[Mb-civic] Jailed Reporter Is Distanced From News, Not Elite Visitors - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Jailed Reporter Is Distanced From News, Not Elite Visitors

By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 17, 2005; Page A01

Locked in the Alexandria Detention Center for the past 11 weeks, New 
York Times reporter Judith Miller is cut off from the world. She has no 
Internet access and precious little opportunity to view CNN. Her phone 
calls are limited, friends say. Her daily newspaper arrives a day late.

But for 30 minutes nearly every day, the world comes to her: A parade of 
prominent government and media officials, 99 in all, visited Miller 
between early July, when she was jailed for refusing to be questioned by 
a federal prosecutor, and Labor Day, according to a document obtained by 
The Washington Post.

The who's who of friends, supporters and Washington and New York 
luminaries includes John R. Bolton, President Bush's new ambassador to 
the United Nations, former "NBC Nightly News" anchor Tom Brokaw and 
former senator Robert J. Dole (R-Kan.). Gonzalo Marroquin, president of 
the Inter-American Press Society and director of the Guatemalan daily 
Prensa Libre has been by.

Most say they want to rally her spirits and show support for what they 
believe is the right of a free press to protect confidential sources.

"Judy Miller is the most innocent person in this case," Brokaw said in 
an interview yesterday. "I really thought that was outrageous that she 
was jailed and we needed as journalists to draw a line in the sand in a 
strong but thoughtful way."

Miller was jailed July 6 after a federal judge found her in contempt of 
court for repeatedly refusing to cooperate with special counsel Patrick 
J. Fitzgerald in the Valerie Plame leak case. Fitzgerald has been 
investigating whether Bush administration officials broke the law by 
leaking the name of Plame, then an undercover CIA operative, to the 
media in retaliation for criticism of the administration leveled by 
Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/16/AR2005091601646.html
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