She spent 85 days in jail over the summer for refusing to testify about her conversations with a ... Judith Miller Retires From

She spent 85 days in jail over the summer for refusing to testify about her conversations with a confidential source. But after her release, she was criticized harshly and publicly by Times editors and writers for her actions in the CIA leak case and for her reporting during the run-up to the Iraq war, later discredited, indicating that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.

"We are grateful to Judy for her significant personal sacrifice to defend an important journalistic principle," Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said in a statement. "I respect her decision to retire from The Times and wish her well."

The Times declined to disclose details of the severance package, but said the paper had agreed to print a letter from Miller in which she defended herself and explained her reasons for leaving.

"I have chosen to resign because over the last few months, I have become the news, something a New York Times reporter never wants to be," Miller wrote in the letter.

Even before her involvement in the CIA case, she added, she had "become a lightning rod for public fury over the intelligence failures that helped lead our country to war." The full text of the letter was available on Miller's Web site, judithmiller.org.

Speaking at a panel discussion Wednesday evening, she said she planned to take a break but already had begun to receive job offers. She planned to continue lobbying for passage of a federal shield law that would protect journalists from having to reveal their sources.

The paper had initially been publicly supportive of Miller, and waged a long and costly legal battle on her behalf after she refused to tell a grand jury about conversations she had with I. Lewis Libby, then chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, about CIA operative Valerie Plame. Plame is the wife of a Bush administration critic.

After Miller ultimately decided to testify, saying Libby had given her permission to do so, the Times ran an article depicting Miller as a rogue reporter who battled with editors and colleagues. In a subsequent staff memo, Times Executive Editor Bill Keller said Miller also appeared to have misled editors about her "entanglement" with Libby.

In a memo to the Times staff announcing Miller's departure, Keller lauded her "fierce determination and personal courage both in pursuit of the news and in resisting assaults on the freedom of news organizations to report."

He also circulated a letter he had sent to Miller, in which he clarified that he did not mean the word "entanglement" to imply that she had an improper relationship with Libby. He also softened his earlier statement that Miller had misled a Times editor, acknowledging that the editor in question did not himself claim to have been misled.

Miller told The Associated Press late Wednesday that the Times' decision to release Keller's letter was important. "I'm very glad that The New York Times has cleared this up," she said. "I never misled anyone."

Libby was indicted last month on charges that he lied to investigators trying to learn whether there was an intentional effort to blow Plame's cover.

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