Miller sees 'assault' on leaks

[Algorem]

http://www.palmbeachdailynews.com/news/content/news/Miller_0116.html


Former 'New York Times' journalist decries government attacks on press freedom.

By DAVID ROGERS, Daily News Staff Writer

Monday, January 16, 2006

Journalism is under attack by a government interested in tightly controlling information — and is being weakened by complacency in the profession, according to former New York Times reporter Judith Miller.

Miller spent 85 days last year at the Alexandria Detention Center in Virginia before agreeing to testify about conversations with Lewis "Scooter" Libby, then chief of staff for the vice president, in connection with the leak of Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA agent in 2003.

Miller, a former Washington bureau chief who specialized in national security issues, had been with the Times for nearly 30 years. Last summer, she found herself at the center of a political firestorm.

Conservative columnist Robert Novak revealed Plame's identify in an article in July 2003, eight days after Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, accused the Bush administration, in an opinion piece in the Times, of using falsified documents to claim the Iraq government was attempting to buy uranium from Niger to build nuclear weapons...