Judy Miller's "found" notebook, Winpac, aspen clusters, and her vacations

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When I first heard that Miller "found" another notebook almost immediately after getting out of jail, I was pretty suspicious. I've worked with engineers who keep a notebook of all they work on and ideas they have. These notebooks can be vital in patent disputes, for instance, to establish who was thinking about or telling whom about what and when. Everything is dated, any gaps or missing notebooks are obvious, any phony fudged notebook that overlaps another is mighty suspicious. I can't imagine that journalists don't at least keep track of their notebooks, which they'll need for any discussions with editors and publishers or for any disputes about their credibility. That she had a notebook that she forgot about is inconceivable to me, and that a notebook was lost and was not an issue for being lost is equally inconceivable.

Then when an article (I think by her, but don't remember for sure) talked about that sentence in parentheses in her notes "Wife works for Winpac," I became really suspicious. For any who haven't heard, Winpac is a CIA group that does stuff about WMDs and such but isn't at all under cover. So this seems to show that maybe some of the people involved innocently didn't think Plame was doing anything secret. Yeah, right. So why has no one at any time during this whole two year episode ever mentioned the name Winpac before now? If that was legit, they'd have brought it up long before now, and corporate newsaganda would have made Winpac almost synonymous with CIA. Another angle on this relates to all the recent news about how this "incorrect fact" may lead Fitzgerald to find out where the misinformation came from. Or, I might add, it sends the prosecutor off on a wild goose chase.

This found notebook with the evidence of innocent misunderstanding doesn't pass even the most basic smell test for me.

Now I digress for a moment but will bring the digression back together. Back to when Judy was still in jail and Scooter sent her that cryptic, obviously coded message:

You went into jail in the summer. It is fall now. You will have stories to cover—Iraqi elections and suicide bombers, biological threats and the Iranian nuclear program. Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them. Come back to work—-and life. Until then, you will remain in my thoughts and prayers.

So far everyone seems to interpret that to mean that he's telling her that everyone is flipping and turning state's evidence or that all the "important" people at that conference in Aspen are dropping Bush, but that just doesn't feel right to me. Further, that statement "out west, where you vacation" has always struck me as odd from the first time I read it. Why would he need to remind her where she vacations?

My question is this: Does anyone know or has anyone even asked if she really does vacation out west? Here's what I'm getting at. In my Walter Mitty fantasies, one fantasy once was being held captive by (insert whatever criminal, terrorist, enemy group) and forced to write and sign some propaganda, confession, claim that I'm not being tortured, or whatever. How to communicate that what I'm writing is a lie and I don't really believe it? Insert some seemingly offhand, casual remark that will seem innocuous to anyone who doesn't know me but will tell someone who knows me that this isn't right. For example, "Go Raiders" would seem like a normal thing for someone from the San Francisco/Oakland area to say, but people who know me know I'm a 49ers fan. That would say "This whole document is a lie" or "This particular statement is a lie." A reminiscence about a love tryst or a trip or a vacation that never happened would do the same.

So, does Judy really vacation out West? Maybe Scooter is really saying, "Despite what you may fear, our group of aspens isn't turning. We're hanging together." Remember that this was before the news reports of someone in the White House having flipped.

Now look again at the sequence of sentences in the coded paragraph, particularly "stories to tell," "aspens turning (or not)," and "come back to work." You could paraphrase that sequence thus: "Judy, we've worked together on scamming propaganda stories and had/have plans for many more. Despite what you fear or may even have heard, we're all sticking together. We have another story to do now, and we need you to do it, so come back."

So she gets out of jail and immediately "finds" a notebook with a note that makes it all an innocent misunderstanding, at least for some of the people involved.

Alternatively, if she really does vacation out west, then the statement about the aspens turning and the seasons changing just says, time is slipping by, time is of the essence, get your butt out here where you can help us and save your own butt.

If Fitzgerald doesn't ask the grand jury for indictments today or Friday, I'm hoping it's because he's waiting for forensic tests on Judy's "found" notebook and for other investigation to determine questions such as these:

• Does the ink in the "Wife works at Winpac" sentence match the ink on the rest of that page? Same ink, same age, on paper and exposed to air the same amount of time?
  
• Is the whole notebook and the ink in it as old as it purports to be?
  
• Where does Judy Miller vacation?