Miller: Libby reveals CIA agent earlier than confessed

BEIJING, Jan. 31 (Xinhuanet) -- A U.S. star journalist testified Tuesday in Washington that former vice presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby identified Valerie Plame, a CIA operative, to her on two occasions.

Judith Miller, the journalist, said her two meetings with Libby came on June 23 and July 8, 2003 -- earlier than the dates Libby told FBI investigators, according to media reports Wednesday.

Miller said Libby mentioned Plame, wife of a prominent Iraq war critic, as a CIA employee "in the face-to-face meetings."

Libby, then Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, however, told the FBI and a grand jury that he heard Plame's CIA job for the first time from NBC's Tim Russert on July 10, 2003.

But five U.S. government officials have also testified that Libby discussed Plame and her CIA job with them before the date he gave to the FBI.

Libby resigned after he was charged with lying to investigators in the case.

Libby is not accused of leaking Plame's job but of perjury and obstruction of the investigation into how her name was leaked. The discrepancy over when Libby learned about Plame is a major element in the charges on which he is being tried.

Miller, The New York Times' star journalist until she resigned in late 2005, has spent 85 days in jail because of resisting court orders to disclose who told her about Plame's identity. Citing confidentiality, she resisted revealing her source and was released from jail last year.

The media said the Plame case goes to the heart of criticism that the White House deliberately twisted intelligence about Iraq's purported weapons programs in order to justify the Iraq war.

Plame's husband Joseph Wilson challenged the administration assertions that Iraq had tried to buy uranium in Africa for a nuclear weapons program, saying he had investigated the claim for the CIA on a visit to Niger and found no evidence, and went public on July 6, 2003.