I cannot believe I an blogging about this. But the NYT story is troubling and so is its coverage. Instead of focusing on Miller, the focus should be on the prosecutor who caved in and, more disturbingly, is about to take out his own failure on the wrong people. The fact that Libby and Rove are powerful should not make them acceptable fall guys. Here are the crucial quotes. The first one is before Miller went to jail:

Mr. Abrams said he wanted Mr. Fitzgerald to question Ms. Miller only on her conversations with Mr. Libby about Ms. Wilson. And he wanted a promise that Mr. Fitzgerald would not call her back for further questioning after she testified once.

Note that Abrams implication is that he was willing to let Miller testify about Libby. The problem was testifying about another person. That was also Libby's impression. But Fitzgerald refused the limitation.

Ms. Miller said she was persuaded."I mean, it's like the tone of the voice," she said."When he talked to me about how unhappy he was that I was in jail, that he hadn't fully understood that I might have been going to jail just to protect him. He had thought there were other people whom I had been protecting. And there was kind of like an expression of genuine concern and sorrow."

But as the grand jury is about to disband, Fitzgerald caves. The Miller-Libby conference call is nothing but an exercise designed to cover up the prosecutor's backtracking.

Mr. Bennett, who by now had carefully reviewed Ms. Miller's extensive notes taken from two interviews with Mr. Libby, assured Mr. Fitzgerald that Ms. Miller had only one meaningful source. Mr. Fitzgerald agreed to limit his questions to Mr. Libby and the Wilson matter.

If this is a basis for indictment, the system is broken.