JUDITH MILLER has been purged from The New York Times after going from journalistic martyr to outcast in a matter of weeks.

The former star reporter at the centre of the CIA leak inquiry retired from America’s leading daily on Wednesday after spending more than twice as long in prison as any other journalist in US history to protect a confidential source.

She said she was happy to be free from the “convent of The New York Times, a convent with its own theology and its own catechism.”

Her defenestration, which raises questions about the newspaper’s judgment, came as a fresh blow to The New York Times’s authority, already dented by the scandal over the rogue reporter Jayson Blair in 2003 that cost the two top editors their jobs.

Ms Miller’s 28-year career at the “Old Grey Lady” earned her a Pulitzer prize for her reporting on terrorism. But she became the focus of controversy with her headline-grabbing stories before the war about Iraq’s suspected weapons of mass destruction, which later turned out to be wrong.

The irony of her downfall is that she never wrote the story that put her behind bars. Until recently, The New York Times had defended her refusal to name the source who had identified Valerie Plame, the wife of a former US ambassador sent to Africa to investigate Iraq’s suspected nuclear programme, as a covert CIA agent.

The journalistic “diva”, now 57, spent 85 days in prison for refusing to reveal that Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice-President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, was her source. She finally agreed to testify before a grand jury and was freed from jail when Mr Libby released her from her pledge of confidentiality. He has since been indicted for lying about his role.

Almost as soon as she was freed, Ms Miller came under what she called a “tsunami” of criticism. Despite her friendship with New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr, the editor and much of the newsroom staff turned against her.

In an e-mail to staff, Bill Keller, the Editor, said Ms Miller “seems to have misled” the newspaper about her “entanglement” with Mr Libby. Columnist Maureen Dowd excoriated her in a piece headlined “Women of Mass Destruction”.

Byron Calame, the newspaper’s ombudsman, also pitched in. “The problems facing her inside and outside the newsroom will make it difficult for her to return to the paper as a reporter,” he wrote.

Mr Sulzberger reportedly suggested that she return in an editing capacity, but Ms Miller insisted on returning as a reporter. Mr Keller said the newsroom would not have her back.

In the end, the two sides agreed a severance package; Ms Miller was given her final say in a letter published yesterday. “Mainly 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,” she wrote.

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