Will Libby's Lawyer be indicted for obstruction?

Murray Waas has reported another of his outstanding articles on the Plame case.

In this article he describes how Judy Miller went to jail for 80 some days to avoid testifying to the Grand Jury about what her source told her regarding Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA officer. Miller went to jail, she said, because while "Scooter" Libby had given her a general release that said any reporter could testify to anything he said, she felt that since Libby would have been fired from the White House had he not signed it, it was signed under duress. Libby finally sent her a letter and told her the release was valid, and then spoke to her by phone telling her the same thing, so that Miller has now been released from jail and has testified regarding what she knows.

So why did it take nearly three months with her in jail for Libby to let her know she could testify? Seems like that should have happened within days of the contempt judgment.

Miller's attorney, Floyd Abrams, stated that Libby's attorney, Joseph A. Tate,

had indicated to him that Libby had considered the general waiver by its very nature to have indeed been coercive. "In our conversations," Abrams wrote to Tate, "you did not say that Mr. Libby's written waiver was uncoerced. In fact, you said quite the opposite. You told me that the signed waiver was by its nature coerced and had been required as a condition for Mr. Libby's continued employment at the White House. You compared the coercion to that inherent in the effective bar imposed upon White House employees asserting the Fifth Amendment. A failure by your client to sign the written waiver, you explained, like any assertion by your client of the Fifth Amendment, would result in his dismissal. You persuasively mocked the notion that any waiver signed under such circumstances could be deemed voluntary."

Tate denies that he said any such thing.

If, however, there is evidence found by Fitzgerald that Tate did make such statements designed to prevent Miller from testifying, then that is legal obstruction of an on-going investigation.

A senior Justice Department official said in an interview that "any affirmative statement or action" that "would discourage Miller might be construed to be an obstruction of justice." The official, who has no direct involvement with the Plame probe, requested to speak on the condition of anonymity due to the political sensitivity of the investigation. "Any thorough prosecutor is going to look long and hard at that," the official said.

Dan Richman, a professor at Fordham Law School and a former federal prosecutor for the southern district of New York, said in an interview that while he could not speak specifically as to what occurred between Tate and Abrams, "[A]n attorney encouraging a witness to withhold information from a grand jury when the witness had no right to withhold is engaging in obstructive behavior."

Richman suggested that because Fitzgerald has already been investigating allegations of perjury and obstruction of justice by officials of the Bush administration, the prosecutor might be motivated to examine additional evidence of such conduct because it might demonstrate a pattern of behavior.

Looks like Tate could be named in one of the indictments when Fitzgerald finishes his investigation.

The Grand Jury term is up October 31, 2005, so it will be soon. Sort of like waiting for Christmas.