The Associated Press reports that Judith Miller's notes from one of her conversations with Lewis Libby are wrong, and that the error may help Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald in his probe. I think this is more spin coming from Lewis Libby's team.

Miller disclosed this weekend that her notes of a conversation she had with I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby on July 8, 2003 stated Cheney's top aide told her that the wife of Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson worked for the CIA's Weapons Intelligence, Non-Proliferation, and Arms Control (WINPAC) unit.

Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, never worked for WINPAC, an analysis unit in the overt side of the CIA, and instead worked in a position in the CIA's secret side, known as the directorate of operations, according to three people familiar with her work for the spy agency.

I just re-discovered this handy little list from Newsday in March, 2004:

A federal grand jury has subpoenaed White House records on administration contacts with more than two dozen journalists and news media outlets in a special investigation into the improper leak of a covert CIA official's identity to columnist Robert Novak last July. They include:

Robert Novak, "Crossfire," "Capital Gang" and the Chicago Sun-Times
Knut Royce and Timothy M. Phelps, Newsday
Walter Pincus, Richard Leiby, Mike Allen, Dana Priest and Glenn Kessler, The Washington Post
Matthew Cooper, John Dickerson, Massimo Calabresi, Michael Duffy and James Carney, Time magazine
Evan Thomas, Newsweek
Andrea Mitchell, "Meet the Press," NBC
Chris Matthews, "Hardball," MSNBC
Tim Russert, Campbell Brown, NBC
Nicholas D. Kristof, David E. Sanger and Judith Miller, The New York Times
Greg Hitt and Paul Gigot, The Wall Street Journal
John Solomon, The Associated Press
Jeff Gannon, Talon News

Note it is not the reporters who were subpoenaed, but records of White House contacts with them.

Reps. John Conyers and Ike Skelton, as ranking members of the Judiciary and Armed Services Committees, respectively, have written the following letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (now available here):

Dear Mr. Secretary:

We write about reports that journalists who were embedded with U.S. forces in Iraq were given security clearances. In her recounting of discussions with Scooter Libby, the Vice President's Chief of Staff, New York Times reporter Judith Miller, disclosed her belief that she had a security clearance. She specifically wrote, "[d]uring the Iraq war, the Pentagon had given me clearance to see secret information as part of my assignment 'embedded' with a special military unit hunting for unconventional weapons."1 She also noted she was not certain whether her clearance was in existence at the time she met with Mr. Libby.2

There's a great post today byAttytood on Andrea Mitchell, Cheney and that July, 2003 White House's 90th birthday reception for Gerald Ford. Remember, Fitzgerald subpoenaed the guest list.

And, it was not just a birthday party for Gerald Ford. There was a co-honoree, as I recall from doing research on this months ago -Allan Greenspan, who just happens to be married to Andrea Mitchell. I believe she was at that party. So she might know why Fitzgerald was interested in that guest list. She never talks about it.

Yes, Bloomberg News reported last night that Cheney was a focus of Fitzgerald's probe. I did not see any new information there that Raw Story or I hadn't reported on before, so I wrote about a different section of the article which mentioned that Joseph Wilson is considering suing Bush, Cheney, et. al.

Bloomberg doesn't say Fitzgerald has uncovered evidence of Cheney wrong-doing, only that he is looking at it. Bloomberg also acknowledges there have been no leaks from Fitzgerald's team, so the information has to be coming from lawyers for other subjects of the investigation, some of whom, it appears, are in legal jeopardy. It may just be spin and an attempt to deflect attention from their clients. For example, Miller says she exonerated Cheney in her appearance before the grand jury.

But, there's plenty of information out there, for those willing to connect the dots. Whether it's enough to get Cheney is open to interpretation. You can find most of the details in these two posts.

• Cheney, Wilson and the White House, Part One

• Fitzgerald Widening His Probe (follow the embedded links for source material.)

Raw Story confirms that Judith Miller's attorney Robert Bennett had a hand in writing her Sunday article in the Times explaining her role in PlameGate.

No lawyer would let a client write a tell-all about a recent appearance before the grand jury in a case in which she was a principal player and had been held in contempt without reviewing it first and probably making some changes. As I wrote on Saturday about the article:

For anyone who still thinks [Miller] is going to be indicted, please understand that her lawyers would have carefully vetted this article before they allowed her to send it in to the Times. If Miller was in jeopardy from Fitzgerald, there would have been no article.

Bloomberg News reports that Joseph Wilson may sue Bush, Cheney and others in the Administration:

In an interview yesterday, Wilson said that once the criminal questions are settled, he and his wife may file a civil lawsuit against Bush, Cheney and others seeking damages for the alleged harm done to Plame's career.

If they do so, the current state of the law makes it likely that the suit will be allowed to proceed -- and Bush and Cheney will face questioning under oath -- while they are in office. The reason for that is a unanimous 1997 U.S. Supreme Court decision ruling that Paula Jones' sexual harassment suit against then-President Bill Clinton could go forward immediately, a decision that was hailed by conservatives at the time.

What's good for the goose....

In a telephone interview with the Wall Street Journal (free link), Judith Miller Sunday explained how she came to look for and find her notes of her earlier converstion with Scooter Libby, the ones that led to her second grand jury testimony.

In a brief telephone interview Sunday, 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 Sunday.

I have gotten a few e-mails asking how Judith Miller can write an article about what she was asked during her grand jury appearances. The answer is that federal grand jury secrecy laws don't apply to witnesses before the grand jury or their lawyers, only to government prosecutors, agents, investigators and the like. Remember, Matthew Cooper did the same thing after his appearance.

Here is one of my prior explanations of the rule, which is Rule 6(e) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.

From that post (in the context of how to tell which side is leaking):

Time Magazine reports:

Another character in the drama remains unnamed: the original source for columnist Robert Novak, who wrote the first piece naming Plame. Fitzgerald, says a lawyer who's involved in the case, "knows who it is—and it's not someone at the White House."

Remember what Joseph Wilson said Novak told him initially?

I'm not sure this is big news as opposed to stating the obvious, but Time Magazine reports Rove and Libby will resign if indicted.

No wonder Judith Miller is now Fitzgerald's hero. Here's her lawyer, Bob Bennett, on ABC's "This Week" today when asked if Libby tried to influence Miller's testimony. [Update: BradBlog has the video.]:

"I wouldn't say the answer to that is yes, but it was very troubling," Bennett said on ABC's "This Week." "Our reaction when we got that letter, both Judy's and mine, is that was a very stupid thing to put in a letter because it just complicated the situation," Bennett said.

"It was a very foolish thing to put in a letter, as evidenced by the fact that you're highlighting it here," Bennett said. "It was a close call and she was troubled by it; no question about it."

The import of what Bennett is saying: Libby should have known Miller wouldn't lie for him and his letter was a suggestion that she should.