...adding, some actual coverage from Hardball yesterday:
MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL.
Another day of testimony in the Scooter Libby trial. Former “New York Times” reporter Judith Miller took the stand today, the first time she testified publicly against Libby, who was the source she chose to protect, leading her to spend several weeks—many weeks in jail.
HARDBALL‘s David Shuster is standing by at the courthouse.
David, I was shook today to hear that Scooter Libby told Judy Miller, told Judy Miller, that it was the vice president‘s inquiry about a uranium deal in Africa that led to Joe Wilson‘s trip. This is the first time we‘ve heard out of the vice president‘s office, even secondhand, ad admission, a confession that that trip was because of a question raised by the veep, not because Mrs. Wilson, Valerie Plame, thought her husband needed a junket.
DAVID SHUSTER, MSNBC CORRESPONDENT: Right, I mean, it was the missing piece of the puzzle that the vice president‘s office has been loathe to acknowledge these last three years and that certainly Scooter Libby has not want to come out of this trial. But it did happen when Judy Miller was testifying about a conversation with Scooter Libby in June of 2003. And she testified that Scooter Libby brought up Joe and Valerie Wilson.
And it was during this testimony, when Judy Miller said that she was told by Libby about the genesis of Joe Wilson‘s trip, and that it was the vice president who had asked the CIA about an intense report that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger in 2002, and that, according to Miller, Libby told her that the CIA then followed it up with Joe Wilson, but that Libby was also adamant, according to Miller, in saying the vice president‘s office didn‘t know anything about this trip, the vice president‘s office didn‘t get a report from the CIA, it was the fault of the CIA.
And, Chris, what was so remarkable is the glimpse that Judy Miller‘s testimony offered us again, about the extent that—extent to which the vice president‘s office wanted to blame everybody else for the faulty intelligence. They were blaming the CIA for not getting back to the vice president‘s office. They were blaming the State Department and the Energy Department for having a footnote in a report that expressed the dissension about what aluminum tubes were for. And according to Miller, Libby said, “It‘s not our fault that we didn‘t see this in this report.”
It was always somebody else‘s fault. And it goes to the idea, Chris, that even after the war had begun, the vice president‘s office was adamant about suggesting that everybody else was unanimous in agreeing that Iraq was trying to expand a nuclear program.