to jail rather than reveal who told her the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson. She later agreed to testify when one of her sources, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, gave her a personal waiver to do so.

Ms. Miller testified twice before a grand jury led by U.S. prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who is trying to find out if officials broke any laws in a possible quest to discredit former diplomat Joseph Wilson, a critic of the Bush administration's Iraq policy.

Ms. Miller's attorney has said the reporter isn't a target of the investigation, but she could be called as a witness if Mr. Fitzgerald obtains indictments in the case. New York Times Co. has been paying Ms. Miller's legal bills, but it isn't clear whether they would continue to do so if she is no longer employed by the company.

The newspaper began to distance itself from the reporter last week after the particulars of Ms. Miller's relationship with Mr. Libby were revealed in a first-person account of her testimony and in an independently reported piece in the Times. Those articles suggested that Ms. Miller may have misled the paper about a previously undisclosed meeting with Mr. Libby, and that the paper was negligent in not asking Ms. Miller more questions about her involvement before advancing her cause.

Over the weekend, two columnists for the New York Times wrote pieces questioning whether Ms. Miller could continue working for the paper. Ms. Miller currently is on vacation. She was released from jail Sept. 29.

In 2002, Ms. Miller was among a team of 10 Times reporters who won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Middle East after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. She has since become a subject of controversy for her prewar reporting on Iraq's nuclear capabilities, which bolstered the Bush administration's case for an invasion.

Many of those reports, which relied in part on anonymous administration officials, turned out to be incorrect. The Times has since acknowledged flaws in the reporting and published a series of articles correcting the mistakes. Ms. Miller has said she may write a book about her recent experiences.

Write to Joe Hagan at joe.hagan@wsj.com

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