A former star reporter for the New York Times, Judith Miller "retired" atop a mushroom cloud of controversy in 2005 after becoming embroiled in the investigation into who leaked the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame. She's since gone on to become a commentator on Fox News and has written for the conservative outlet Newsmax.

Born in New York, Miller went to high school in Hollywood before graduating from Barnard and receiving her masters from Princeton. During her years at Princeton she traveled to Jerusalem and became fascinated by the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, which led to positions as a correspondent at The Progressive and National Public Radio. In the early aughts, she found her way to the New York Times, where she was mailed a hoax anthrax letter, the only person from a U.S. media outlet to receive a threat. She reported extensively on the subject and other security issues, particularly about the early aughts buzzword WMDs. Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and Donald Rumsfeld all sited Miller's work to be an impetus for going to war; however, many of her stories ended up being false or inaccurate. Yet the last straw in her NYT career came when she divulged CIA agent Valerie Plame's name to colleagues. She then refused to say who gave her the name (it was Cheney's Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby) and was charged with contempt of court. The controversy finally drove her away from the Times into the arms of ever-forgiving Rupert Murdoch as she's since worked for the Wall Street Journal and as a pundit for Fox News. [Image via Getty]