Here's something else about why Judith Miller went to prison:
"Tatel actually found that reason and experience 'support recognition of a privilege for reporters' confidential sources'. But Tatel still ordered Cooper and Miller to testify because he found that the privilege had to give way to 'the gravity of the suspected crime'. "
Judge Tatel?s opinion has eight blank pages in the middle of it where he discusses the secret information the prosecutor has supplied only to the judges to convince them that the testimony he is demanding is worth sending reporters to jail to get. The gravity of the suspected crime is presumably very well developed in those redacted pages. Later, Tatel refers to [h]aving carefully scrutinized [the prosecutor?s] voluminous classified filings...
Tatel wrote a 41-page opinion in which he seemed eager to make new law -- a federal reporters? shield law -- but in the end, he couldn?t bring himself to do it in this particular case. In his final paragraph, he says he 'might have' let Cooper and Miller off the hook '[w]ere the leak at issue in this case less harmful to national security.'
Tatel?s colleagues are at least as impressed with the prosecutor?s secret filings as he is. One simply said 'Special Counsel?s showing decides the case.'
All the judges who have seen the prosecutor?s secret evidence firmly believe he is pursuing a very serious crime, and they have done everything they can to help him get an indictment."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblo...son-_3769.html
Also an interesting read:
http://citizenspook.blogspot.com/200...aw-part-2.html