Keller On Miller's Life Behind Bars: Bad Food But Good Spirits

By: Joe Strupp As Judith Miller of The New York Times approaches the end of her second week in a Virginia jail, reports from behind bars reveal she is enduring stomach problems from jail food. She is also sharing a cell unit that had originally been designed to house just one person. Because of that, Miller had been forced to sleep on a mattress on the floor for a few days but now has her own bed.

"It has definitely dawned on her that this is really in jail -- it is certainly no summer camp," Times Executive Editor Bill Keller told E&P Monday. "The food has not agreed with her and we have been trying to impress on her that she needs to eat. We have been hammering that in."

Surprisingly few stories about Miller's experience in jail have emerged, with just one such story in her own paper. "I don't want to cross over the line into using the newspaper as a promotional vehicle for her case," Keller explained. "The story she is caught up in is a big story -- to the extent she is news we will write about it. We aren't going to start writing a Judy story everyday just to drum up sympathy. That becomes advocacy instead of journalism."

Keller added that Miller has also been cautious about doing any press interviews, saying "there is always a chance it could antagonize the judge. If I were her, I would not want to take a chance, they still control her life." When asked if Miller might write something first-person about her time in jail, Keller said, "nothing I want to talk about."

Keller said Miller had been trying to answer the many letters she has received "as much as she can." Her time is also occupied with reading from the prison library and watching CNN and Fox News when other prisoners do not keep the shared television on hip-hop and rap music videos. "Those seem to be the favorite of the cell block," the editor said.

When he visited Miller last Tuesday, she "looked really thin to me" and as though "she had not been eating," Keller reported. But, he said her spirits were high, noting "she is feisty and she is firm in her resolve that she is doing the right thing." Keller added that Miller "has had a fairly regular stream of visitors. She sees the lawyers or people from the lawyers' offices several times a week, or she sees [attorney] Floyd [Abrams]."

Miller has been incarcerated since July 6, when U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Hogan ordered her to jail for refusing to reveal her source in the ongoing Valerie Plame case. She could spend up to four months behind bars for refusing to disclose who revealed the identity of Plame, a former CIA agent, to her.

She is serving her time in the "non-violent" wing of the Alexandria Detention Center in Alexandria, Va., Keller said. Her first visitor from the paper was Times Washington bureau chief Philip Taubman, with Publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. planning to visit soon.

Keller said others from the paper have signed up for visits with her attorney, while some have also received collect calls from her. The jail allows prisoners to make unlimited collect calls out, but not to take incoming calls.

"We are trying to pace out the visitors over time," Keller said. "So she is aware we are with her. So she doesn't get a lot of visitors right away and then none for a while."

Although visitors are limited to 30 minutes with each inmate, speaking through plastic partitions, Keller said he got about 45 minutes with Miller during his visit due to a lockdown earlier in the day limiting previous visiting times.

"I was trying to get a feel for what her life was like, and let her know what was going on at the paper," Keller said. "She has been getting a lot of mail, from friends and colleagues, from sympathizers and readers. Very heavily supportive." But, Keller added that "everyone gets some wacko mail."

Miller "hasn't had any difficulty with other women in the cell block," Keller said. "She seems to be on fairly genial terms with some of them. I think everyone in there knows what she's in for. She has a higher public profile than most."

Keller also declined to discuss which legal options her attorneys were pursuing to possibly have Miller released early: "My hope would be that [Special Prosecutor Patrick] Fitzgerald would end the investigation and disband the grand jury so she can get out."