Sept. 30 (Bloomberg) -- New York Times reporter Judith Miller said she testified before a grand jury today only after a source personally released her from a pledge of confidentiality and the prosecutor agreed to limit his questions.

Miller's decision yesterday to cooperate with the investigation of the leak of a CIA officer's name ended an 85-day stay in jail for contempt. She said after her appearance in a Washington court today that she decided to testify after her source assured her in writing and by phone that she was free from her pledge of confidentiality.

``I concluded from this my source genuinely wanted me to testify,'' she said. Although Miller didn't identify the source today, the New York Times reported that he is Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's top aide.

Miller, 57, said she would have stayed in jail ``even longer'' if she hadn't ``achieved these two things, the personal waiver and the narrow testimony.'' She declined to describe her testimony, saying only that it was limited to her contacts with her source.

Her agreement to testify suggests that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is winding up his investigation into whether someone in President George W. Bush's administration revealed the name of Central Intelligence Agency operative Valerie Plame to reporters in July 2003.

Rove

The probe also has ensnared Karl Rove, Bush's deputy chief of staff and longtime political adviser. He was named by a Time magazine reporter as a confidential source, though not as one who disclosed Plame's identity.

Bernard Grimm, a Washington criminal defense lawyer, said Fitzgerald would not have gone to the ``extraordinary lengths'' of jailing Miller unless he was pursuing a serious criminal investigation.

``There obviously has to be something larger going on for him to take this kind of action,'' Grimm said. ``When you lock up a reporter, you're essentially locking up the First Amendment, and no prosecutor is going to do that in any kind of casual way.''

Fitzgerald said in court papers in June that the probe is mostly complete except for an interview of Miller and Time's Matthew Cooper. Cooper testified in July; the grand jury's term ends Oct. 28.

Fitzgerald

In addition to the probe into who revealed Plame's name, Fitzgerald is investigating whether administration officials made false statements during the course of the investigation.

Miller said that she ``went to jail to preserve the time- honored principle that a journalist must respect a promise not to reveal the identity of a confidential source.''

``It's good to be free,'' said Miller, who was ordered confined in an Alexandria, Virginia detention center for contempt of court on July 6, after the Supreme Court rejected her argument that reporters are protected by the Constitution's First Amendment free-press guarantee.

Miller's lawyers reached agreement with Fitzgerald ``regarding the nature and scope of my testimony, which satisfies my obligation as a reporter to keep faith with my sources,'' she said yesterday.

New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller said yesterday that initially Miller ``had only a generic waiver'' of her vow not to reveal her source, ``and she believed she had ample reason to doubt it had been freely given. In recent days, several important things have changed that convinced Judy that she was released from her obligation.''

`Intense Negotiations'

The newspaper said on its Web site that Miller's lawyers had ``intense negotiations'' with Libby's lawyer, Joseph Tate, that were ``sometimes strained.''

Robert Bennett, Miller's lawyer, said that Libby made contact with her on Sept. 19 and authorized ``her to go forward.''

``This was the first time that there was this personal communication,'' Bennett said today on CNN. He said Miller didn't attempt to make contact with her source for permission to testify because such an approach may have looked like an attempt at ``coercion.''

Miller and Libby talked by phone this month and Libby released her from the confidentiality promise regarding their 2003 conversation, the paper said. Libby asserted he gave his waiver more than a year ago, the Times said.

Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of the newspaper, said in a statement last night that, ``We are very pleased that she has finally received a direct and uncoerced waiver, both by phone and in writing, releasing her from any claim of confidentiality and enabling her to testify.''

White House spokesman Scott McClellan declined to answer questions about the grand jury, saying the White House has a policy of not commenting on an ``ongoing investigation.''

``The president doesn't know all the facts,'' McClellan said.

Novak Column

A spokesman for Cheney, Steve Schmidt, declined to comment and referred calls to Libby's lawyer, Tate, in Philadelphia, who wasn't available for comment, a spokeswoman for his office said.

The case was sparked by a July 14, 2003, syndicated newspaper column by Robert Novak that revealed Plame's name and CIA association. He cited ``two senior administration officials'' as saying Plame was responsible for sending her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, on a mission to Niger to look into claims Iraq was trying to obtain uranium yellowcake for nuclear weapons.

Plame also was named in a Time.com report written by Cooper and published July 17, 2003.

Opinion Article

A week earlier, Wilson wrote an opinion article published in the New York Times criticizing the administration's decision to go to war with Iraq and saying some of the intelligence used to justify the March 2003 invasion had been ``twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.'' He has accused the Bush administration of leaking his wife's name to intimidate him and other critics.

It is a federal crime to knowingly reveal the identity of a covert agent, and the CIA asked for an investigation. After the Justice Department formally opened a probe, Bush said he ordered his staff to cooperate with investigators and vowed to fire anyone who committed a crime by leaking the agent's name.

According to the Washington Post, Libby in 2004 offered waivers of confidentiality to four reporters: Cooper, of Time, Tim Russert of NBC, and Walter Pincus and Glenn Kessler of the Post. All four have either testified or given depositions.

After appearing before the grand jury, Cooper wrote in Time that while he learned from Rove that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, the Bush adviser never mentioned her name. Novak has not said whether he has testified or been questioned under oath.

Miller continued to refuse to testify and was jailed. Though she never wrote about Plame, according to the New York Times she met with Libby July 8, 2003, and talked with him by telephone later that week.

To contact the reporter on this story: Catherine Dodge in Washington at Cdodge1@bloomberg.net;

Last Updated: September 30, 2005 17:29 EDT