Miller gave prosecutors meeting notes belatedly

WASHINGTON — The New York Times' Judith Miller belatedly gave prosecutors her notes of a key meeting in the CIA leak probe only after being shown White House records of it, and her boss declared Friday she appeared to have misled the newspaper about her role.

In a dramatic e-mail, Executive Editor Bill Keller wrote Times' employees he wished he'd more carefully interviewed Miller and had "missed what should have been significant alarm bells" that she had been the recipient of leaked information about the CIA officer at the heart of the case.

"Judy seems to have misled (Times Washington bureau chief) Phil Taubman about the extent of her involvement," Keller wrote in what he described as a lessons-learned e-mail. "This alone should have been enough to make me probe deeper."

Keller said he might have been more willing to compromise with Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald "if I had known the details of Judy's entanglement" with Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Miller said in an interview reported by the New York Times that Keller's statements were "seriously inaccurate." She also provided The Times with a copy of a memorandum she sent to Keller in response.

"I certainly never meant to mislead Phil, nor did I mislead him," she wrote to Keller, referring to Taubman.

She wrote that, as she had said in an account in The Times last Sunday, she had discussed Wilson and his wife with government officials, but "I was unaware that there was a deliberate, concerted disinformation campaign to discredit Wilson and that if there had been, I did not think I was a target of it."

She added: "As for your reference to my 'entanglement' with Libby, I had no personal, social, or other relationship with him except as a source."

Fitzgerald is investigating the disclosure of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity.

In a sign the prosecutor may be preparing indictments, Fitzgerald's office erected a Web site Friday containing the record of the broad investigative mandate handed to him by the Justice Department at the outset of his investigation. Unlike some of his predecessors who operated under a law that has since expired, Fitzgerald is not required to write a final report, so he would not need a Web site for that purpose.

Meanwhile, two lawyers familiar with Fitzgerald's investigation told The Associated Press that Fitzgerald first learned from White House records that Miller had met as early as June 23, 2003, with Libby and discussed the CIA operative.