EDITOR: JUDITH MILLER 'MISLED' NEW YORK TIMES

Next stop: Pinkslip Town. John Solomon of The Associated Press breaks the story:

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 reportedly tried to hose the special prosecutor by playing cute and not remembering a June meeting with Libby. Only when confronted with Secret Service logs showing a June 23 meeting in the Old Executive Office building did Miller break and acknowledge there "may have been" a meeting.

But -- aha! -- Miller also played another excuse: She had just gotten back from "covering" the Iraq War and "was probably giving Libby an update about her experiences there," The AP reported.

Giving Libby an update. So that's what the kids are calling it these days.