Who's Playing Chicken with the Special Prosecutor?

In his various submissions to the court, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has asserted that he knows who Judith Miller's source(s) are, and that those source(s) have signed waivers permitting Miller to testify. Miller has indicated, however, that she considers those waivers to be coerced, and she has not received a specific waiver from her source(s) allowing her to testify. If all of this is true, then someone is playing a very high-stakes game of chicken with the Special Prosecutor's Office. If Fitzgerald indeed knows who Miller's source is, then he knows that that person is deliberately impeding his investigation by refusing to provide her with the type of waiver she requires. It's hard to think of a more provocative gesture. Fitzgerald must be furious. Whoever it is is practically daring Fitzgerald to indict him/her. It's certainly not the behavior of someone who is attempting to cooperate with the prosecutor and thereby avoid indictment. Rather, whoever it is may be gambling that, absent Miller's testimony, Fitzgerald won't have enough evidence to prosecute and will therefore elect not to. That's a pretty big gamble. Needless to say, prosecutors don't like being jerked around like that. It's also possible that Miller's source has come to the conclusion that an indictment is inevitable and is now attempting to minimize the possible evidence that could be used against him/her at trial. Either way, it's a pretty dangerous game to be playing with the prosecutor's office.

There are, of course, two other possibilities. One is that, despite what he claimed in his court papers, Fitzgerald honestly doesn't know who Miller is protecting. If that's the case, Miller's source is gambling that she will keep her secret and Fitzgerald will never find out who it is that's impeding his investigation. The other possibility is that Miller has in fact received special waivers from her source(s) and is lying when she says she has not (perhaps to avoid revealing something personally embarrassing or incriminating). If this is the case, then her source(s), in order to avoid Fitzgerald's wrath, would surely have informed Fitzgerald that Miller was in fact given a specific waiver. If this is the case, he would know that Miller is lying and would likely seek criminal contempt charges against her.

The bottomline is that someone, whether it's Miller or one of her sources, is deliberately impeding this investigation, and it must make Fitzgerald furious. Don't expect him just to let it go.