With everyone inside the Beltway and media universe holding their breath, The New York Times's much-clamored for investigation of its reporter Judy Miller's 85-day jail stint for refusing to testify in Plame-gate, and an accompanying "personal account" by Miller herself, were published today.

When it came to unearthing the kind of smoking gun that could make prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's day, the Times's post-mortem probably fell short. But when it came to opening the window on the sausage factory that is the Times's newsroom it largely delivered, portraying management's uneasy and sometimes undisciplined relationship with a controversial bigfoot reporter who put the paper's reputation and credibility on the line and in the national spotlight.

Those hoping that Miller would use this opportunity to dramatically and unflinchingly finger her source -- Vice-President Dick Cheney's chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby -- for culpability in leaking the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame to retaliate against Plame's husband and Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson will likely be disappointed.

"My notes do not show that Mr. Libby identified Mr. Wilson's wife by name. Nor do they show that he described Valerie Wilson as a covert agent or 'operative," wrote Miller in the Times. Perhaps more notably, Miller said she was unable to identify Libby as the source for two notations in her notebook that contained erroneous versions of Plame's name -- "Valerie Flame" and "Victoria Wilson."

Those harboring the deeper, darker conspiracy theories about Miller -- that she was actually the source of Plame's name or that she cynically opted for incarceration to rehabilitate a reputation damaged by faulty reporting on pre-war Iraq -- will not be comforted by today's accounts. While Miller may have been the only one to do time so far for Plame-gate, there's nothing to suggest that she's the perpetrator here.

Miller was portrayed as standing tall on principle: "She'd given her pledge of confidentiality," the paper quoted Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. as saying. "She was prepared to honor that. We were going to support her." Miller also stressed that she was unwilling to break her promise of confidentiality to Libby until she received a letter and phone call last month making it unequivocally clear that he wanted her to testify. Asked why she finally made a pro-active effort to seek Libby's okay after several months in jail, Miller said: "I owed it to myself to see whether or not Libby had a change of heart."

Despite the lack of any clear-cut blockbusters, none of this frees Libby, Karl Rove or the Bush administration itself from suspicion or scrutiny in this mess which at its core, is about the White House's bogus rationale for war, its treatment of those who had the temerity to dissent, and the blame game that ensued after the alleged WMD proved MIA.

And if Miller's account today -- complete with some frustrating memory lapses -- seemed to let Libby off the hook at some key junctures, it didn't exactly put him miles away from the scene of the crime either.

Miller did say that "Mr. Libby told me that Mr. Wilson's wife may have worked on unconventional weapons at the C.I.A.," that Libby offered lengthy and pointed criticisms of Wilson, and that he tried to blame the CIA and insulate Cheney from responsibility in the WMD fiasco. The Times account also raises an alarming discrepancy between Miller and Libby's lawyer about whether Libby wanted to control Miller's testimony.

After an early discussion between Times attorney Floyd Abrams and Libby's attorney Joseph Tate, Miller said Abrams told her that Tate "was pressing about what you would say. When I wouldn't give him an assurance that you would exonerate Libby, if you were to cooperate, he then immediately gave me this 'Don't go there, or, we don't want you there.'" In an email to the Times, Tate disputed that version of events, saying "I never once suggested that she should not testify. It was just the opposite. I told Mr. Abrams that the waiver was voluntary."

If the Times was hamstrung by the "he said, she said" method of resolving that crucial disagreement, the reporters on today's main story -- Don Van Natta Jr., Adam Liptak, and Clifford J. Levy -- seemed more certain in their portrayal of Miller's uncomfortable relationship with her own paper.

Interspersed throughout the story were damning flashes of communication and ego issues, some of which even harken eerily back to the systemic internal problems that came to light in wake of the Jayson Blair fiasco:

1) In describing management's willingness to cede the major decisions regarding Plame-gate to Miller, the story called her "an intrepid reporter whom editors found hard to control." Keller was quoted saying "I wish it had been a clear-cut whistleblower case. I wish it had been a reporter who came with less public baggage."

2) Another passage said that "Inside the newsroom, she was a divisive figure. A few colleagues refused to work with her."

3) The story recounted how one former Times editor said that Miller had called herself "Miss Run Amok." When he asked what that meant, the editor said Miller replied: "I can do whatever I want."

4) Before she became something of a media martyr by going to jail, Miller's reputation had been badly tarnished by her too unquestioning reporting of claims that Saddam Hussein was developing WMD. In May 2004, the Times published an extraordinary editors' note acknowledging problems with some of that coverage, but not mentioning Miller by name. (New York magazine seized on the situation to publish an unflattering portrayal of Miller that focused on everything from her prickly personality to her sex life.) In today's Times account, Miller finally offered a modified mea culpa by saying "W.M.D. -- I got it totally wrong. The analysts, the experts and the journalists who covered them -- we were all wrong. If your sources are wrong, you are wrong. I did the best job that I could."

5) Other parts of today's Times story raised troubling issues about Miller's coverage of the run-up to the war. The reporters noted that after Miller's supervising editor left the Times in 2002, "Ms. Miller operated with a degree of autonomy rare at The Times." (Sounds like "Miss Run Amok," to me.)

6) After Keller succeeded Howell Raines as the Times's executive editor in the summer of 2003, he told Miller that she was off the Iraq and WMD beat. But in today's story, Keller was quoted, remarkably enough, saying "she kept kind of drifting on her own back into the national security realm." (Sounds like "Miss Run Amok" to me.)

7) There are also a few hints at strains between Miller and her employer. For one thing, the reporters said that in interviewing her for this story, "Miller generally would not discuss her interactions with editors, elaborate on the written account of her grand jury testimony or allow reporters to review her notes."

8) In one obvious and strange disagreement, Miller said she strongly recommended that an article about Wilson and Plame be pursued. Jill Abramson, then the paper's Washington bureau chief, said no such recommendation was ever made. Also in today's story, Abramson, now a Times managing editor, was asked what she regretted about the paper's handling of Plame-gate and responded: "The entire thing."

9) Today's story referenced the tremendous internal tensions at the Times as reporters and editors became increasingly frustrated by the constraints in covering a story in which one of their reporters was a central figure. Both Abramson and her successor as Washington bureau chief, Philip Taubman, described the predicament as "excruciatingly difficult."

10) When Miller returned to the Times newsroom in early October after being freed from jail, it does not sound like she was greeted as a returning hero. The post-mortem tellingly reported that "she made a speech claiming victories for press freedom. Her colleagues responded with restrained applause, seemingly as mystified by the outcome of her case as the public."

There's nothing in today's Times revelations to argue that Judy Miller deserved to be locked up behind bars for refusing to testify about a confidential source. But there was plenty to suggest that the Times has paid a major price for again failing in its oversight of a strong-willed reporter who had generated internal skepticism about work habits and work product. And that sounds all too familiar.