Oh, hey, good to have you here. Just grab a cold one. Bob will be with you in a sec. He's just tending to the stakes.

Mmm, summer and grilling. They're made for each other, right? And that's why all this August, you're invited to Bob's Grill, a collection of interviews from over the years where one person takes on the role of the chef, that's Bob in the apron, and the other person, well...

We launched the series this week with an interview I did in 2005 with former New York Times journalist Judith Miller.

Back in 2002, Miller co-wrote a crucially influential article citing unnamed, quote, American officials and, quote,

intelligence experts, claiming that Iraq's purchase of aluminum tubes proved that it was

actively seeking to build a nuclear weapon. The Bush White House used that piece, leaked to the

Times, as supposed independent verification of Saddam's threat

to the region. So there was that. Plus, and I admit that this gets a little complicated,

Miller was jailed for contempt of court in the Valerie Plame leak investigation. Now, Plame was a

CIA operative whose cover was blown after her husband,

Joseph Wilson, a former diplomat, wrote in a Times op-ed in which he argued that, quote,

some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate

the Iraqi threat.

Are you still with me here?

Miller never wrote about Plain, but she had information relevant to the leak investigation,

and she refused to give up her source, and so chose to sit behind bars for 85 days

until getting the go-ahead from her source,

senior White House official Scooter Libby, to name him in the Plame affair. And adding insult

to injury, Miller left jail only to be vilified for her pre-war stories about supposed Iraqi

weapons of mass destruction and for her conduct as a reporter.

Much of the criticism stemmed from her own 3,000-word article describing her conversations with Libby,

who was later indicted in the leak probe.

...