Judith Miller, the former New York Times reporter jailed for refusing to testify in the Scooter Libby case, will serve as a contributor to Fox News, Howard Kurtz reports. Miller will serve as an on-air analyst and writer for Fox News’s website.
Miller left the Times in 2005 amid criticism from opponents of the Iraq war for her reporting on weapons of mass destruction and her role in the Libby case. Libby, during his perjury and obstruction of justice trial, testified that he told Miller when he was Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff in 2003 that Valerie Plame Wilson was a CIA agent. Plame’s status was later used by columnist Robert Novak to try undermine an op-ed by her husband, Joseph Wilson, in which he criticized the administration for exaggerating Iraq’s efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction.
Fox News senior vice president John Moody downplayed the mistakes Miller had made.
“We’ve all had stories that didn’t come out exactly as we had hoped,” Moody told The Washington Post’s Kurtz. “It’s certainly something she’s going to be associated with for all time, and there’s not much anyone can do about that, but we want to make use of the tremendous expertise she brings on a lot of other issues… She has explained herself and she has nothing to apologize for.”