CIA-leak reporter to leave New York Times

NEW YORK - Reporter Judith Miller, a journalist at the centre of the CIA leak controversy that led to the indictment of a White House aide, will leave the New York Times, the paper said.

Miller's lawyers and the paper negotiated a severance package, terms of which were not disclosed. As part of the agreement, the paper will publish a letter from Miller explaining her position, the Times said on its website.

Miller, a Pulitzer-prize winner who worked at the paper for 28 years, went to jail for 85 days this summer rather than name her source in the CIA leak case.

She eventually obtained assurances from her source, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, that she could testify about their conversations.

Libby was charged on October 28 with obstructing justice, perjury and lying in the two-year investigation into the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity after her diplomat husband Joseph Wilson criticised the Iraq War.

After the indictment Libby resigned and has since pleaded not guilty.

Miller, 57, who covered national security for the Times, had faced criticism for stories she wrote on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that turned out to be based on faulty information supplied by Iraqi exiles.

According to nytimes.com, Miller wrote in her letter, to be published in the Times on Thursday, that she had become a "lightning rod for public fury over the intelligence failures that helped lead our country to war" and wanted to leave the paper because she had "become the news."

Executive Editor Bill Keller was quoted in the Times as saying the paper had been hurt by delays in "coming clean" over lapses in its reporting that supported US allegations of Iraqi weapons programmes, much of which was written by Miller.

In a letter to the Times staff released on Wednesday, Keller said Miller had "displayed fierce determination and personal courage both in pursuit of the news and in resisting assaults on the freedom of news organisations to report."

- REUTERS