Sulzberger Says It's Time To Put the Miller Case Behind Us, As She Describes Finding 'Flame' Notebook for First Time

By: E&P Staff Since The New York Times published its long-awaited probe of reporter Judith Miller's involvement in the Plame scandal this weekend, the paper's exeuctive editor and its publisher, and Miller herself, had remained silent. But the Wall Street Journal on Monday published brief but revealing comments by each.

Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., said he was satisfied by his newspaper's account and "we can all hope this period is behind us."

One gaping hole in the weekend account by a team of Times reporters, and in Miller's own first-person story, was the question of how and why she belatedly discovered the notebook that held ther notes of her first interview with "Scooter" Libby on June 23, 2003, which she turned over to the prosecutor earlier this month. This was the notebook that carried the now-famous notation "Valerie Flame."

Miller told the Wall Street Journal that she discovered the notebook in her office after being asked to seek out answers to another question from the prosecutor. "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 told the Journal.

She said she found the notebook in her office.

Talking to the Journal, she repeated that she couldn't recall who first told her about former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, even though that name became front-page news just three weeks after she wrote "Valerie Flame" in that notebook.

"I don't remember who told me the name," she said, growing agitated, as the Journal described it. "I wasn't writing a story, remember?" Asked if the other source was Mr. Rove, she replied, "I'm not going to discuss anyone else that I talked to."

The Journal also reached Executive Editor Bill Keller in China where he is visiting the paper's Beijing bureau. Keller replied by e-mail: "Knowing everything I know today about this case, I might have done some things differently, but I don't feel the least bit apologetic about standing up for a reporter's right to do the job."

Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for the Times reiterated that, despite the uproar over the weekend articles, Miller "was expected to return to the newsroom at some point."