This weekend, ABC’s Jake Tapper argued that the New York Times’ attacks on Judith Miller have weakened her credibility, making her a less reliable witness should special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald decide to take the case to trial. Today, Josh Gerstein writes in the New York Sun that the criticism that Bill Keller, Maureen Dowd, Barney Calame and others have leveled against Miller has led some legal analysts to agree with Tapper’s assessment:

WASHINGTON – A recent barrage of attacks on the credibility of a New York Times reporter, Judith Miller, could affect a prosecutor’s decision about whether to bring indictments of White House officials in an investigation of the leak of a CIA operative’s identity, according to legal analysts.
Attorneys closely following the case said the sharp criticism Ms. Miller has received from her editors and colleagues may discourage the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, from bringing perjury charges against Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby.

GWU law professor Jonathan Turley called Miller a “target-rich environment for cross-examination.” Still, I’m not sure it would make much difference. The issue is going to be whether Libby learned Plame’s identity from journalists, as he told the grand jury, or from Dick Cheney, as reports are now suggesting. If those reports are correct, the conversation with Cheney happened before any meeting with Miller, so her testimony wouldn’t be all that important. Nevertheless, it would be ironic if the New York Times undermined a case against the administration it hates by attacking the credibility of its own reporter.