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October 15, 2005
Times Report on Judith Miller: Key Moments, My Comments, and What the Blogs SayHere are my initial annotations of the big report. Key passages and brief comments. (Do add your own.) Plus my eight paragraph summary of the case and its press think.I give credit to the Times for running the story a few days after they felt the legal clearances were had, for giving readers a look inside at decision-making normally hidden, for airing uncomfortable facts—including internal tensions—and for explaining what happened as well as the editors felt they could. This was a very difficult piece of journalism to do. As language in conveyance of fact, it is superbly edited. I have a small bit of news to break if you skip down to “After Matter.” My eight-graph view of the case and its mangled press think: Maybe the biggest mistake the New York Times made was to turn decision-making for the newspaper over to Judith Miller and her “case.” This happened via the magic medium of a First Amendment struggle, the thing that makes the newspaper business more than just a business to the people prominent in it. But her second attorney saw it more clearly. “I don’t want to represent a principle,” Robert Bennett told her. “I want to represent Judy Miller.” He did that. The Times was the one left holding the principles. On to some key moments in the report, The Miller Case: From a Name on a Pad to Jail, and Back. My eye fell on these passages. I explain a little about why. And when the prosecutor in the case asked her to explain how “Valerie Flame” appeared in the same notebook she used in interviewing Mr. Libby, Ms. Miller said she “didn’t think” she heard it from him. “I said I believed the information came from another source, whom I could not recall,” she wrote on Friday, recounting her testimony for an article that appears today…. Miller cannot recall where the name at the center of the case came from? Wowzer. Sure to be the center of controversy over the next week. Claiming memory loss about the most important fact in the story is weak. Very. Miller actually subtracts from public knowledge in this part, a feat. She introduces into the narrative a new “source” who must have been around to plant the name on her, and then promptly tells us she cannot remember anything about him. So we know less if we believe her. Mr. Sulzberger and the paper’s executive editor, Bill Keller, knew few details about Ms. Miller’s conversations with her confidential source other than his name. They did not review Ms. Miller’s notes. Mr. Keller said he learned about the “Valerie Flame” notation only this month. Mr. Sulzberger was told about it by Times reporters on Thursday. Like I said, it became Judy Miller’s newspaper. Her decision-making, I said on CNN, was driving the newspaper’s. Mr. Sulzberger is the publisher; the Times is a public company. Isn’t his hand supposed to be on the wheel for the newspaper as a public trust? This car had her hand on the wheel… I know what he meant. It was her call on whether to “end” the case by testifying. But it was his call when the Times declared her case a First Amendment struggle and matter of high journalistic principle. Because the particular high principle invoked by Miller—protecting a reporter’s sources—in this case tied their hands for later stages of the fight their strategy brought on. They turned over the wheel to Judy Miller; her games of telepathy with Libby became the case “logic.” Just ask yourself when you re-read the Times report, who was actually in charge of these events? “We have everything to be proud of and nothing to apologize for,” Ms. Miller said in the interview Friday. Ms. Miller seems incapable of self-doubt. Is this the person you want driving the car in a game of chicken with a federal prosecutor? Asked what she regretted about The Times’s handling of the matter, Jill Abramson, a managing editor, said: “The entire thing.”… Indeed. In two interviews, Ms. 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 I called this The Hypothesis: “Judy Miller would not, in any material way, cooperate with the team of Times reporters.” (See Armchair Critic Speculates, Oct. 12.) Seems like she didn’t. What principle of confidentiality extends to “interactions with editors?” I am not aware of one the Times would uphold. And how’s this for corporate candor? The Washington Post reported today: “Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis said yesterday that Miller is now cooperating with fellow reporters on the story.” Odd definition of cooperating. (See “After Matter” for an update on it.) This, I think, is what will finally sever Judy Miller from the Times: Ms. Miller generally would not discuss… Not forgivable in the newsroom’s moral code. Your colleagues are trying to finally tell the truth and get it right— and you won’t help? (Editor & Publisher’s Greg Mitchell agrees and calls for Miller to be fired.) Ms. Miller said in an interview that she “made a strong recommendation to my editor” that a story be pursued. “I was told no,” she said. She would not identify the editor. So she won’t even identify the editor, and Jill Abramson says no way, it never happened? Second wowzer. In the fall of 2003, after The Washington Post reported that “two top White House officials disclosed Plame’s identity to at least six Washington journalists,” Philip Taubman, Ms. Abramson’s successor as Washington bureau chief, asked Ms. Miller and other Times reporters whether they were among the six. Ms. Miller denied it… Was she lying? Times reporters will have vivid opinions on that. Lying to an editor is an immediate firing offense. It has to be, if the newsroom is going to function. One of many reasons Miller will not be returning to the newsroom. The Times said it believes that attempts by prosecutors to force reporters to reveal confidential information must be resisted. Otherwise, it argues, the public would be deprived of important information about the government and other powerful institutions. A striking feature of the entire story: the men in charge didn’t know some of the key facts because they didn’t ask. Normally this would be bad. But it was okay not to know because Judy was making the calls. She knew. Mr. Abrams told Ms. Miller and the group that Mr. Tate said she was free to testify. Mr. Abrams said Mr. Tate also passed along some information about Mr. Libby’s grand jury testimony: that he had not told Ms. Miller the name or undercover status of Mr. Wilson’s wife. The most confusing part of the article is this. From what it says, I can see no reason Abrams or the Times had for not accepting Tate’s “she was free to testify,” except Miller’s subjective feeling about it, and the fact that she didn’t get the call she felt she would get. “Judy believed Libby was afraid of her testimony,” Mr. Keller said, noting that he did not know the basis for the fear. “She thought Libby had reason to be afraid of her testimony.” Amazing, especially: he did not know the basis for the fear. This is what the Times staff was afraid of. Had the paper—and the newsroom bosses—taken too great a risk? Maybe Keller didn’t know things he would have to know to guard against it. Asked in the interview whether he had any regrets about the editorials, given the outcome of the case, Mr. Sulzberger said no. As I have written, it is sad to me that this stance is repeated, and occupied as some kind of high ground, when it has been admitted by Keller that Miller’s case would not have been covered by a national shield law. How can she be a symbol of it? And when Sulzberger says “the editorial page is the right place for such support, not the news pages…” I must say I draw a blank. The news pages weren’t supporting Miller? Where did he get that? The news pages of the New York Times were edited for many months under the principle: don’t report anything that would anger the prosecutor or affect Miller’s case. That’s “support.” And the Times report documents this, including the stories that weren’t published and the reporters who did them, and the discouraging “message” the Washington bureau took from it, and so on. If Sulzberger believes the news pages didn’t support Miller, that’s alarming. A few weeks later on Capitol Hill, in November 2004, Ms. Miller bumped into Robert S. Bennett, the prominent Washington criminal lawyer who represented President Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal and who is known for his blunt style and deal-making skills. Three points:
How strange: Every day, she checked outdated copies of The Times for a news article about her case. Most days she was disappointed. She didn’t know why there weren’t any news articles about her case? By their own account, the editors were holding back in deference to her. Finally, it says so much about this case, about the information underworld of confidential sources, how little the Times own rules mattered to her, and how far gone Miller herself is when, in her account accompanying the Times article, she says: Mr. Fitzgerald asked about a notation I made on the first page of my notes about this July 8 meeting, “Former Hill staffer.” Telling. (Let Josh Marshall explain why.) The new description for Libby is wholly misleading to readers—amounting to a lie, a misdirection play—but Miller is fine with it because it’s technically true. After Matter: Notes, reactions & links… My bit of news is TIMES STANDS BY CLAIM: MILLER COOPERATED. Meaning I e-mailed New York Times spokesperson Catherine J. Mathis with a question: The Washington Post said you told them Judith Miller was cooperating with reporters. The Times report says: “In two interviews, Ms. 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.” That says she didn’t really cooperate. Her reply: “While Judy put limits on what she would discuss, the fact that she did sit for interviews and wrote her own account of her testimony certainly represents cooperation.” Represents to whom? I guarantee you Times journalists did not see her “limits” as reasonable or as cooperation. Susie Madrak, a journalist who blogs as Suburban Guerilla: “Well, the Times spokeswoman ‘misspoke,’ since Judy wouldn’t answer questions nor show her fellow reporters her notes.” Bill Keller is quoted in the Wall Street Journal’s story on the report (Oct. 17): “Knowing everything I know today about this case, I might have done some things differently, but I don’t feel the least bit apologetic about standing up for a reporter’s right to do the job.” See Keller’s note to staff from Asia, where he’s visiting bureaus. Best post I have read on Miller, post-report, is Next Time, Try Monster.com by Jane Hamsher at firedoglake. She thinks Miller wants to land at the Wall Street Journal, and gave a “pitch” interview to their reporters. Read why it didn’t work. Tom Rosenstiel in Howard Kurtz’s “reactions” story, Oct. 17: “It is still not clear entirely what principle Miller felt she was protecting that also allowed her to testify.” Agreed. Kurtz’s Media Notes column is better for your range-of-reactions needs. Listen to how how he starts: The Judy Miller story is so hot right now that I want to get right to the blogosphere reaction, and will make you scroll down to read my print column… Farhad Manjpoo in Salon: Judy Miller and the damage done. Cogent and it answers questions instead of just posing them. I recommend it, and warn you I am in it. Ditto for FishbowlNY’s wrap-up. Also see Fishbowl DC’s Miller post. (Both Oct. 17) Kathy Gill, a “guide” at About.com for US Politics, has a nicely thorough round up of bloggers reactions. About is owned by the Times. Mickey Kaus is asking good questions. Jeff Jarvis has a good round-up of reactions. He’d have more to say but he’s a consultant to the Times. Also see Joe Gandelman, as you always should when these things break. It’s one thing to be gamed by a punk like Jayson Blair who lied so outrageously that you’d have to be as nuts as him to think he was making it all up. It’s another to be gamed by a senior Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter. That requires a systemic flaw. And that requires David—a philosopher—to think about it, and tell us what the flaw might be. Halley Suitt, keeping it real: “And as for metaphors of who was running the show, the Times publisher suggests Judy Miller was in the driver’s seat at the paper, but c’mon guys, can’t we call it what it was … she seemed to have the boys by the balls.” James Wolcott: “You’re sitting there having breakfast at the St. Regis with Scooter Aspen, buttering each other’s toast, and somehow the name ‘Valerie Flame’ pops up in your notebook without you knowing how it got there! It’s your handwriting, sure enough, but rack your brain much as you will, you just can’t remember which little birdie tweeted that name into your ear.” Dan Gillmor: “This is a sad day for the Times and for journalism.” Mark Jurkowitz, Boston Phoenix: “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.” Steve Lovelady at CJR Daily: “The Times Gives Us a Modified, Limited Hangout.” Historian David Kaiser: “the Times seems to have forgotten not only the purpose of protecting confidential sources, but also the reason we have a free press at all.” “Then she starts to get a little crazy and reckless,” writes Jane Hamsher. “She sticks it to her lawyer, which is not really the best idea when he’s the only thing standing between you and a ten year stretch in chick prison…” Mickey Kaus explains why Sulzberger’s stand on “principle” has actually made it harder for journalists. KAUS: It’s now clear confinement wasn’t pointless. It worked for the prosecutor exactly as intended. After a couple of months of sleeping on “two thin mats on a concrete slab,” Miller decided, in her words, “I owed it to myself” to check and see if just maybe Libby really meant to release her from her promise of confidentiality. And sure enough - you know what? - it turns out he did! The message sent to every prosecutor in the country is “Don’t believe journalists who say they will never testify. A bit of hard time and they just might find a reason to change their minds. Judy Miller did.” SPECIAL SECTION: Judy Miller And Her Security Status Q. Does Judy Miller have security clearances enabling her to deal in classified information, preventing her editors from knowing what she knows, even if they knew to ask? A. From Judith Miller’s My Four Hours Testifying in the Federal Grand Jury Room come these passages suggesting she may: … Mr. Fitzgerald repeatedly turned to the subject of how Mr. Libby handled classified information with me. He asked, for example, whether I had discussed my security status with Mr. Libby. During the Iraq war, the Pentagon had given me clearance to see secret information as part of my assignment “embedded” with a special military unit hunting for unconventional weapons. She did not know? I wrote this at PressThink on Oct. 13: Jack Shafer in a column on the risk of criminalizing relations with sources writes: “National-security reporters—none of whom have clearances—receive classified information for a living.” How does he know that there aren’t any reporters with security clearences? It would be a good way of favoring a favorite, says I. Surely such arrangements would be secret if they existed. In fact, I could see a journalist fighting pretty hard to keep that kind of secret. Military and media blogger Sisyphus (Tim Schmoyer) has some good background on Miller’s “security clearance” during the hunt for WMD’s. Interesting portrait of Miller in the field. TPM Cafe is asking questions about this too. I say it’s either 1.) a big nothing—Miller’s exagerrated description of clearances other embedded reporters had during the war, a kind of puffing up—or 2.) a very big deal if she had “special” clearances post-embed that came into play during her talks with Libby. Reporters I have talked to said that would be shocking and troubling, if true. 1) seems more likely, 2.) would explain a lot. Read William Jackson’s September 2003 column (just put back online by E & P) about Judith Miller… “It appeared that she was, once again, the ‘drop’ of choice for a politically-motivated leaker.” It has a portrait of Judy Miller operating in Iraq, where she claimed to have “secret” clearence to see things other reporters could not. (Judy calls this kind of behavior “having sharp elbows.”) An e-mail message to me from her PAO sergeant escort regarding a three-week trip with META in April stated: “She did not have a SECRET clearance.” She was “high maintenance and came to the field badly prepared. The problem I had with her was that whenever other members of the press showed up, which they did as embeds from other units or as unilaterals, she would insist that I get rid of them and that the 75th’s story was her story, exclusively. She didn’t seem to have any idea that the Army needed as much coverage of the 75th’s mission as possible and that excluding everyone else was detrimental to the credibility of what the 75th was trying to accomplish. Bill Lynch, retired CBS News correspondent, in a letter to Romenesko: There is one enormous journalism scandal hidden in Judith Miller’s Oct. 16th first person article about the (perhaps lesser) CIA leak scandal. And that is Ms. Miller’s revelation that she was granted a DoD security clearance while embedded with the WMD search team in Iraq in 2003. Read the rest; it’s interesting. Franklin Foer’s New York magazine profile of Miller also has background on this. The Source of the Trouble, it’s called. About.com has good background on military security clearances. NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski checked it out (Oct. 17): WASHINGTON — Officials from the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon say they have no idea what New York Times reporter Judith Miller was talking about when she claimed to have been given a “security clearance” while she was embedded with a U.S. Army unit in Iraq in 2003. There’s more if you are interested. Also see historian Bob Bateman’s letter to Romenesko. This is a very good compendium of facts and links to articles about Judith Miller. And here’s an index of everything that’s appeared at Romenesko about Miller, Libby, Plame, Fitzgerald, Cooper, Novak, etc.
Posted by Jay Rosen at October 15, 2005 7:00 PM
Comments
Jay the key passage in the whole thing was this: Before the grand jury, Mr. Fitzgerald asked me questions about Mr. Cheney. She buried the lead - as if the story were about her! And her NYT editors, even at this late date, let her. That's the scandal....(I have a brief post up). Posted by: Tom Watson at October 15, 2005 7:38 PM | Permalink I don't believe for a second that she actually cooperated with the NYT reporters. She wrote up her version of the GJ testimony and had it reviewed by her lawyer. Then when she was called back, she updated her write-up. That's pretty much all the reporters had to work with. They learned more by talking with her colleagues than from her. And her testimony is cagey and not credible. She cannot explain why Valerie Flame is in her notes except to say she learned the name from someone else (but can't remember whom)? The NY Times management must feel sick at this point. They wasted millions of dollars defending her, lost their own credibility in the process, and for what? Possibly a shareholder lawsuit? Posted by: Libby Sosume at October 15, 2005 8:03 PM | Permalink Thanks for the analysis, Jay. I'd like to know how long Miller had this notebook in her possession after she was released from jail and before she turned it over to Fitz. The "Valerie Flame" part is so odd. Who's to say she didn't do a bit of creative editing before she turned over the notes? Posted by: Valley Girl at October 15, 2005 8:08 PM | Permalink Jay, The article says, "And when the prosecutor in the case asked her to explain how "Valerie Flame" appeared in the same notebook she used in interviewing Mr. Libby, Ms. Miller said she "didn't think" she heard it from him. "I said I believed the information came from another source, whom I could not recall," she wrote on Friday, recounting her testimony for an article that appears today." 1. If she did not believe Mr. Libby gave her Valerie Plame's name, what was she protecting him from? "Once Ms. Miller was jailed, her lawyers were in open conflict about whether she should stay there. She had refused to reopen communications with Mr. Libby for a year, saying she did not want to pressure a source into waiving confidentiality. But in the end, saying "I owed it to myself" after two months of jail, she had her lawyer reach out to Mr. Libby. This time, hearing directly from her source, she accepted his permission and was set free. "We have everything to be proud of and nothing to apologize for," Ms. Miller said in an interview Friday." 2. Ms. Miller talked herself into believing Mr. Libby's original release, was not. In the end, what she owed to herself was to get out of what she hoped was a martyr role, but had not turned out that way. For a year or more she chose not to clarify Mr. Libby's position?! Sounds completely self-serving to me. "On Tuesday, Ms. Miller is to receive a First Amendment award from the Society of Professional Journalists. She said she thought she would write a book about her experiences in the leak case, although she added that she did not yet have a book deal. She also plans on taking some time off but says she hopes to return to the newsroom." 3. I for one will not buy her book, unless or until she earns my respect. Posted by: Bill Riski at October 15, 2005 8:28 PM | Permalink This passage jumped out at me: Within a few weeks [of becoming executive editor], in one of his first personnel moves, Mr. Keller told Ms. Miller that she could no longer cover Iraq and weapons issues. Even so, Mr. Keller said, "she kept kind of drifting on her own back into the national security realm." The NYT has never come completely clean as how flawed they've known Miller's reporting to be. How much more do the editors know about her reporting that they haven't told us yet? This reminded me of a run-in that David Albright had with Judy Miller in the lead-up to the war. Albright had been in contact with a number of nuclear experts within the intelligence establishment, and he was trying to blow the whistle to Miller on how the Aluminum Tubes were NOT suitable for uranium enrichment after reading Miller's September 8th, 2002 article. In December 2003, Albright released a report describing his interaction with Miller. From page 17: Judy Miller had called me at home and left a message before her September 8th story, but I was out of town and only got home on the day the story appeared. I called her back and alerted her to the internal expert criticism of the administration’s public claims. Partly in response, she decided to do another article, which appeared on September 13. In a surprising development, however, the article was heavily slanted to the CIA’s position, and the views of the other side were trivialized. An administration official was quoted as saying that "the best" technical experts and nuclear scientists at laboratories like Oak Ridge supported the CIA assessment. These inaccuracies made their way into the story despite several discussions that I had with Miller on the day before the story appeared—some well into the night. In the end, nobody was quoted questioning the CIA’s position, as I would have expected. [emphasis added] Albright also indirectly raised concerns about Miller's coverage before the war on September 23, 2002 saying: In fact, the intelligence community is deeply divided about the purpose of the tubing, with a significant number of experts knowledgeable about gas centrifuges dissenting from the CIA view. It appears that the New York Times stories represented only one side of this debate. I have a feeling that there's still a lot of things about Miller's pre-war reporting that the NYT hasn't come clean with yet. It is just as forecast -- Sulzberger and Keller turned the newspaper over to Miller. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at October 15, 2005 8:42 PM | Permalink No, I guess she didn't cooperate: "In two interviews, Ms. 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." And Raw Story says she is now on indefinite leave while the Times decides what to do with her. Which of course really means, "Judy, we'll give you some time off to write your letter of resignation." I'll enlarge my predictions. BK and/or PS will be gone by tomorrow night. Hopefully both. Posted by: Libby Sosume at October 15, 2005 8:43 PM | Permalink In the fall of 2003, after The Washington Post reported that "two top White House officials disclosed Plame's identity to at least six Washington journalists," Philip Taubman, Ms. Abramson's successor as Washington bureau chief, asked Ms. Miller and other Times reporters whether they were among the six. Ms. Miller denied it. Another wowzer! Lying and sidestepping the question. And what, pray tell, does "generally no" mean? No? Sorta no? Almost no? "You could see it in people's faces," Ms. Miller said later. "I'm a reporter. People were confused and perplexed, and I realized then that The Times and I hadn't done a very good job of making people understand what has been accomplished." One of the deeper mysteries of this story is whether Miller is merely a self-serving liar or just delusional. What has been accomplished? I'm sure her newsroom colleagues, who greeted Miller with "restrained applause," could explain it in detail. Posted by: Chiaroscuro at October 15, 2005 8:57 PM | Permalink Here's the link to the Raw Story article mentioned by Libby: Reporter in leak case to take leave of absence effective immediately. Personally, I gained more from Miller's article but this part struck me: "Mr. Freeman advised Ms. Miller to remain in jail until Oct. 28, when the term of the grand jury would expire and the investigation would presumably end." Hmmmm. The company lawyer certainly seemed to have the Times' interests ahead of poor Judy's. So it seems that there was some pressure for her to fight for the "cause." Posted by: Ron Brynaert at October 15, 2005 8:58 PM | Permalink one addition to the above thought: So while Judy used the Times...The Times also used Judy. Posted by: Ron Brynaert at October 15, 2005 8:59 PM | Permalink In his comment in tomorrow's Times, Frank Rich writes: "It's long been my hunch that the WHIG-ites were at their most brazen (and, in legal terms, reckless) during the many months that preceded the appointment of Mr. Fitzgerald as special counsel." It's long been his hunch, he says, but he has waited until tomorrow to tell us so. He also neglects to tell us the extent to which his subject -- the WHIG -- has been discussed in the Times. And then he says: "We still don't know the whole story of how our own democracy was hijacked on the way to war." Posted by: Cervantes at October 15, 2005 9:07 PM | Permalink I generally agree with your first take, Jay. A couple of other questions came to mind: - So the "Valerie Flame" notation wasn't in the section of the notebook where she had her Libby notes, and she doesn't remember where it came from. Um, so, *where* in the notebook did the notation appear? Who was being interviewed? - There was absolutely no discussion about how the notes from the June meeting were "discovered." This seems like a weird omission. - That line about Miller pitching the story to an editor-who-shall-not-be-named is *really* strange. I assumed that it must be to someone other than Abramsom -- after all, it did seem that was working with a variety of desks at the paper -- but for the life of me I can't imagine why the name of the editor has to be a secret. Is she lying about this and if so, why? Or does she think she's protecting someone? Why? - Libby is so very very hosed. I agree that it must have been a horrible story to write. And I really don't blame the reporters for all the holes in the article: I think Miller didn't give them much to work with, probably on advice of counsel. But the article didn't even come close to answering all the questions it was supposed to answer. Posted by: Sunny Seattle at October 15, 2005 9:20 PM | Permalink Also from Rich's Sunday column (from behind the wall): The vice president cited as evidence a front-page article, later debunked, about supposedly nefarious aluminum tubes co-written by Judy Miller in that morning's Times. The national security journalist James Bamford, in "A Pretext for War," writes that the article was all too perfectly timed to facilitate "exactly the sort of propaganda coup that the White House Iraq Group had been set up to stage-manage." Posted by: Ron Brynaert at October 15, 2005 9:46 PM | Permalink But the article didn't even come close to answering all the questions it was supposed to answer. Indeed, from a crisis communications point of view this was an opportunity lost. Speculation will continue and is likely to be more damaging to the NYT that whatever the truth would have been. As long as Sulzberger has the confidence of the Board of Directors no one can touch him, with the possible exception of bond holders. Posted by: Alice Marshall at October 15, 2005 9:48 PM | Permalink What a load of crap. Keller says he never reviewed Miller's notes because he felt no need to do so, implying pretty directly that he could have if he wanted to. But Miller refused to let reporters review her notes, implying pretty directly that she has control over them. Which is it? If Keller could have reviewed the notes, could he not have ordered Miller to give his reporters access to them? To whom do Times reporters' notes belong, the reporter or the paper? Mr. Keller told Ms. Miller that she could no longer cover Iraq and weapons issues. Even so, Mr. Keller said, "she kept kind of drifting on her own back into the national security realm." Well, gee, maybe Mr. Keller should have complained to the executive editor that one of the paper's reporters was ignoring instructions from the executive editor. "Bill, this is Bill. Judy's ignoring me. What should I do?" This is bad reporting. Congratulations to the Times for acting so quickly once Judy gave them the green light. Too bad it's crap. More later. I have to take my kid to the westling extravaganza now, where I fully expect the participants to be more straightforward than the Times or Miller. Posted by: weldon berger at October 15, 2005 9:52 PM | Permalink (I posted this at the end of the last thread, after reading the Times article.) The first word that came into my mind to describe the Times piece on Miller was "mushy." Considering the number of words used, there is relatively little of any real substance to the piece. ************************ My "bullshit" meter did go off the charts when I read this particular passage.... Ms. Miller had written a string of articles before the war - often based on the accounts of Bush administration officials and Iraqi defectors - strongly suggesting that Saddam Hussein was developing these weapons of mass destruction. "Often" based on the 'accounts of Bush administration officials and Iraqi defectors'?!!?!? "Strongly suggesting" that 'Saddam Hussein was developing these weapons of mass destruction'?!?!?! there is a time for understatement....this wasn't it. *********************** On my pet issue, the article certainly gives no indication that the Times itself had "legal entanglements" that prevented it (and Byron Calame) from doing its (and his) job. The story "strongly suggests" (i.e. "says") that Keller and Sulzburger never demanded to know from Miller what it was she was "protecting", and whether it really was worthy of putting the full force of the Times' reputation behind Miller. Miller claimed she was acting on principle, and Pinch and Keller just took her at her word. So what are these fabled "legal entanglements" for the newspaper that kept Calame from writing about the subject? Its starting to look like the Times may need someone to act as the Ombudsman for its own Ombudsman.... Posted by: ami at October 15, 2005 9:59 PM | Permalink In what alternate reality would you not fire this reporter? Posted by: Daniel Conover at October 15, 2005 10:01 PM | Permalink Sad to say because no one likes to see careers ruined - although it appears greatly warranted - some important heads have to roll. Ms. Miller's journalistic career is obviously gone. Bill Keller needs to resign. This is just a terrible terrible failure on the part of everyone involved with this issue who works on the paper. Unless there's something extremely critical that I'm missing; something I cannot begin to imagine. SMG Posted by: SteveMG at October 15, 2005 10:06 PM | Permalink Miller: "My recollection, I told him, was that Mr. Libby wanted to modify our prior understanding that I would attribute information from him to a "senior administration official." When the subject turned to Mr. Wilson, Mr. Libby requested that he be identified only as a "former Hill staffer." I agreed to the new ground rules because I knew that Mr. Libby had once worked on Capitol Hill." Is that level of distortion normal for reporters? She would agree to call him a "former Hill staffer" to cover up the fact that he was a senior White House official? Posted by: Cal Lanier at October 15, 2005 10:08 PM | Permalink Why did Libby go out of his way to have his lawyer convey that, “He(Libby) had not told Ms. Miller the name or undercover status of Mr. Wilson’s wife.” Why? Because that is exactly what he did tell her. Keller says, “She thought Libby had reason to be afraid of her testimony.” Yes, Libby’s fear was that she’d tell the truth. But he shouldn’t have feared. His fellow neo-con, Miller, came through for him and told a lie: “Ms. Miller said she ‘didn’t think’ she heard it from him. ‘I said I believed the information came from another source, whom I could not recall,”” How could she not recall? Don’t forget Novak’s column came out shortly after she made the note “Valerie Flame” on the pad she used while interviewing Libby. Like any good reporter she must have then recalled then where she got the name. But she’s leaving the impression that it was two years ago so she can’t recall. She’s still protecting Libby, her old neo-con buddy, who earlier used her as a wholly owned subsidiary of the “chicken hawk” brigade that got us into this war with Iraq. Posted by: Socrates at October 15, 2005 10:12 PM | Permalink Oh, my. The last line, about not recognized Libby. She's at a rodeo. And, he's in a hat, and sunglasses. Where's Mr. Burkett? What's so strange about lying liars, and their faked recollections. Libby's letter to Judy, in jail, goes under the mircoscope. And, nobody see's how odd Miller's take is? Libby's not the source! Valerie Flame could be a porn star, for all we know. And, we're getting closer and closer to "Deep Throat." Either a porn star queen, or an FBI #2. Take your pick. But if the MSM were doing a retread on a script, they're gonna get bitten by this farce. What a cockamamie story. Posted by: Carol_Herman at October 15, 2005 10:20 PM | Permalink Cal: That one jumped out at me too. Mr. Libby requested that he be identified only as a "former Hill staffer." I agreed to the new ground rules because I knew that Mr. Libby had once worked on Capitol Hill." I think that is so telling. Outrageous, of course. But it tells you a lot about Miller and this case. Posted by: Jay Rosen at October 15, 2005 10:26 PM | Permalink Jay, Great work. And for free. Thanks. And so it goes. Novak's #2 source may well be Miller's source, and no, it's neither RovEvil or Scooter. Sorry. It appears that Fitzgerald may be looking closely at someone, but who? Miller, anyone? ... Sucks to be Joseph Charles Wilson IV. Not to mention Valerie Double-0-Plame. Really. Posted by: MeTooThen at October 15, 2005 10:38 PM | Permalink If Libby is not the source for "Valerie Flame," as Judith Miller maintains, can Miller be a source for the White House officials? In other words, to what extent was Miller feeding officials information gleaned from her knowledge and contacts--which I imagine could be better than those of specific officials. As such, Miller would be assisting the admin. agenda not only through her stenography of their WMD agenda, but by passing along info useful to their propaganda campaign. I hope this isn't going out on a limb. I simply feel that if the underlying premise is that Miller facilitated Bush's Iraq agenda--in her reporting--all these still unanswered questions bring up the issue of what she was doing behind the scenes, perhaps in exchange for scoops, perhaps out of ideological conviction on Miller's part. Posted by: John at October 15, 2005 10:43 PM | Permalink No. That's not common journalistic practice to ID a source by some other job/position they may have had. Why not ID Libby as a former high-school junior. He was one at some point. Judy has been busy playing newspaper reporter. Brenda Starr gets the big scoop!! This is an extraordinary bit of reporting on L'Affaire Miller. I've seen reporters fired for much less. It's depressing as hell to see a once-great newspaper become a parody. Wonder how the folks at SPJ feel about their award for Ms. Miller now? Posted by: Dave McLemore at October 15, 2005 10:46 PM | Permalink I think I figured this out. Joe Wilson, who got himself an Op Ed spread in the NY Times, to blast our war efforts in Iraq, and President Bush, was lying. We know that now. BUT WHAT IF THE ATTEMPT TO SMEAR THE PRESIDENT, goes beyond just Joe Wilson, and his wife? What if the game was set up at the CIA, a democratic strong hold. With the help of Colin Powell and/or George Tenet. The Mainstream Media will never let the truth out! It was just easier to go after Rove and Libby. And, didn't Joe Wilson get quoted that he was sure "Rove would be frog marched/or perp walked out of the White House?" I think I've read that quote. How can the media keep carrying this one? The Iraqis have voted on their Constitution. This time, the terrorists weren't able to grab the headlines with horror acts of explod-y-dopes. It's no wonder there's a lot of head burying. But the Internet is on top of this story. And, that's just another sign that the Internet is alive with the sounds of Americans trying to fathom how Judith Miller hijacked the NY Times reputation, itself. We're way beyond Jayson Blair now. We're into Mary Mapes' territory. Another broad with a book deal. Posted by: Carol_Herman at October 15, 2005 10:48 PM | Permalink To be fair to the reporters that wrote the story: I think they tried. The key people who could have answered the questions, wouldn't. Posted by: Libby Sosume at October 15, 2005 10:49 PM | Permalink You forgot the Clintons, Carol_Herman. In addition to Wilson, his wife, the CIA, the Democrats, a liberal media, Colin Powell and George Tenant, (I have to admit, typing that last sent me into a fit of giggles.) you can always blame the Administration's woes on Bill and Hillary. Posted by: Dave McLemore at October 15, 2005 10:58 PM | Permalink Miller is obviously not giving us the whole story -- and I have to wonder whether the NYT has been protecting Miller so staunchly in order to prevent a fall from grace that could shine a spotlight on other pre-war institutional failures. It wasn't until Chalabi had his fall from grace that the NYT felt like it could run it's first Mea Culpa on May 26, 2004 -- despite all of the evidence that had long gathered. I just relistened to a radio debate between Michael Massing and Judith Miller from February 3rd, 2004. There were a few whoppers that jumped out at me -- like Miller's defense of her stenographic approach to investigative journalism: My job was not to collect information and analyze it independently as an intelligence agency; my job was to tell readers of the New York Times as best as I could figure out, what people inside the governments who had very high security clearances, who were not supposed to talk to me, were saying to one another about what they thought Iraq had and did not have in the area of weapons of mass destruction. Miller basically admits that she's nothing more than a conveyor belt of official propaganda, and so how can we believe her when she then says: "Believe me, I tried to vet information in every way that I could before it was published. We never published -- not once -- an administration allegation without checking it against alleged experts, independent experts." Those two statements don't seem to be compatible. Jack Shafer's dissection of Miller's radio appearance is well worth rereading -- and very telling. Posted by: Kent Bye at October 15, 2005 10:59 PM | Permalink From Barney Calame's post, "Now Is the Time": An important and obvious issue that has arisen in recent days, of course, is Ms. Miller’s seemingly belated discovery of notes from a June 2003 conversation that she had with I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff. The Times story does not address this question at all. What gives? Posted by: Zach at October 15, 2005 11:03 PM | Permalink To be fair to the reporters that wrote the story: I think they tried. The key people who could have answered the questions, wouldn't. My feelings precisely. Posted by: Alice Marshall at October 15, 2005 11:05 PM | Permalink If Libby is not the source for "Valerie Flame," as Judith Miller maintains, can Miller be a source for the White House officials? In other words, to what extent was Miller feeding officials information gleaned from her knowledge and contacts--which I imagine could be better than those of specific officials. Rove and Libbey would like us to believe that. Before the end of the month we will find out what the grand jury believes. Posted by: Alice Marshall at October 15, 2005 11:09 PM | Permalink One thing that jumped out at me is this sentence from Judy's article: "During the Iraq war, the Pentagon had given me clearance to see secret information as part of my assignment "embedded" with a special military unit hunting for unconventional weapons." Maybe everyone knew, or assumed, this. It is a logical assumption. But doesn't a security clearance for a reporter seem a little strange? This is more than being embedded, it's participation. Which fits with the stories about Judy giving orders to, and threatening, members of the military assigned to look for WMD in Iraq. Overall, it looks to me like Saint Judy's still not telling the truth. Not that I'm surprised. Thanks, Jay, for your insightful analysis. So far, your speculation seems to have been right on target. And thanks to a large group of intelligent commentors as well. Posted by: Chuck Dupree (Belisarius) at October 15, 2005 11:13 PM | Permalink She spent two months in jail to protct a source whose name she can't recall? Jay: If we have the government going after officials simply for discussing classified information, then the ability of the press to gather information about government wrongdoing will be severely - I mean severely - curtailed. Does the name Daniel Ellsberg ring a bell? It seems to me that there are a lot of people who want to get Rove or the evil neocons and in doing so will be doing a great deal of damage to our ability to monitor what our elected officials do. This is a little more complicated than the "let's get those bastard Republicans" crowd seems to understand. EH Posted by: EricH at October 15, 2005 11:18 PM | Permalink I think I figured this out. Joe Wilson, who got himself an Op Ed spread in the NY Times, to blast our war efforts in Iraq, and President Bush, was lying. We know that now. BUT WHAT IF THE ATTEMPT TO SMEAR THE PRESIDENT, goes beyond just Joe Wilson, and his wife? What if the game was set up at the CIA, a democratic strong hold. With the help of Colin Powell and/or George Tenet. This is parody, right? Posted by: ami at October 15, 2005 11:35 PM | Permalink Thanks, Chuck. Regular readers (you may be one, of course) would I think say I don't speculate very often in posts. I especially think it's dumb to speculate about stuff that you're gonna know around the corner anway. But this was different because the people who should be telling us weren't. Also, the Times was being un-transparent. Posted by: Jay Rosen at October 15, 2005 11:39 PM | Permalink "During the Iraq war, the Pentagon had given me clearance to see secret information as part of my assignment "embedded" with a special military unit hunting for unconventional weapons." Maybe I should have known this, but I didn't know Miller had security clearence. This adds an suspicous element. If she had clearence she could see things other reporters couldn't. Adds layers to Fitzgerald's case. Posted by: Jay Rosen at October 15, 2005 11:48 PM | Permalink Jay.... Not only that, but her own editors could not know what she knew because they did not have clearance... and certainly her readers could not know. Was she an agent of her readers, or not? Posted by: Jeff Jarvis at October 15, 2005 11:54 PM | Permalink Definitely, Jeff. I had this as one of my speculations, but I didn't use it because I didn't have any facts clearly for it, just inferences. I wrote this at PressThink on Oct. 13: Jack Shafer in a column on the risk of criminalizing relations with sources writes: “National-security reporters—none of whom have clearances—receive classified information for a living.” How does he know that there aren’t any reporters with security clearences? It would be a good way of favoring a favorite, says I. Surely such arrangements would be secret if they existed. In fact, I could see a journalist fighting pretty hard to keep that kind of secret. What intrigued the hell out of me was Miller could not say whether she still had security clearances. Posted by: Jay Rosen at October 16, 2005 12:10 AM | Permalink I have NEVER heard of reporters getting security clearances. Who gives clearances to them: DOD, CIA, NSA ...??? Why would any government agency give a reporter clearance? Too weird. Posted by: K at October 16, 2005 12:19 AM | Permalink Jay, even if Miller had a security clearance, she wouldn't have been authorized to know the identity of a Non-Official Cover (NOC) agent. At that level of security, only those with a need to know are authorized to receive that kind of critical information. It's hard to conceive of a scenario where Judith Miller, NY Times reporter, would have a need to know the identity of a NOC. In the reality-based world, that is. I remember when she was granted the clearance; it was controversial at the time. . Posted by: Phredd at October 16, 2005 12:20 AM | Permalink I wasn't saying it would have been okay for her to know about an agent or Valerie Wilson. No. It makes Miller vulernable to other forms of manipulation and silencing. It makes her harder to believe because she's protecting a new level of "confidentiality." It justifies her haughty manner (if you knew what I knew), and it explains--possibly--why she was unsupervised and out of control. Posted by: Jay Rosen at October 16, 2005 12:26 AM | Permalink My suspicion is that all this Miller/Rove/Libby focus is off target and that Fitzgerald may be more interested in shinanigans going on in the basement of the CIA. And you can bet if indictments come down on those folks, there will be a lot fewer sources for the likes of Judith Miller not to recall. Posted by: Jake at October 16, 2005 12:37 AM | Permalink Still curious to know if it is correct to assume that Miller's notes/ notebook were in pristine/ virgin/ unaltered condition, so to speak, when they were passed on to Fitz. Or, am I wrong in assuming that he has these in hand? Posted by: Valley Girl at October 16, 2005 12:40 AM | Permalink Miller did "tell what happened" no? But she didn't tell everything, and I guess that's the issue. Here's my question. Miller is an investigative reporter--they are a strange breed and as far as I know a fairly rare one, even at newspapers. When I think of Miller--I do not compare her to a Cooper but to a Seymour Hersh, off the rails a bit, a bit freaky, not entirely trustworthy and certainly very secretive. Sy gets a lot of things wrong too, and he gets used. But to my question: is it reasonable for an investigative journalist to guard her notes and her sources like an animal protecting its young, even from her own editors? I think it is, right? In that context, her behavior might even seem to be expected, rather than "suspicious." She did put forth a complete account of facts directly connected to the case (if you believe it) in the pages of The Times but certain things--the things someone of her ilk automatically holds to the vest--she didn't give up, things that perhaps she feels are extraneous to the focus of the investigation and her testimony. Would another investigative reporter--let's say one who usually gets things right--behave differently? Posted by: Lee Kane at October 16, 2005 1:36 AM | Permalink Man, I didn't think my opinion of Judith Miller, especially after my blistering attack of her earlier, could get lower. But to quote what I assume must be a journalism term: wowza. I hear the phrase "I don't remember" in regards to testimony and I think back to Reagan using that to justify his lack of recall regarding Iran Contra. Did Miller have an explanation for how she can conveniently forget such inforamtion? Let's try for a second to take her story at face value: So what if she had a follow-up question she wanted to write or - call me crazy - she wanted to actually write an article. How would she go about that if she didn't even know the source? Either she knew the source and forgot the name - pretty hard to imagine in a profession whose currency is knowledge, memory and connections - or she's lying, which is perjury. I'm starting to wonder she did with her time in jail in between entertaining visting sources (another major no no in my book). If I was in jail over a story I'd be stewing over what I did right, what I did wrong, what could have gone differently, etc. What I don't think I would do is avoid determining or "remembering" the identity of such an important source. Earlier I compared Miller to Jayson Blair in terms of the magnitude of her errors, the Times handling of this and how both need to re-learn their profession. Reading over this article and the PressThink comments on it I have to wonder two questions: 2) Didn't the Times put into place safeguards post-Blair to try to avoid reporters playing fast and loose with the truth? So where were these safeguards in stopping someone like Miller? If her editors and colleagues had concerns about how she was operating why did it take all of this to bring matters to a head? 3) If she goes ahead with a rumored book deal will she give some of the proceeds to the people dying in the war that she helped promote? Posted by: Scott Butki at October 16, 2005 1:51 AM | Permalink Another interesting tidbit: Mr. Abrams said Mr. Tate also passed along some information about Mr. Libby's grand jury testimony: that he had not told Ms. Miller the name or undercover status of Mr. Wilson's wife. [..] Ms. Miller said in an interview that she concluded that Mr. Tate was sending her a message that Mr. Libby did not want her to testify.
And Bill Keller knew about this all along. He knew that a group of high government officials had disseminated lies in the push to sell the public on the war. Elisabeth Bumiller, another New York Times reporter, knew about the "evidence" fabricated by the White House Iraq Group in the late summer of 2002. Yet, none of them chose to inform their readers about this fact. Not until 3 years later, under threat of felony indictment. The New York Times is not a newspaper, folks. The evidence so far suggests that it is the major propanganda arm of the Bush Administration. - Posted by: Phredd at October 16, 2005 1:56 AM | Permalink At what point does an act become "conspiracy"? Does it take more than 2 people, or are 2 people sufficient? Oh, and after the (potentially undiserved) heat the CIA took for the so-called faulty intel in the state of the union address, I'd bet that there are a few CIA folks looking to get even. A few other thoughts before I go to bed: There is, I think, one positive note: At least one of the main editors is unhappy with how this has all progressed, a nice contrast to the main editor who seems clueless and tone deaf to what Miller and the newspaper has done wrong. Asked what specifically she regretted about how the matter was handled Managing Editor said: 'The entire thing.'" Exactly. And that is a marked contrast to the tune of Miller who while refusing to comment - even to her own newspaper - about her notes and her relationshp with the editors. still acts as if nothing improper has happened. In the article Miller is quoted as saying: "We have everything to be proud of and nothing to apologize for," That suggests she either has no idea why others - including some at her own paper - can't believe how much she was coddled and tolerated despite doing a terrible job as a reporter. Or.. she knows and is just spinning to try to put a happy face on matters. In either caes I've reached the same conclusion as
Posted by: Scott Butki at October 16, 2005 2:18 AM | Permalink Carol: I think I figured this out. Joe Wilson, who got himself an Op Ed spread in the NY Times, to blast our war efforts in Iraq, and President Bush, was lying. We know that now. BUT WHAT IF THE ATTEMPT TO SMEAR THE PRESIDENT, goes beyond just Joe Wilson, and his wife? What if the game was set up at the CIA, a democratic strong hold. With the help of Colin Powell and/or George Tenet. Hardly. Its a known fact that Wilson was revealed to be a liar by the Senate Intel Committee. Its also a known fact that several CIA peeps forgot [and were fired] because they forgot that their job was to gather intel & advise the president, not create their own foreign policy when they disagreed with POTUS. Posted by: Fen at October 16, 2005 2:22 AM | Permalink The New York Times is not a newspaper, folks. The evidence so far suggests that it is the major propanganda arm of the Bush Administration. Right. Thats why so many of us conservatives read it... Posted by: Fen at October 16, 2005 2:24 AM | Permalink Excellent analysis as always. This is such an inside-baseball story for the media-political axis, but that doesn't mean it's not important. I have a few reactions to points you made: Jay writes: "Miller cannot recall where the name at the center of the case came from? Wowzer. Sure to be the center of controversy over the next week. Claiming memory loss about the most important fact in the story is weak. Very." But keep in mind that while the outing is at the center of the case now, at the time she first heard about Valerie "Flame" it was not. Miller heard about Plame's occupation, but thought she was an analyst, not a covert agent. The disclosure of Plane's job appears to have been made in a very low-key way, and it was not at all the "center" of the various stories that Miller was reporting on at the time. In a case like that, it's not particularly surprising that Miller does not today -- 2-plus years later -- remember where the name came from. It just wasn't the point of the story back then. Jay writes: "Like I said, it became Judy Miller’s newspaper. Her decision-making, I said on CNN, was driving the newspaper’s. Mr. Sulzberger is the publisher; the Times is a public company. Isn’t his hand supposed to be on the wheel for the newspaper as a public trust?" Although most of the conversation is on Miller, and although everyone involved will probably agree that this is not a great case, remember that sometimes important principles hang on bad cases. (See almost everything involving Larry Flynt for support on this point.) Sulzberger correctly (IMO) viewed this not as a flawed factual case involving Miller but as an important stand for the paper to take no matter what. For example, quoting the Times takeout this morning: "After Ms. Miller was jailed, an editorial acknowledged that "this is far from an ideal case," before saying, "If Ms. Miller testifies, it may be immeasurably harder in the future to persuade a frightened government employee to talk about malfeasance in high places."" Sulzberger is protecting every reporter at the Times with his stand on this, and that One thing that is getting lost in the focus on Miller's foibles is that important principles were being upheld here by the Times. If you ever want to cover a story that the government or a powerful individual or institution does not want you to cover, then protecting reporters who protect their sources is a vital role for the newspaper to play (assuming the source-protection has been vetted by an editor). Say what you want about whether Miller's earlier reporting on WMD was skewed by wrong or duplicitous sources. The larger important point to me is, will a newspaper stand behind a reporter when that reporter is at risk in the ways that Miller has been at risk? How I wish the facts in this case were better, but if the Times did not do for her what they did, how does any other reporter at the Times know that the paper will be there for them in better circumstances? Posted by: John Granatino at October 16, 2005 2:31 AM | Permalink Fen, your take on Wilson is beyond absurd. Republicans control the White House, both chambers of Congress with their massive investigative authority, the Justice Department and in large part the courts. The Plame investigation is being conducted by a Republican US Attorney who was appointed to office by George W. Bush, and yet somehow you manage to feel victimized, at least in part by a paper that through Miller and her leeeebrul editors lent its imprimatur to the bogus intelligence the administration used to sell the invasion. That's just pathetic. Posted by: weldon berger at October 16, 2005 3:04 AM | Permalink A few comments from reading all of this. When the NYT turned control of the car over to Ms. Miller, what they really did was turn control over to people like Mr. Libby and Mr. Rove. Ms. Miller is obviously very close to Mr. Libby. Mr. Libby's love note to her in jail was telling, and she still seems to be going to great lengths to cover for him. And the very interesting question is did she just perjure herself to a grand jury covering for Mr. Libby? Or for someone else? BTW, the fact that her notes spell the last name as "Flame" instead of "Plame" says to me that she was hearing this name verbally from someone else for the first time when she made that note. That's the way you might spell the name if you'd heard it, but never seen it. To me, that says she was getting the name from someone else, not passing it along to Mr. Libby. If she knew about Ms. Plame and Mr. Wilson from her WMD work before (and possible contacts with that group in the CIA), then she'd know how to spell the name. Ms. Miller obviously did not carefully cross-check and verify anything she was hearing from her neocon friends/sources. I know within hours of hearing the 'niger uranium' story for the first time, I was hearing very critical commments on this story. The facts were clear that all uranium in Niger is mined in mines that are owned by western european firms, and that all the uranium was committed to long term contracts. And that the nuclear powers watch this all very closely. Thus to me there were very credible questions about this story being raised long before Amb. Wilson's op-ed piece or the IAEA's declaration that the documents were crude forgeries. If I'm picking that up from the internet as a casual reader, then surely an 'expert' on WMD's like Ms. Miller should have been able to learn this very easily. Its clear to me that her role was to help support her friends like Mr. Libby. Real investigative reporting was never a part of the plan. Posted by: Marc S at October 16, 2005 3:29 AM | Permalink Please provide something other than fallacy by association, as well as the ad-hom strawman that I'm pathetic b/c I feel victimized by the NYT [you're an empath, over the net? LOL] My point is that Carol's speculation is not without foundation - since his op-ed in the NYT, we've learned that Joe Wilson lied to congress, lied about his wife's involvement, mis-represented his "intel-gathering" trip to Africa. We also know that he floated his wife's name around the DC cocktail circuit, to lend himself credibility and impress his newly found "journalist" friends. His photo shoot for Vanity Fair pretty much sums up the kind of character we're dealing with. As for the NYTs, its a joke amoung conservatives. We've considered it a leftist propaganda piece for quite some time, and find comments that its shilling for Team Bush to be hysterical. Posted by: Fen at October 16, 2005 3:41 AM | Permalink The facts were clear that all uranium in Niger is mined in mines that are owned by western european firms, and that all the uranium was committed to long term contracts. And that the nuclear powers watch this all very closely. Prime Minister Tony Blair, 2003: "In case people should think that the whole idea of a link between Iraq and Niger was some invention, in the 1980s we know for sure that Iraq purchased round about 270 tons of uranium from Niger." Posted by: Fen at October 16, 2005 3:53 AM | Permalink "In case people should think that the whole idea of a link between Iraq and Niger was some invention, in the 1980s we know for sure that Iraq purchased round about 270 tons of uranium from Niger" Er, so? The situation in Niger, with regards to disposition of uranium, has probably changed since then. Further, Iraq was supposed to have 500 tons on-hand, so why bother seeking more? Posted by: Jon H at October 16, 2005 4:47 AM | Permalink Well you know, Fen, it hardly requires an empath to detect the mewling victim in someone who thinks the dreaded MSM is capable of preventing a party controlling every lever of investigative power from investigating a Wilson-led conspiracy against itself. Posted by: weldon berger at October 16, 2005 4:54 AM | Permalink Ms. Miller is obviously very close to Mr. Libby. Mr. Libby's love note to her in jail was telling, and she still seems to be going to great lengths to cover for him. Not according to Miller, she's not. Based on her account, it would appear that she hardly knew Libby before she started interviewing him on the question of why no WMDs had been found. Miller claims that in the summer of 2003, Libby said hello to her at Aspen CO.....and she didn't know who he was until he told her his name. If true (and there is really no reason to doubt it) this means he was not one of her sources for the bogus WMD stories she published in the run-up to the Iraq war.... ....and more importantly, that she had no specific personal reasons to protect him as a source. I also believe that Miller is telling the truth (mostly) about why she did not think that Libby wanted her to testify. At the Time that Miller was supoenaed, Libby was in full-scale denial mode with regard to any involvement with Plame's outing---claiming that he never discussed her with any journalists. Miller knew better, and knew that if Libby was making that claim to the grand jury, that he was perjuring himself. ....which raises another interesting question. In essence, Miller is saying that she suspected/knew that Libby was lying to the grand jury, and thus she was "protecting" someone who she believed was committing perjury. Its one thing to "protect" a whistle-blower from retaliation by his employer, but when a source testifies under oath, and a reporter has information that indicates that testimony is perjurious.....well, lets just say that "journalistic privilege" shouldn't cover this kind of thing.... Uh-huh. That makes no sense at all, and has no relation to anything I've said here. Wilson-led conspiracy? When you're finished trying on fallacious arguments and want to discuss issues with us in good faith, let me know. Posted by: Fen at October 16, 2005 5:18 AM | Permalink Jay, Miller's agreement to change her reference to Libby as an anonymous source from administration official to hill staffer is an explicit confession of personal participation in planting and covering up a Vice Presidential attack on a critic of the Vice President. When you consider the Bush administration's attitude toward classified information (classified information being anything unflattering to George W. or necessary to actual congressional oversight of the executive branch), what conclusion can you draw from Judith Miller having a security clearance other than that someone in the White House has determined that she was on their team--it practically makes her a card-carrying member of the White House Iraq Group. It's like Cheney scheduling an interview with Armstrong Williams or Rush Limbaugh while stone-walling all press that is not expressly on the Bush team. The administration decision that Williams passed muster as an undercover part of their team was damning even before he was paid compensation for agreeing to the arrangement. Miller has effectively told us that she agreed to the arrangement. After being embedded with troops in Iraq, she returned to Washington to be embedded in the White House. What is a Bushco security clearance for Judith Miller if not offical Bush administration recognition of her as a member of the Bush team? What do we think of John Bolton as a possibility for the "Flame" source she "can't remember" (assuming that this source actually exists)? And can anyone explain why she would get a visit in prison from Richard Clarke of all people? Posted by: Mark Anderson at October 16, 2005 5:29 AM | Permalink But keep in mind that while the outing is at the center of the case now, at the time she first heard about Valerie "Flame" it was not. Miller heard about Plame's occupation, but thought she was an analyst, not a covert agent. The disclosure of Plane's job appears to have been made in a very low-key way, and it was not at all the "center" of the various stories that Miller was reporting on at the time. In a case like that, it's not particularly surprising that Miller does not today -- 2-plus years later -- remember where the name came from. It just wasn't the point of the story back then. A few points of rebuttal: -- Miller met with Libby three times - once before Wilson's op-ed, twice after. Novak's column was published within two weeks of Wilson's op-ed. My point: Plame's name was _timely_. -- Miller says in her confessional that she pressed the paper to do a story on Wilson/Plame -- ie, where was the vendetta. Kinda hard to do that if you don't have the names/sources. -- Miller says now that she assumed Plame was an analyst ... the point is that she says Libby told her Plame worked at the CIA at Winpac!
Is the defense going to be "but I thought Judy Miller had clearance to know this"?
Posted by: Kathy Gill at October 16, 2005 6:36 AM | Permalink I just read back through the comments -- a few folks did take offense at the anonymous citation. It's late. :) Based on her account, it would appear that she hardly knew Libby before she started interviewing him on the question of why no WMDs had been found. I didn't take this away from the read at all. Neither do I think someone who was on their second or so interview with the VP's chief of staff would be spending two hours over breakfast with him. As far her statement that she didn't recognize Libby out-of-context (a rodeo) and out-of-uniform (western gear, not a suit) ... that part of the story made sense to me (it's happened to me). The attempt to tie it in to roots of Aspens ... now that was a stretch.
Posted by: Kathy Gill at October 16, 2005 7:02 AM | Permalink Sadly, Jay has taken the liberal view on this issue hook line and sinker. Jay writes about the case: since it was about using the press to discredit people without being named That is an untruth. It was about discrediting information supplied by Wilson...information shown to be demonstrably untrue by a Senate committee that looked at the issue. What is most frustrating about Jay's view on this whole affair is that he paints Wilson as someone who leaked truth, when in fact, he was leaking things that were untrue.... Libby, on the other hand, was telling Judy Miller the truth -- again see the Senate report. Jay thinks Miller has no right to principle because he has decided that Wilson was the man of principle. But the facts support the contention that Wilson is actually a liar. Any overview of this case that doesn't specifically site the most comprehensive intelligence known about it - the Senate report - is just a spin job... sorry Jay. Posted by: rrsafety at October 16, 2005 7:19 AM | Permalink rrsafety: I’m with you and Fen. The elephant in the room here is the fact that Wilson has been completely discredited. welden berger: It was the bipartisan Senate Select Intelligence Committee that told us Wilson is a liar. Every member of the bipartisan committee signed the report. Those are Democrats – telling us that Wilson is a liar. Posted by: OCSteve at October 16, 2005 8:51 AM | Permalink If she actually was issued a security clearance (which is generally handled thru DoD, with investigative help from FBI), then that adds whole new dimensions of personal liability for her, because if you are cleared for access to information, you are legally bound NOT to disclose it. It may explain some of the cutesy back and forth with the prosecutor, because she was possibly jockeying for immunity from prosecution for mishandling classified info, a la Sandy "Pants" Berger. Posted by: SDN at October 16, 2005 8:58 AM | Permalink Well, all I'm seeing is alot of speculation. You might as well wonder if Plame was Miller's source at CIA. Talking points seem to center around painting Miller as the villian, and distancing the NYTs from yet another CBS-like backfire. Why don't we wait until Fitz is done? And where does Karl Rove go to get his good name back? Posted by: Fen at October 16, 2005 9:10 AM | Permalink How ironic?! The same month that Jay declares the Washington Post as the premier newspaper in the land, Howie Kurtz' lays an egg in the first few paragraphs of one of the most important stories in Washington. This line from Howie Kurtz's article today is WRONG: "During one of the 2003 conversations with I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Miller said, she wrote a version of Plame's name in her notebook." It is actually the OPPOSITE, Miller said, "I told Mr. Fitzgerald, I simply could not recall where that came from.."
Posted by: rrsafety at October 16, 2005 9:47 AM | Permalink It was about discrediting information supplied by Wilson...information shown to be demonstrably untrue by a Senate committee that looked at the issue. Well, it looks like the discrediting of Wilson has worked....at least among the tin-foil-hat crowd. Here's a clue. You discredit information by showing that the information is wrong. That is what Wilson was doing when he went to Niger. He didn't come back and say "The Italian Security Services are unreliable because of X, Y and Z. Never trust them, they are liars with bad motives." He came back with information that discredited what was being alleged. That isn't what the White House did --- they tried (and failed, except about the wingnut crowd) to discredit Wilson, just as they have attempted to discredit every other critic. (see, Clarke, O'Neill, etc....) There was a reason why Wilson was targeted rather than his information being "discredited"; the minor details that Wilson got wrong were irrelevant to the larger story, and the explanation of why those details were wrong (i.e. because on the same day that Wilson returned from Niger, the CIA briefed Cheney, telling him that there was no way that the sale had happened) made the administration look worse than Wilson's story did. Wilson isn't a liar. He may have gotten a few minor facts wrong for understandable reasons, but openly acknowledges those errors. (For instance, it was perfectly rational for Wilson to assume that Cheney was briefed on his trip. Cheney had asked the CIA for more info, and Wilson was acting in response to that request, and when a high government official asks for more information and steps are taken to provide that information, normal procedure is to brief the official when the information requested is received.) The fact that the wingnuts who denigrate Wilson don't hold the White House accountable for far more serious, consistent, deliberate, and consequential "errors" demonstrates their lack of intellectual honesty and good faith. There is no point in engaging them further. What I have actually said about Wilson, as opposed to what your culture war scorecard tells you, rr, is that he's "no truthtelling hero" (post) and "seems to me a very poor choice for lionization" (comments.) Sound like the liberal line? Well, does it? Nor do I buy the lock-step, propagandistic and party line view that he's been completely discredited. The case is about discrediting people, rr. If had to do with discrediting information, and the information to sink Wilson was a solid and irrefutable as you say, Libby would have gone on the record. He would have written an op ed piece himself. But he didn't, and never would, because what he was doing was unsavory--and if you will pardon the academic language--chickenshit. This is about the New York Times and Judith Miller. Let's keep it on that and not the level of opposition research. My point is you're wrong about what I think because you let the culture war read for you. Posted by: Jay Rosen at October 16, 2005 9:49 AM | Permalink It takes a special kind of ego to think like this: ...she felt that if Mr. Libby had wanted her to testify, he would have contacted her directly. Never underestimate the infectuous power of the illusion of self-importance. Here we have a journalist putting herself above a source, and here we have the root of the problem. It's not only Judy Miller's New York Times; it's Judy Miller's world. Posted by: Terry Heaton at October 16, 2005 10:00 AM | Permalink Jay, we'll just have to disagree then. I believe what the bi-partisan Senate Committee determined. That Joe Wilson's view of his trip (i.e. he went to Africa, proved that Iraq never asked about yellowcake, and brought this info back to the highest reaches of the US government) is basically a fabrication. In reality, backed up by the Senate Committee report is that he went to Nigeria and reported back that it is unknown if Iraq had bought yellowcake, but that Iraq had probably been asking around about it. Not only that, Wilson's trip was actually a low level affair, information from which was not reported to Tenet or the White House. The reason why this is important to the Judy Miller story is because if Wilson is lying then attempts by a reporter to set the record straight is laudable. If Wilson was lying to Kristof and Pincus, then an attempt by any reporter to find out what Wilson really reported when he came back would be a good thing, the journalistic thing. We can't just hate Miller because we hate Rove and Libby. That doesn't make sense. That is why to understand Miller we HAVE to understand Wilson... Posted by: rrsafety at October 16, 2005 10:05 AM | Permalink Yeah, first I'm a party liner, then we're agreeing to disagree. Hack. Oh, I missed your answer. The reason Libby did not go on the record--then or since--to discredit the so easily discredited Wilson was...? Posted by: Jay Rosen at October 16, 2005 10:13 AM | Permalink Ami, thanks for proving my point. Wilson claimed in 2004 that he on his trip to Niger he helped prove the forged Italian documents were forgeries. Problem is, the Italian documents didn't surface until about 8 months AFTER Wilson's trip to Niger. Ami, you prove my point about Wilson's untruthfulness by repeating his same untruths on this board. Wilson leaked to reporters that he had told the administration that the Italian documents were fakes....this is demonstrably a lie. Posted by: rrsafety at October 16, 2005 10:16 AM | Permalink And where does Karl Rove go to get his good name back? Now there's a trick question if I ever saw one! Posted by: Cervantes at October 16, 2005 10:32 AM | Permalink If you try to turn this thread into a review of culture war talking points about Wilson I will kill your posts, rr. This is about the Times, Miller, Keller, journalism. To celebrate and reiterate the oppo research on Wilson go elsewhere-- Little Green Footballs and PowerLine are good for that. ami, I would appreciate your cooperation, as well. Posted by: Jay Rosen at October 16, 2005 10:34 AM | Permalink ...Judith Miller had a government 'security clearance'????? WHAT !! I've never seen that assertion before reading it here. It is outrageous, if true. Is there a reliable URL confirming the 'fact' that NY Times reporter Miller was issued an official U.S. Government security clearance {"SECRET" clearance, or higher} ?? Posted by: deckert at October 16, 2005 10:36 AM | Permalink Both Reuters and AP found the Cheney lead amidst the self-serving Miller essay - it is astonishing that even at this late date, no Times editor took that information and put it on page one - or at minimum created a sidebar! Pathetic. Posted by: Tom Watson at October 16, 2005 10:52 AM | Permalink Could someone clear up once and for all the matter of the "bipartisan Senate committee"? The bipartisan committee issued a report; Pat Roberts added an appendix that does not fall under "bipartisan committee." See http://mediamatters.org/items/200508010006. Material from the appendix should not be covered by the phrase "even the bipartisan senate committee." Posted by: gmanedit at October 16, 2005 11:49 AM | Permalink Judy Miller's "Secret" Clearance ... Posted by: Sisyphus at October 16, 2005 11:50 AM | Permalink More on Judy's security clearance. Josh Marshall just posted this link. Posted by: Tex MacRae at October 16, 2005 12:24 PM | Permalink Yes, indeed, that "security clearance" is 'very interesting', as Sgt. Schultz used to say. Back in 1977, Bernstein wrote a groundbreaking article entitled, "The CIA and the Media", about the relationship between the CIA and the media, as summarized by Sam Smith of the Progressive Review: "Carl Bernstein, in a contemporary article in Rolling Stone, estimated that 400 American journalists had been tied to the CIA at one point or another, including such well known media figures as the Alsop brothers, C.L. Sulzberger of the New York Times, and Philip Graham of the Washington Post. Later the New York Times reported that the CIA had owned or subsidized more than 50 newspapers, news services, radio stations, and periodicals, mostly overseas. And, says NameBase Newslines, at least 22 American news organizations employed CIA assets, and "nearly a dozen American publishing houses printed some of the more than 1,000 books that had been produced or subsidized by the CIA. When asked in a 1976 interview whether the CIA had ever told its media agents what to write, William Colby replied, 'Oh, sure, all the time.'"" here, things get a little complicated (in this instance, the CIA, or at least some agents and managers, were in conflict with the administration), but, it is possible that Bill Keller was treating Judith Miller gingerly because she was an intelligence operative run through WHIG, Lewis Libby and Sulzberger? did WHIG and the Office of the Vice President have its own list of media operatives, created by their allies within the intelligence community? oh, that must be silly, but . . . oh wait, I forgot the Bush White House was paying people like Armstrong Williams to propagandize for their programs, and if they were willing to do it for something so relatively trivial as "education reform", why not here, except that, on this level, as I said before, people do it for love, not money paranoid musings, of course, until you realize that she was so accomodating in writing all those stories about WMDs (as Colby said, "Oh, sure, all the time"), and her description of her conversations with Libby, as well as Libby's letter to her in jail, sound like someone talking to their case officer, atmospherically supported by her story about her chance encounter with him out West in sunglasses does anyone at the NYT realize how terrible this all looks? the NYT comes across as a media outlet at the direction of WHIG apparently not, if Keller's pathetic comments are any reflection of what is happening there Posted by: Richard Estes at October 16, 2005 12:27 PM | Permalink Jay: For an academic 'press critic,' you're a bit too credulous. For your proofs, you far too often note without requisite skepticism evidence that is sourced anonymously; for example, you write: "In the fall of 2003, after The Washington Post reported that “two top White House officials disclosed Plame’s identity to at least six Washington journalists,” Philip Taubman, Ms. Abramson’s successor as Washington bureau chief, asked Ms. Miller and other Times reporters whether they were among the six. Ms. Miller denied it… Since much of your investigative argument is pegged around acceptance of the WaPo thesis, shouldn't you question the veracity (and even the motives) of the WaPo's writer who has this 'exclusive' that seems to move the story to a very predictable and convenient political (i.e. anti-Bush) exegesis. You appear to accept as fact that there were indeed two credible sources. Who are these sources? Shouldn't we demand to know this, if in fact we demand the same of 'administration supporter' Miller? The Miller/Plame affair proves nothing save the fact that reporters are American's unelected, unappointed and unapologetic mullahs--protectors of a 'progessive' media meme and orthodoxy. . But the hypocrisy of the MSM is amazing. If Bush had a WH inner circle comprised of aggressive and media-threatening defenders, as did the Clintons (see: Lanny Davis, Sandy Berger, Podesta, Emmanuel, Blumenthal, Begala et al) we wouldn't even be discussing this ridiculous non-story. I cannot recall a single instance where the slightest accusation against Clinton(s) wasn't matched by a hostile and intimidating attack on the poor journalist who dared expose or challenge POTUS. (Vide: the full court press on Freeh's revelations on '60 Minutes' last week.) Really. Wilson and Plame--as we've seen--are publicity hounds, glory hogs who think they're celebrities. The both belong to the party in opposition to the present administration. Geez. Clinton appointees and surrogates attack Bush. Quelle surprise. Actually, we should be exploring whether Wilson lied--and if he lied, treasonously (I know, a rather quaint notion in our present culture) to destroy a president. BTW, it should come as no surprise to readers of 'The Nation' that in the years leading up to 9/11 and the second Gulf War, that is, during the Clinton administration, Saddam's acquisition of nuclear technology was seen as fact, not fiction. A major problem, not a myth. During the midst of the Clinton's rule, prominent 'Nation' writer Eric Nadler, together with Columbia University's Jon Friedman, a documentary was initiated--"Stealing the Fire." Here's Human Rights Watch on the film: Case closed? It is all about WMD after all, isn't it? Posted by: John at October 16, 2005 12:42 PM | Permalink Two points about the first Libby interview: Soon afterward Mr. Libby raised the subject of Mr. Wilson's wife for the first time. This was on June 23, almost 2 full weeks before the Wilson op-ed on July 6. So what is Fitzgerald still investigating at this point? Wasn’t the point of the investigation to determine if Plame’s identity was intentionally leaked as retribution for that op-ed? Yet now we know her identity was out 2 weeks prior. Pre-emptive retribution? I wrote in my notes, inside parentheses, "Wife works in bureau?" I told Mr. Fitzgerald that I believed this was the first time I had been told that Mr. Wilson's wife might work for the C.I.A. The prosecutor asked me whether the word "bureau" might not mean the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Yes, I told him, normally. But Mr. Libby had been discussing the C.I.A., and therefore my impression was that he had been speaking about a particular bureau within the agency… I don’t buy that at all. Would anyone in DC circles actually write bureau in reference to the CIA? I think most people would immediately think FBI. Is there an organizational unit called bureau within the CIA? I know of Directorates and “desks” – but this would be the first time I ever heard of a bureau within the CIA. Maybe someone more familiar with the organization can comment. Which leads me to speculate – possibly Libby thought Wilson’s wife worked for the FBI and mentioned that for whatever reason. That wouldn’t leave much left to the case. Libby (incorrectly) mentions Wilson’s wife works for the FBI (not a crime) and its 2 weeks before the op-ed ran so it is certainly not in retribution for that. I don’t see any indictments coming out of this grand jury. Posted by: OCSteve at October 16, 2005 1:09 PM | Permalink re: Miller's "security clearance---- I would suggest that people are making a mountain out of a molehill here. Miller was "embedded" with a unit that was searching for WMDs. This unit's movements were doubtless controlled by "sourced" information that was classified, and its entirely possible that the unit could have stumbled on information that the government wanted to keep secret (for a time at least), ---in other words, without a security clearance, Miller could not have accompanied the unit. I would suggest that Miller's discussion of her security clearance is more about Miller's own sense of self-importance than it is about Miller having general access to state secrets, and that Miller's clearance was similar to the "clearance" that Wilson himself had to be given in order to explain his mission to Niger (in other words, extremely limited to only what was necessary for someone to do their job.) *************** and yes Jay....no more engagement on the issue of Wilson qua Wilson. Fascinating. Even though this affair includes the Washington Post, I've steered clear of saying much about it because so many people, including Tom Maguire, have a helluva lot more valuable to contribute to it than I could at this point. (Maguire says he is "incommunicado" until Monday. I assume he's getting his security clearance straightened out). One thing, however. Citing Cal, you say: Cal: That one jumped out at me too. Mr. Libby requested that he be identified only as a "former Hill staffer." I agreed to the new ground rules because I knew that Mr. Libby had once worked on Capitol Hill." I think that is so telling. Outrageous, of course. But it tells you a lot about Miller and this case. Look, the whole point of quoting someone anonymously is to use information without explicitly identifying the source. As far as I'm concerned once an editor, reporter or reader accepts the transaction, it's already a misdirection. Absent an outright lie, we're left with an argument about degrees. Reporters with security clearances? Never occurred to me. Posted by: Christopher Fotos at October 16, 2005 1:39 PM | Permalink I the ending of her piece rather interesting... In answer, I told the grand jury about my last encounter with Mr. Libby. It came in August 2003, shortly after I attended a conference on national security issues held in Aspen, Colo. After the conference, I traveled to Jackson Hole, Wyo. At a rodeo one afternoon, a man in jeans, a cowboy hat and sunglasses approached me. He asked me how the Aspen conference had gone. I had no idea who he was. Why was she in Jackson Hole? Perhaps Fitzgerald finds this little bit interesting, too. "I have NEVER heard of reporters getting security clearances. Who gives clearances to them: DOD, CIA, NSA ...??? Why would any government agency give a reporter clearance?" The sponsoring activity requests clearance be granted. The FBI and the sponsoring agencies Investigative arm conducts a length background and NCI check with the FBI doing the primary work. I presume she had only "Secret" clearance which has been granted on temporary basis to other reporters in the past. However, any "Secret" clearance granted Miller by DOD while she was in Iraq, would not still be in effect when she returned home working for the NYT. She would merely have "Cleared Secret - Inactive" status. Libby could have requested reactivation of her clearance status rather easily, and it could have been quickly reactivated without the long NCI FBI investigation required for initial clearance. Posted by: j mosby at October 16, 2005 2:00 PM | Permalink In response to OCSteve: Even though Miller and Libby's first meeting preceded Wilson's op-ed column, Wilson already was being quoted elsewhere anonymously. That would explain why Libby was trying to discredit him. To me, the two Times pieces raised more questions than they answered: I will say this, for all her standing on principle, Miller's account comes across very, very differently than Matthew Cooper's account of his grand jury testimony. With Cooper, you felt like he was telling you everything he knew. With Miller, you get the sense that she's more loyal to Libby than to her readers. What's wrong with this picture? Posted by: Julie Mack at October 16, 2005 2:11 PM | Permalink I would suggest that Miller's discussion of her security clearance is more about Miller's own sense of self-importance than it is about Miller having general access to state secrets I sincerely hope so. The only security clearances I am familiar with are a long process of filling out a form with all your previous jobs, addresses, etc. and then investigators from the Defense Dept. go around checking it out. I have never heard of a process where by some administration big shot touches you with the magic security clearance rod and you are cleared. I am guessing we will be hearing a lot more about the security clearance. Posted by: Alice Marshall at October 16, 2005 2:29 PM | Permalink She said she thought she would write a book about her experiences in the leak case, although she added that she did not yet have a book deal. The NYT should seek reimbursement of the "millions" they spent in lawyers' fees defending her from the proceeds of any book deal she puts together. Posted by: deadlast at October 16, 2005 2:53 PM | Permalink Even though Miller and Libby's first meeting preceded Wilson's op-ed column, Wilson already was being quoted elsewhere anonymously. That would explain why Libby was trying to discredit him. So how did the administration find out that Wilson was the anonymous source who was being quoted? Fitzgerald probably knows. He must have all the email correspondence, phone logs, etc. So he has probably worked out how the administration knew Wilson was the anonymous source. It is at least possible that Judy Miller used her position within the NYT to discover that Wilson was the anonymous source. If that is correct, and this is only speculation, then not only did Miller not go to jail on principle, but in fact played an unsavory role in exposing a source. However, this is only speculation. Posted by: Alice Marshall at October 16, 2005 2:58 PM | Permalink Tom Maguire has checked in. Posted by: Christopher Fotos at October 16, 2005 3:00 PM | Permalink Look, the whole point of quoting someone anonymously is to use information without explicitly identifying the source. As far as I'm concerned once an editor, reporter or reader accepts the transaction, it's already a misdirection. Absent an outright lie, we're left with an argument about degrees. Precisely so. Posted by: Alice Marshall at October 16, 2005 3:04 PM | Permalink Judy is just a sideshow it all goes back to White House Iraq Group that's the real conspiracy... That's where impeachment lies. Posted by: Amy at October 16, 2005 3:09 PM | Permalink What was heretofore called the Valerie Plame -- or Flame depending on whose spelling you use -- affair should hence be called The Miller's Tale. Just as in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the two Millers refused to let someone else tell their tale. Chaucer's Miller was drunk and jumped social rank, and refused to let the Monk tell his tale. Judy, drunk with self-importance, refused to let the Times tell its story. Posted by: George Henson at October 16, 2005 3:15 PM | Permalink After re-reaing today's articles my opinion of her dropped still further and now she is sounding more incompetent and more of a liar: If she doesn't recall the name of her other secret source than how was she going to talk to that person again if she needed to? What if her editors asked the identity of her source other than Libby, which I thought was supposed to be the new practice post-Newsweek Koran scandal? Or is she just the journalism version of the guy in Sixth Sense who sees things. "I see sources... I just can't remember who they are." This is what I wrote up: Posted by: Scott Butki at October 16, 2005 5:25 PM | Permalink Afterthought: Let's pretend she does have another source whose name gave her Valerie Flame and that source is not Libby or Rove. Is Fitzgerald really going to accept an "I don't know" on something this big? Posted by: Scott Butki at October 16, 2005 5:27 PM | Permalink This whole thing is such a load of baloney that I can't believe it's happening. She "forgot" who told her the name Valerie Flame? Wasn't that the punchline of a really old Steve Martin stand-up act? He "forgot" to pay taxes. That was his recommended excuse to the feds when you didn't pay. And this other thing about anonymous sources. When I was a practicing journalist, the deal was you identified a source in a story as fully as possible. That would mean a name and title was the best, followed by just a description of the job or whatever relevant information what help readers understand what kind of source it is and how reliable. But just pulling some factoid from history and throwing it in as the indentification of an anonymous...that's just wrong. I think other newspapers and journalists should now begin to work very hard not get spattered by Miller's professional crackup. Quite apart from the specific rights and wrongs here, this entire affair illustrates how things have changed in the rarefied air of inside-the-Beltway off-the-record briefings... We readers now know how to read traditional reporting that might go like this: "Wilson's accusations about weapons of mass destruction are unreliable because his wife is an undercover CIA expert in WMDs, says a former Capitol Hill staffer." As signifying this: "The off-the-record attempts to discredit Wilson have now escalated to accusations of CIA sabotage of the White House. This counterattack consists of possibly-illegal leaks that Wilson is the crony of an undercover WMD operative. These accusations are so incendiary that the senior staffer releasing the information preferred to be identified by a previous position, that of a Capitol Hill staffer." In this overheated, let's call it Kremlinesque, atmosphere, the motives for leaks are more significant than their manifest content. Until that atmosphere clears, we should ask reporters to treat the activity of anonymous whispering as being newsworthy--not the specific charges those insinuations contain. If Judith Miller had reported her conversations using the second formulation, we would have learned immediately about what was going on in the corridors or power, rather than having to glean it retroactively through the precise parsings of PressThink commenters. By the way, it is a bum rap against Miller that she made note of the "former Hill staffer" moniker. As has been noted frequently, she never wrote that article. She was merely documenting his request, not describing her compliance with it in print. Posted by: Andrew Tyndall at October 16, 2005 5:57 PM | Permalink Sent this morning to both Arthurs, Keller, Calame and others: An Open Letter to the Times' Management I am one of an informal group of more than 100 national and international journalists and media professionals who take their profession seriously, and who are angered at the decay of the press. We come from all walks and companies of the profession from McGraw-Hill and Dow-Jones to trade magazines you have never heard of. And we are angry. Posted by: James Brinton at October 16, 2005 6:17 PM | Permalink Why was Judith Miller parsing the quality (voluntary, not voluntary, etc.) of the release of the confidentiality pledge that she received from her source? Obviously, it wasn't voluntary. Think about it. Matthew Cooper did not have any problem with whether or not Lewis Libby's release had been "voluntary." Miller's stance on this question adds an undue burden on a reporter. (More on this at JPROF.com.) Reporters are not responsible for the situations sources may find themselves in. And how are they to tell is a release is "voluntary"? Miller's decision to protect her source was the right one. She had pledged confidentiality, and she needed to honor that. When she was released from that pledge, that should have ended it. Posted by: Jim Stovall at October 16, 2005 6:28 PM | Permalink Semiotics isn't your forte, Andy. Here's how it parses: Wilson is a unemployable Clinton hack/appointee, now sitting on the sidelines waiting for Hillary and cursing Bush at every chance for derailing his aspirations. Flame-out's wife has been desked at the spook shed--promoted beyond her acumen during the PC tenure of the Clintons and now herself thwarted in career ambitions--like other very public and generou$ contributors to the Dems--in the Bush years. She gets him a job, he fails to do it properly, comes back, outs himself and his wife, and they lands a gig as Vanity's kooky cover kids ...that about it? This is all about WMDs, right? See the movie: "Stealing the Fire." Made by Clinton partisans at The Nation and Columbia University. Posted by: John at October 16, 2005 6:30 PM | Permalink Regardless of the flaws in the Times piece, it was rather impressive in its sincerity and self-criticisms. Could someone please start putting pressure on the Chicago Sun Times to do something similar related to Novak? Although the Plame story is still rather murky, the truth is slowly coming out. The only constant dark spot appears to be Novak. Posted by: Jean at October 16, 2005 6:51 PM | Permalink Greg Mitchell at Editor & Publisher got it right. He proclaimed in an October 15, 2005 column: "It's not enough that Judith Miller, we learned Saturday [October 14, 2005], is taking some time off and hopes to return to the New York Times newsroom. As the newspaper's devastating account of her Plame games -- and her own first-person sidebar -- make clear, she should be promptly dismissed for crimes against journalism, and her own newspaper. And Bill Keller, executive editor, who let her get away with it, owes readers, at the minimum, an apology instead of merely hailing his papers long-delayed analysis and saying that readers can make of it what they will." I doubt Miller's conduct would have been tolerated in any other Times reporter. The kid glove treatment she received from Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. the publisher, and Keller makes me wonder what she has on them. Like Jay said, The Times "became Judy Miller's newspaper" under Keller. The question is: Why did Sulzberger and Keller let it happen? Posted by: Munir Umrani at October 16, 2005 6:53 PM | Permalink This is without question The Mother of All Four Estate Meltdowns. Inevitably the words "I'd hate to take a bit out of you. You're a cookie full of arsenic," come to mind when thinking of Throughly Postmodern Miller. As things now stand the NYT is in insult in the dead fish that some might still consider wrapping in it. It's not just Judy who must go -- the entire editorial board of the NYT must be shown the door. After that it Might be possible to rescue the paper's shredded-beyond-recognition reputation. But I doubt it. Posted by: David Ehrenstein at October 16, 2005 6:59 PM | Permalink Sorry, I'm not a journalist; perhaps that's why I'm struggling with the NYT's protection of principles issue. Granted, I don't have all the information presented to date to the grand jury, but I don't see how Miller's situation could ever have been painted as a crusade for protection of First Amendment rights. The source was a whistleblower acting in the interest of the public? Sure doesn't look like it. The source might have committed a criminal act or aided and abetted a criminal act? Quite possibly, from where I sit. Is there a right under the First Amendment to protect a criminal or their criminal act? Not that I'm aware of. So why did the NYT editorial staff see it differently? Add the other facts -- a security clearance that wasn't provided universally to other embedded journos, resistance to orders to stay away from WMD-related stories (bordering on insubordination), story content that later proved grossly inaccurate, etc. -- it just doesn't add up. The NYT articles published in today's edition don't alleviate this cognitive dissonance. But then, I'm not a journalist. Do journalists see this differently? Do editors see this differently? Should I have to take courses in journalism to figure out this mess and lay claim to larger protections under the First Amendment? Posted by: Rayne at October 16, 2005 7:13 PM | Permalink You make a big deal of Miller's clearance. But obviously the Times was comfortable with it. In fact, it begs the question: was the Times part of the Miller arrangement with the administration? If so, it would answer a lot of the reluctance from the bosses to rein in Miller, would it not? Posted by: whenwego at October 16, 2005 7:13 PM | Permalink Amy Goodman took on Bob Herbert last July over this very same proposition. She very specifically asked for his reaction to Miller's use of confidentiality to hide government manipulation, including her stories about WMD in the leadup to the war, which they later apologized for. In this interview, he said it was ok for a reporter to use confidentiality for whatever they wanted. Link to transcript. Posted by: jasperjed at October 16, 2005 8:33 PM | Permalink PR statements are always parsed to the nth degree before being released. Judy Miller "is taking some time off and hopes to return to the New York Times newsroom." Posted by: Steve Lovelady at October 16, 2005 9:15 PM | Permalink Warning: don't take the "security clearance" thing too terribly seriously. It doesn't mean a whole lot. It certainly doesn't mean she was some kind of administration darling. As was pointed out above, Ms. Plame spent some time with a military unit doing investigations. That might very well require a clearance -- but not for the reason you might think. Holders of security clearances are in much deeper shit if they spill the beans than those who don't have clearances and learn things in ways that can be considered innocent, and their output must by law be vetted by superiors. The clearance was almost certainly not a privilege, but rather a sword to hold over her neck to make sure she didn't tell anything the military considered secret. Regards, Posted by: Ric Locke at October 16, 2005 9:36 PM | Permalink The state of Miller's clearanceness may be important--or maybe not. I recall having a secret clearance, as an Infantry 2LT. I don't think it was confidential. I believe all commissioned officers had it. If you didn't qualify, you didn't get a commission. One of my OCS (1969)buddies was temporarily in limbo due to a trip he'd made to the USSR with a college choir (hell of a second tenor). After deciding he'd been too well-chaperoned to be set up in case he went into the Army a couple or three years later, they let him continue. I served in a branch for a while which was considerably more technical than the Infantry, and it was not uncommon for a couple of officers to stop in mid-sentence, look around the room, and then continue. One possible reason she didn't recall the source of "Flame" is that it was such common knowledge that it wasn't a big deal. It could have been Bill, or maybe Fred. Or, no, wait. Maybe it was Sally. Or at the meeting about the .... who was there? Posted by: RichardAubrey at October 16, 2005 9:44 PM | Permalink And of course I got the name wrong -- in my second paragraph above, s/Plame/Miller/ I must say, as a certified, card-carrying wingnut, this whole business is starting to be as funny as twenty clowns in a Volkswagen. Jay will call me names if I go farther, and will be right to do so. Regards, Posted by: Ric Locke at October 16, 2005 9:49 PM | Permalink The state of Miller's clearanceness may be important--or maybe not. The first question is, did she even have one? A drama queen like Miller may have fashioned that from the whole cloth. Posted by: Alice Marshall at October 16, 2005 9:58 PM | Permalink Back when I had a security clearance, it didn't mean that I was a secret agent or an administration hack. It meant that the FBI had no reason to believe that I was a spy, or a saboteur, or the sort of person who would call a Muslim charity and warn them of an impending raid. And it went with the job - no longer working on the job, no longer have the clearance. Posted by: big dirigible at October 16, 2005 10:23 PM | Permalink David Ehrenstein: Absolutely dead on. There must be senior editors who still view working at the Times as a privilege not to be violated, but apparently none of them are working at the Times. I'm afraid I don't have your name recognition -- still no call from Jeff Gerth. Posted by: weldon berger at October 16, 2005 11:11 PM | Permalink Judy speaks briefly to the WSJ in a new piece tomorrow... Go to www.talkleft.com --- Posted by: Volvo Liberal at October 17, 2005 12:04 AM | Permalink Today's Judy Miller story and NY Times "mea culpa (sorta)" present another tale of a sociopath who played the journalistic system like a fiddle. In the climactic scene of "The Bad Seed," Rhoda Penmark (the Patty McCormack character) tries one last time to lie her way out of an accounting for all her murderous little missteps. Then, when this no longer works, she slides into an increasingly bizarre and chilling series of excuses, all played out in the role of mama's little girl. No less eerie are Ms. Miller's open display of misjudgment about when to reveal, when to conceal, when to stand on or stand down from principle, when to remember and when to forget; her baffling belief that somehow at the end of this charade lies a lucrative heroic read; and her treatment of public deception as technically all right. She is in a class with Blair, Kelley and Glass. But within this set she's a league of her own. She alone helped trick the citizens of a hyperpower into the most senseless war in its history. She alone managed to get its (onetime) paper of record and premier first amendment lawyer to ignore plain facts and back her on principle. And she alone sustained the travesty for years amid denunciations from people of no more than average discernment. A supposable sequel to "The Bad Seed" has Rhoda deflect the lightning bolt onto someone else, make her way into journalism school, and sail down a Milleresque career path the rest of the way. With all we've seen to date, who can say that this isn't the book at the end of Ms. Miller's dark-hued rainbow? Posted by: Creeping Truth at October 17, 2005 12:06 AM | Permalink rr, What about Fitzgerald's 8 pages of hidden information that allowed him to go after Cooper and Miller?
--- Posted by: Volvo Liberal at October 17, 2005 12:09 AM | Permalink She was used by the Bush administration, and she didn't know it. This sort of thing must go on in journalism all the time. I mean, look at it. The lead players at the New York Times, for god's sake, are kind of stupid. Why wouldn't the people they hire be stupid as well? There have got to be a lot of reporters out there who are blinded by their own sense of self-importance and these days, god-knows-what-other drug~induced, religion-or-patriotism-fueled willingness to suspend disbelief. Judith Miller seems like the archetype. Posted by: NealB at October 17, 2005 12:23 AM | Permalink More on Judy's security clearance. A piece from AJR in 2003 and one from NY Mag in 2004 go into more detail on Judy's arrangement with DoD and her clearance to be embedded in Iraq. Reportedly Rumsfeld approved the arrangement. A DoD public affairs officer says her stories were censored; did the NYT tell its readers this in 2003? Doubtful. In fact, it sounds like the paper didn't have a clear picture of her relationship with DoD in 2003 OR 2005. The NY Mag piece also provides context around what was happening at the NYT in 2003-2005 that might have contributed to her, umm, running wild. Posted by: Kathy Gill at October 17, 2005 2:20 AM | Permalink “So did Bill Keller, so did Jill Abramson. But there was nothing they could do.“ Surely you jest! They could have stepped up to bat and cut their newsroom loose from the editorial page at any time they were willing to risk their own positions in the name of journalistic integrity. As reporters everywhere else have amply demonstrated, Ms. Miller’s personal input is not, never was, and certainly never should have been, a prerequisite for filing a report of almost any kind on this story. A simple, standard, “Ms. Miller declined to comment…” would have covered that base quite adequately. I am astonished to find you giving Keller and Abramson what amounts to a sympathetic pass on this, as though they were dealing with circumstances that just somehow spiraled beyond their control. “By the time they realized what Miller’s secrets had done to their people and their journalism….” I’m sorry, but we’re talking about what the failure of Keller et al to fight for their own newsrooms did to their people and their journalism -- a failure of both courage and judgment where both press and public ought to be able to expect it most. Posted by: JM Hanes at October 17, 2005 2:22 AM | Permalink I am astonished to find you giving Keller and Abramson what amounts to a sympathetic pass on this, as though they were dealing with circumstances that just somehow spiraled beyond their control. Keller clearly does not deserve a pass on this---and indeed, I think that E&P doesn't go far enough by recommending that Keller apologize; Keller should be fired. Abramson, on the other hand, is Keller's subordinate, and the "Landman crew" piece strongly suggests that she was not a happy camper during this entire episode. She does not appear to have had any real control over the situation, and she should not be put in the same class as Keller. Alice Marshall: So how did the administration find out that Wilson was the anonymous source who was being quoted? My little footnote in history: so far as I know, I was the first person to speculate publicly that Nick Kristoff's source was Wilson. It took me about a day using Google to figure it out, and while the forged Niger documents demonstrate that the administration hadn't exactly mastered Google at the time, it's a safe bet they, along with a substantial chunk of Washington's reporterorial population, knew it was Wilson considerably earlier than I did. Posted by: weldon berger at October 17, 2005 4:26 AM | Permalink it's a safe bet they, along with a substantial chunk of Washington's reporterorial population, knew it was Wilson considerably earlier than I did. True enough. Another reason not to use anonymous sources is that the powers that be can almost always work out who is behind the quotes. Just ask Dr. David Kelly. Posted by: Alice Marshall at October 17, 2005 7:12 AM | Permalink However, any "Secret" clearance granted Miller by DOD while she was in Iraq, would not still be in effect when she returned home working for the NYT. Bingo. And to extend the conversation about how that secrecy culture works (good points about a clearance "getting you where your commander wants you to go"), the people who make their living in Spookworld tend to be highly aware of the value of information and the standing of the people who receive it. In other words, a big security clearance only gives you access to the info you need to do your job. I once carried an absurdly high NATO clearance because I had access to a slice of our war plans, but that still didn't give me clearance to know the identity of all my routine contacts or the mission of an agency with which I interacted. All my clearance really meant was that if my chain of command needed me to know more stuff, they could just give it to me. No new vetting required. A sidenote: As I remember the rules, the holder of a clearance remains responsible for all information received under the terms of the clearance, even after the active clearance is retired. In other words, if Miller received classified info while in Iraq under clearance, she's not supposed to reveal it until it's declassified. Which is a good reason why reporters should resist the offer of secret clearances. The easiest way I can imagine to throttle the press would be to give reporters classifed information under a security clearance. That way, even if they ever get that info from an independent source, they can't report it. Did that apply in this case? I dunno. But it looks to me like Judith Miller has become a resident of Spookworld. Once you cross that line, I don't think you can ever really come back. Posted by: Daniel Conover at October 17, 2005 9:36 AM | Permalink Daniel. I believe you're right about the forever angle of classified information. I signed a form when I got off active duty saying I'd keep whatever I knew secret with no time limit. Anyway, whither the NYT? Where will they be this time next year? Posted by: RichardAubrey at October 17, 2005 10:05 AM | Permalink Judy Miller as Rhoda Penmark? I LOVE IT! Can't you just see Judy stroking Bill Keller's check the way Patty McCormack did to Nancy Kelly? "Oh, I have the loveliest editor in the whole world. I was DAMNED RIGHT about those Weapons of Mass Destruction, wasn't I?" Posted by: David Ehrenstein at October 17, 2005 10:51 AM | Permalink Confession: I didn't really grasp the implications of my comment until after I wrote it. A reporter doesn't accept a security clearance in order to be given classified information. A reporter would accept a clearance only as an agreement not to release information he or she might accidentally acquire in the course of covering a related story (being embedded with a military unit with a classified mission, etc.). A clearance isn't a badge of honor: it's a leash. There's one alternative I can think of: Perhaps a government official might convince a reporter to accept a clearance in order to give the reporter classified information that would discredit an erroneous story. In other words, if a political enemy was spreading a story that I wanted stopped, but my proof was classified, I might offer a reporter a chance to see that proof if he/she agreed to accept a clearance for the purpose of seeing it (sound familiar?). But this is an awful deal for the reporter, and it's particularly bad for the reporter's editor, because you could never truly verify the "classified" information you would receive under such an agreement. The reporter couldn't even ask other sources about it without knowing they were pre-cleared, and you couldn't really know that without asking. Plus, the reporter could not legally share the info with an editor unless the editor also signed the clearance. I cannot imagine ever authorizing a reporter to enter into such an agreement, because it would be too easy for the source to manipulate me afterward. And maybe this is all a misunderstanding. I certainly hope so. For Miller to have some kind of standing clearance (as opposed to a contingent clearance for her embedded reporting) would make her, for all intents and purposes, an agent of the United States government. And if the NYT allowed that to happen, it essentially handed the White House the keys to its franchise. Posted by: Daniel Conover at October 17, 2005 11:17 AM | Permalink "A clearance isn't a badge of honor: it's a leash." Exactly. That is why it's alarming that she may have one. Posted by: Jay Rosen at October 17, 2005 11:19 AM | Permalink There's a good round-up of bloggers on the Miller sitaution here. My favorite pithy line I've penned on this mater is this one
Posted by: Scott Butki at October 17, 2005 11:24 AM | Permalink As I have said many times before, Judy Miller is no more a journalist than Andrea Mitchell. She's an agent of powers both foreign and domestic. The history of American journalism finds compromising incidents of all sorts (the most pertinent example being Maurine Watkins' stories for the Chicago Tribune), but never so severely demaging as what we find today. We have allowed the "unnamed sources" con job to run unchecked, and until very recently unquestioned. As a result there is no reason whatsoever to believe one single word of what's printed in the NYT as "news." And that's just one example. Posted by: David Ehrenstein at October 17, 2005 11:31 AM | Permalink Exactly. That is why it's alarming that she may have one. I'm slow, but sometimes I get there. Posted by: Daniel Conover at October 17, 2005 11:35 AM | Permalink Did you guys know you are involved in a trust shift? Participants in these threads are cited... The truth is that my trust has shifted. I find I trust The Times and other mainstream media far more after they've gone through the blogosphere. E.g., I trust Jay's blogging of the the Times' coverage — and the remarkable voices in his comments section — more than I trust the coverage itself. Posted by: Jay Rosen at October 17, 2005 12:25 PM | Permalink The idea in anyway that the editors of the Times were duped by Miller is ludicrous, they were complicit. Posted by: brutus at October 17, 2005 12:29 PM | Permalink Purely from a security standpoint, consider this: Posted by: Steve Lovelady at October 17, 2005 12:39 PM | Permalink A few comments on security clearances. First, if what Miller was granted was a standard SECRET clearance that is not particularly a high one. It is, of course, to be taken seriously, but it is not anywhere near some of the compartmented info clearances that are typical in intel agencies, which require very extensive and timeconsuming background checks before they are awarded. Second, a clearance expires but, as noted above, the legal requirement to protect information learned during the time the clearance was active does not. Whatever else Miller may be guilty of, neither her reticence about potentially disclosing classified information nor her lack of clarity about whether her clearance was active at the time of her conversation with Libby doesn't surprise me ... a lot of people don't keep track of when a clearance expires, if they don't view themselves as actively using it anymore. Of course, if she didn't think she was cleared, that raises a question about what she DID think about the information discussed with Libby. Did she think it was classified? And if so, was she relying - as apparently many journalists do - on some informal precedent that allows journalists without clearances to learn classified info? To me, THAT is a huge story here and one that deserves much more discussion. While I understand Jay's discomfort about clearances for reporters, I must say I'm rather unhappy at what appears to be selectively applied concern on the part of journalists for protection of classified data that has surfaced as a result of Miller's actions. If journalists are not to be cleared, then they cannot be embedded with some units - that is pretty obvious. If they are not to be embedded, it may enhance their independence but it also restricts their access to information on the battlefield -- and it raises very large issues about their safety. The tradeoffs are very real and are not, I suspect, susceptible to easy reconciliation. Posted by: Robin Burk at October 17, 2005 12:51 PM | Permalink Preview is my friend ..... that should have read neither her reticence about potentially disclosing classified information nor her lack of clarity about whether her clearance was active at the time of her conversation with Libby surprises me Posted by: Robin Burk at October 17, 2005 12:53 PM | Permalink Judith Miller has/had security clearance. She will not reveal/or recall her original source for disclosing Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA undercover opreative. What if, as many others have claimed (pace Ariana Huffington), Judith Miller *is* the original source? And she's protecting herself for disclosing classified information? Let's think about this. All other accounts (including the two inept NYT artcles on Sunday) just don't add up. Posted by: Biodun at October 17, 2005 1:01 PM | Permalink If Judy had a security clearance (which she apparently did) , then does that get Libby off the hook for revealing to her classified information which she never printed? That, plus, Steve: the very thing that would tend to draw her into confidential discussions with Libby would draw her away from editors and their knowledge because they do not have any such "clearances." She had a (serious) reason not to divulge things to them. Which might begin to explain why she was, in effect, unsupervised, and on and on. Posted by: Jay Rosen at October 17, 2005 1:09 PM | Permalink As a result there is no reason whatsoever to believe one single word of what's printed in the NYT as "news." You go too far. The NYT has a very fine business section. Posted by: Alice Marshall at October 17, 2005 1:12 PM | Permalink Robin: There are circumstances in which journalists might properly enter into a limited clearance agreement (I'm embedded with a unit and I overhear the CO and the XO discussing tomorrow's plan of attack: That's classified info that should remain classified), but that's not the issue with Miller. My hypothetical embed example is a protection against the reporting of accidentally disclosed classified information in wartime. But we're talking about a stateside clearance that shows no signs of being a protection against accidental disclosure. So, why would Miller agree to be leashed on subjects that were deliberately disclosed to her? Second, were her editors party to this agreement? Posted by: Daniel Conover at October 17, 2005 1:18 PM | Permalink Robin: I agree with you that it's not clear why Miller feels she has a right to see classified information, or push for it. Also, I understand what you said: if you are going to have embeds you are going to need some kind of clearance for them. Agreed. My questions are: 1.) We know she claimed to, but did she actually have some special clearance--severals of classication "higher" than other reporters working in Iraq--and from whom did such clearances come if she did? "Just boasting" or "has some basis in fact?" 2.) Did she have some special clearance to see classified material that applied to her stateside reporting, not as an embed in Iraq but as a part of the press corps in Washington, and if she did from whom? "Just boasting" or "has some basis in fact?" Her statement is wholly ambigious about 1.) and 2.) What I want to know from you, Robin is: what was your reaction to Miller's statements, like, "Mr. Fitzgerald asked me if I knew whether I was cleared to discuss classified information at the time of my meetings with Mr. Libby. I said I did not know." What did you make of the tale she was telling about her clearances? Posted by: Jay Rosen at October 17, 2005 1:23 PM | Permalink Jay, typically clearances are awarded for a set period of time rather than being tied to a job or an event. Unless that was modified for embedded reporters in Iraq, the distinction you're drawing between a clearance for Miller in Iraq and a clearance for Miller as part of the press corps is probably misleading. It depends entirely on when the clearance was awarded and whether it fit the usual guidelines or was tailored in a more restrictive fashion. That said, Miller does not come across, in stories about her behavior in Iraq or at home, as a very likeable or modest person - or one reticient to use her status and connections to elbow her way to the front of the line for info. I can well imagine that the troops in country detested her after a while. There is an ego inflation that people with a small amount of knowledge often fall prey to, especially when they are able to stand next to big events unfolding. Dan Rather in his safari jacket opining portentiously from Baghdad comes to mind as one egregious example, but he is far from alone. If Miller had a SECRET-level base clearance but additionally had some very limited compartmentalized clearance just for the WMD search in Iraq, it might explain her reputed sense of greater access than that afforded other embeds. It might also explain confusion about the boundaries of her clearance once back home. But all that is speculation. Do we even know for sure that the base clearance was at the SECRET level? At any rate, the phrase "discuss classified information" is rather vague. There is, as others have noted, information classified at various levels. There are also compartments of special information for which both access and discussion are very tightly controlled - and generally speaking, one does not discussion the fact that one holds a clearance for compartmentalized info, or which one. Access to information at the higher level clearances, certainly at the Top Secret clearance and then compartments, is on a "need to know" basis and the fact that someone else has a clearance at that level does not automatically encourage discussions of such information between the parties. Information classified at the SECRET level is less tightly held among clearance holders. So a great deal depends on exactly what clearance(s) Miller was granted and whether she understood them and interpreted them correctly. Posted by: Robin Burk at October 17, 2005 1:40 PM | Permalink One other comment, Jay. The story quoted above says of Miller, An e-mail message to me from her PAO sergeant escort regarding a three-week trip with META in April stated: “She did not have a SECRET clearance.” I'm not sure how to read this, other than at some point she was allowed to join META with a Public Affairs Office escort and did not, at that time, have a SECRET clearance. Several possibilities: (1) that she was later granted a SECRET clearance, (2) that she never had a full SECRET clearance but only some limited form or (3) that she was later granted a full SECRET clearance that allowed her to be embedded with the WMD search team. I would be a little surprised if she were able to embed with the WMD search team without some sort of clearance because their work inevitably would make regular use of intel sources and methods. Posted by: Robin Burk at October 17, 2005 1:50 PM | Permalink The most benign interpretation is that she had a limited clearance for her sojourn with the MET. That need not have had a formal title such as SECRET. She would, in the normal course of affairs as METs go--which is to say nobody had a clue what would be happening since it had never been done before--only be exposed to the info that the group was using since they wouldn't be talking about anything else. She comes home and everybody forgets about it. Except her and she continues to claim she had a clearance. Somebody takes her word. Posted by: Richard Aubrey at October 17, 2005 2:35 PM | Permalink On the security clearance issue, miller said that "During the Iraq war, the Pentagon had given me clearance to see secret information as part of my assignment "embedded" with a special military unit hunting for unconventional weapons." This sounds like a very limited "clearance" to me. More interesting, perhaps, is the sentence which precedes it: "He asked, for example, whether I had discussed my security status with Mr. Libby.". But Miller doesn't tell us her answer.... Also notable is this comment.... "Mr. Fitzgerald asked if I had discussed classified information with Mr. Libby. I said I believed so, but could not be sure. He asked how Mr. Libby treated classified information. I said, Very carefully." Does anyone else see a significant contradiction here? If Miller discussed classified info with someone who handled classified info 'very carefully', it seems to me that the other person would have alerted Miller to the classified status of the information --- and Miller wouldn't be "not sure" if classified info was discussed. She'd know it, because her source would have made sure that Miller understood that the information was classified. **************** the folks who have suggested that a "security clearance" is a means of controlling a reporter are right. The most egregious example was Miller's report on the "Iraqi scientist" that she saw pointing to 'where the WMDs were buried". That story was vetted by the Pentagon to avoid giving away anything that the Pentagon wanted to remain classified. We know she claimed to, but did she actually have some special clearance--severals of classication "higher" than other reporters working in Iraq--and from whom did such clearances come if she did? "Just boasting" or "has some basis in fact?" I've been looking for some mention in Miller coverage early in the war for clues about this. So far, this quote from a Howard Kurtz column about the John Burns-Judy Miller clash when Burns was the Baghdad bureau chief and Judy ripped off a Chalabi story (worth reviewing anyway for what it says about Ms. Run Amok's ethics): Behind that story [Judy's mysterious "Iraqi scientist" who famously pointed at a sand dune] was an interesting arrangement. Under the terms of her accreditation, Miller wrote, "this reporter was not permitted to interview the scientist or visit his home. Nor was she permitted to write about the discovery of the scientist for three days, and the copy was then submitted for a check by military officials. Those officials asked that details of what chemicals were uncovered be deleted." Since then, no evidence has surfaced to support these claims and the Alpha team is preparing to leave Iraq without having found weapons of mass destruction. Rosenthal says all embedded reporters agreed to the same restrictions. "We didn't feel this amounted to censorship," he said. "We thought the added burden of the rules was justified by the access we got to what would have been secret operations." FWIW. It seems Rosenthal, at least, was under the impression that Miller's status was that of a typical embedded reporter. Also intriguing is Kurtz's reporting on MET Alpha, read in light of Miller's current confessions. A few excerpts: The MET Alpha team was charged with examining potential Iraqi weapon sites in the war's aftermath. Military officers critical of the unit's conduct say its members were not trained in the art of human intelligence -- that is, eliciting information from prisoners and potential defectors. Specialists in such interrogations say the initial hours of questioning are crucial, and several Army and Pentagon officials were upset that MET Alpha officers were debriefing Hussein son-in-law Jamal Sultan Tikriti. "This was totally out of their lane, getting involved with human intelligence," said one military officer who, like several others interviewed, declined to be named because he is not an authorized spokesman. But, the officer said of Miller, "this woman came in with a plan. She was leading them. . . . She ended up almost hijacking the mission." Said a senior staff officer of the 75th Exploitation Task Force, of which MET Alpha is a part: "It's impossible to exaggerate the impact she had on the mission of this unit, and not for the better." Three weapons specialists were reassigned as the unit changed its approach, according to officers with the task force.[...] Miller later challenged the pullback order with Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the 101st Airborne. While Petraeus did not have direct authority over Col. Richard McPhee, the commander of the 75th task force, McPhee rescinded his withdrawal order after Petraeus advised him to do so. McPhee declined two requests for comment "Our desire was to pull these guys back in," said an officer who served under McPhee, adding that it was "quite a surprise" that the order was reversed. As for MET Alpha's seeming independence, this officer said: "The way McPhee phrased it for [staff] consumption was, 'I know they have gone independent, I know they have gone rogue, but by God at least they're doing something.' But if they're doing something, where's the meat? It didn't pan out."I think I'm coming down on the "just boasting" side of Miller's security clearance story, or it might have been that she thought her embedding agreement was a security clearance. In fact, the more I read (or, rather, re-read, because so much of this information looks different now), the more it seems likely that MET Alpha's real job was to follow Judy around Iraq and babysit her. It will be interesting to see if the military ever comments on this. Did they withdraw the weapons inspectors from MET Alpha and let it "go rogue" with Ms. Run Amok driving?
Whether or not the unit's initial findings pan out, Rosenthal says, he is "extremely comfortable" with Miller's reporting because "all the information was attributed to MET Alpha, not 'senior U.S. officials' or some other vague formulation." Posted by: Tex MacRae at October 17, 2005 2:46 PM | Permalink Miller's report on the "Iraqi scientist" that she saw pointing to 'where the WMDs were buried". That story was vetted by the Pentagon to avoid giving away anything that the Pentagon wanted to remain classified. I certainly HOPE so! Richard Aubrey, you are probably right - in which case having a 'reporter with a clearance' is much less of a concern. That said, I'm not exactly thrilled at the suggestion that she shaped the search for WMD on the part of one team ..... Posted by: Robin Burk at October 17, 2005 2:53 PM | Permalink Richard's interpretation... She had a limited clearance for her sojourn with the MET. That need not have had a formal title such as SECRET. She would, in the normal course of affairs as METs go--which is to say nobody had a clue what would be happening since it had never been done before--only be exposed to the info that the group was using since they wouldn't be talking about anything else. ...sounds plausible to me. She would enflate her status and try to get an edge, see more, get people to share confidences that way. Part of her "sharp elbows" style, right? Except that security clearance doesn't help with publishing the facts. You agree not to publish and never to disclose. The very fact that she's boasting about it tells of misplaced priorities. Sources are more important than readers. To publish is nice, but to know herself the inside scoop... much better. The readers will take what we give them: "Former Hill staffer” for example. Posted by: Jay Rosen at October 17, 2005 3:27 PM | Permalink Jay. I think you miss the point. All this speculation gives me the visual of a pyramid pointy-end down. Posted by: Richard Aubrey at October 17, 2005 4:28 PM | Permalink So here are a series of basic questions: 1. Does Miller carry a security clearance? Who around here knows how to get these questions asked, if not answered? Posted by: Daniel Conover at October 17, 2005 4:54 PM | Permalink X: As a result there is no reason whatsoever to believe one single word of what's printed in the NYT as "news." Y: You go too far. The NYT has a very fine business section. And Sports. Posted by: Cervantes at October 17, 2005 5:39 PM | Permalink Daniel, those are reasonable questions. So reasonable, in fact, that the Times' story should have addressed them, rather than leave us to wonder about them. Also, if Miller had any clearance beyond that granted to any embedded reporter, why didn't the Times tell its readers? I see no reason why it shouldn't have been a little caption at the bottom of each story. Posted by: Cal Lanier at October 17, 2005 5:48 PM | Permalink Cal, on at least one story, the one about the "scientist" standing out in the desert pointing at the ground, the disclaimer was fairly explicit. I don't recall the exact wording, but it said her story had to be read and approved by the military, she had to wait three days to file it, she wasn't permitted to interview the "scientist" and she wasn't permitted to name the precursor chemicals the man was allegedly pointing out. I wrote on of the paper's senior editors about it at the time, suggesting the constraints made the story at least useless, and he responded --I'm paraphrasing here because I can't find the actual correspondence now -- that reporters were operating under difficult conditions and while the paper wasn't happy about it, they had to live with it. One more bad decision. Posted by: weldon berger at October 17, 2005 6:15 PM | Permalink Richard Aubrey, I don't think you can double deal like that. If you don't have clearance and you mislead other with security clearance into violating their clearance, you've done something that's at least unethical and at worst criminal. You might be able to pull off that stunt once, but whoever got burned would go after you with a vengance. Posted by: Mavis Beacon at October 17, 2005 6:36 PM | Permalink Jay wrote: " 'In two interviews, Ms. 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 ' I called this The Hypothesis: “Judy Miller would not, in any material way, cooperate with the team of Times reporters.” (See Armchair Critic Speculates, Oct. 12.) Seems like she didn’t. What principle of confidentiality extends to “interactions with editors?” I am not aware of one the Times would uphold." Speaking as someone with two decades plus of practice as a lawyer (though non-criminal, now retired), these are precisely the instructions I would give my client, were that client's name Miller. From Miller's perspective the considerations are very clear: if there is a trial of any person(s) indicted by this grand jury, Miller is highly likely to be a witness, if not herself a defendant. Her testimony may have been limited by agreement before the grand jury, but the prosecutor would not be subject to any such limitations -- other than relevance -- at trial. If Miller were to share other details in print beyond the limitations of her grand jury testimony, those details might only provide Fitzgerald with a roadmap to other witnesses or subject her to recall before the grand jury or cross-examination at trial. As to sharing her notes with other reporters and her editors, remember that Miller shared only a highly redacted version with the prosecutors. If she were to share an unredacted version with them and Fitzgerald were to learn that, he could possibly subpoena the Times for her notes, as he subpoenaed Time for Matt Cooper's. If I were Sulzberger's or Keller's attorney, I'd say leave those notes alone at this point. I realize there are sometimes more important considerations than the legal ramifications, but I think a consideration of those is part of what's missing from this discussion. BTW, long-time reader, first-time poster, I've found the discussions here quite intelligent and interesting. My thanks to Jay and the regulars. Posted by: Cathleen at October 17, 2005 7:16 PM | Permalink Officials unaware of reporter's special status Officials from the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon say they have no idea what New York Times reporter Judith Miller was talking about when she claimed to have been given a "security clearance" while she was embedded with a U.S. Army unit in Iraq in 2003. Posted by: Tex MacRae at October 17, 2005 7:38 PM | Permalink Officials unaware of reporter's special status According to the officials, they know of no instance or circumstance when a reporter has been, or would be, granted a security clearance and believed she would not have been given one when she was embedded with the unit that was tasked with finding Iraqi WMDs immediately after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. I'm getting the feeling that the govt is saying this to protect their other media "assets" whose true allegiance has heretofore not been exposed to their readers. Posted by: anon at October 17, 2005 8:18 PM | Permalink Mavis, how do they go after somebody for having misled them? Posted by: Richard Aubrey at October 17, 2005 9:08 PM | Permalink I'm watching you folks obsessing over the clearance, and it's getting hard to stifle the giggles. Have you realized what you're talking yourself into? anon, might there not be just the bare possibility that you ought to try the hypothesis -- strictly a hypothesis, you understand -- that "the officials" are telling the truth, and try to see where that leads? Many of you are practicing journalists. As such, you're bound to know someone, or know of someone, who's been "embedded" in the past. Ask them. You know, investigate. Have they ever been granted a formal clearance? Or did they have to "wait for clearance" before reporting to the unit -- meaning that somebody did a background check which had to be completed before the reporter could start work? Isn't that something that a confirmed egotist with a mythological image of what a clearance is all about might misinterpret to her own aggrandizement? Hell, ask Michael Yon, who's doing a helluva job without formal backing. Point is, the people who have the answers you need are available to you, and you even have an "in" with them that disposes them to answer your questions. Ask, instead of speculating in a vacuum. You are indulging in 'way too much wild-ass guessing, and spending 'way too much time buying into a rather stupid mythology about what a clearance is all about. In the process you're generating a level of paranoia that's just flat silly. Cool it, before you make yourselves look like idiots. Regards, Posted by: Ric Locke at October 17, 2005 9:34 PM | Permalink Anyone remember that mid-80s sci-fi mini-series "V" about the aliens who look like lizards? One of the earliest plot points to the mini-series involved a female TV journalist and the conflict she had with her ex-husband (I think he was a photographer) in covering the "world's biggest story" ie, the aliens. Basically the female reporter becomes co-oped by the aliens, she sees things their way. She certainly doesn't want the human race to be exterminated, she simply doesn't believe her ex-husband that they are, in fact, lizards who eat people. She's so proud about being the first human being on the alien ship that this pride goes all the way up until the point the aliens shoot her. There's so much about this scenario that reminds me of Judy's attitude. I can't get my head about her thinking back in 2003. I mean, I can *sort* of understand why she ran her bad WMDs stories. But I don't understand her motivation in the Valerie Plame case BACK in 2003. It can't be simply loyalty to Libby. I'm sure they saw her as a member of the team in a only slightly less trustworthy way that Armstrong Williams was "a member of the team" on NCLB. But is that how *she* sees herself? So much a part of the WH, that, well, she's really a part of their communications team? I can't locate her motivation dating back to 2003. Now her motivation is clearly just to save her own ass (face). Posted by: catrina at October 17, 2005 9:50 PM | Permalink But is that how *she* sees herself? Doubtful. Miller made a career out of hyping the threats represented by WMDs and terrorism. IMHO, when 9-11 happened, and the Bush regime decided to promote the idea that there was a link between al Qaeda, and WMDs, and Iraq, it was like Miller died and went to reporter heaven....she "owned" this story, and she wanted to increase the value of her "property". As a result, she completely lost any journalistic objectivity she may have ever had... Bearing generally on damage control/loss of company credibility in situations like this - if you haven't seen Peter Sandman's columns on risk communication, particularly the one on the differences between public relations and stakeholder communication - you should. He's another Shirky/Graham/Blaser (ie infrequent, but inordinately worthwhile, speaking truth to vacuity). (BTW his most recent column - The Flu Pandemic Preparedness Snowball - is a must-read.) Posted by: Anna Haynes at October 17, 2005 10:56 PM | Permalink "Isn't that something that a confirmed egotist with a mythological image of what a clearance is all about might misinterpret to her own aggrandizement?" Sure. A number of people made that same observation. But why does anyone have to wonder at all? Why would the Times reporters not check up on that themselves? I'm not a journalist, and I don't think I should have to become one because the New York Times can't be bothered to get to the bottom of the Judy Miller story. Posted by: Cal Lanier at October 17, 2005 11:24 PM | Permalink
> ... it's getting hard to stifle the giggles. Have you realized what you're talking yourself into? ... Ask them. You know, investigate.... From Daniel Conover comment, it sounds like 'secret' security clearances do exist? Is there any way (besides via Patrick Fitzgerald) to find out if reporters have them? Posted by: Anna Haynes at October 17, 2005 11:37 PM | Permalink Beware paranoia! Presumably if it's secret, asking would be futile since the reporter would be obligated to deny it, right? The three main classifications of clearance -- Confidential (C), Secret (S), and Top Secret (TS) -- are not themselves classified. It's not illegal for someone to tell you they have a clearance. Higher levels are actually subdivisions of the three main ones, principally S and TS because the requirements for C are relatively low. I'm not at all sure whether or not I can tell you anything about the one I had, though it was thirty years ago; but I can tell you that I had a clearance, and that it was the result of a background check. The background check is the key. What the levels of clearance really mean is the intensity of the background check -- for C they check for obvious problems; for TS they dig deep. Granting a clearance is expensive because, especially in the top levels, the background check is extremely labor intensive. It also takes a long time. (One of the reasons Government contractors favor ex-military for employees is that military people generally have clearances, meaning that the company doesn't have to up-front the cash for the background check, which can exceed a year's salary in some cases.) All of which is a long-winded way of saying: If a reporter, or anyone, actually has a formal clearance they can tell you it exists (or existed) though they may not be able to tell you details. They will also know, because the background check is fairly intrusive on acquaintances, former employers, etc., and not least because issuance of the clearance comes with a very memorable lecture. Ask. I'm not familiar with the current situation in any detail, but I do know how the procedures used to work. Based on that, I would expect that an embedded reporter would get a background check more or less equivalent to a Confidential clearance, but would not receive a formal clearance complete with lecture -- it isn't worth the trouble. The result would be a temporary clearance that would enable the reporter to do the job but wouldn't be permanent, and would in any case correspond with the lowest level. Based on recent experience that paradigm may no longer hold. That's a great hole you guys have got going. Need another shovel? Regards, Posted by: Ric Locke at October 18, 2005 12:16 AM | Permalink It occurs to me that it is not as complicated as it seems. Editors have a word for it. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at October 18, 2005 12:32 AM | Permalink Could our rumination on the "Judith Miller's NY Times goes down in flames" story be complete without the perspective of the Rude Pundit? Judy's Side (Rude Version) Posted by: Mark Anderson at October 18, 2005 12:49 AM | Permalink I've never heard of a reporter receiving an official government clearance, secret or otherwise. Ever. There are sometimes unofficial agreements that you won't report on anything 'secret' or that might otherwise harm an operation or put lives at risk. But for the Pentagon to issue Queen Judy a secret clearance? I just don't think it happened the way she said. Which certainly isn't the first time she's reported in error. It's not just the question of the clearance. There's Judy's questionable reportage on WMD, the refusal of the Times' management to deal with the rising tide of doubt about Judy's coverage and a relationship with the White House that blurred the line between journalism and advocacy. And then their elevation of Judy to sainthood and the absolutely baffling way they've refused to report their own story until too late. After reading the Times's mea culpa and Judy's odd take on her own story, it appears to be some horrible convergence of Ms. Miller's ego, the Time management's willfull ignorance and a mix of hubris and frantic desperation to stay on top that resulted in a perfect storm of journalistic destruction. This has to be a particularly nasty hit for all those many Times' reporters who went about their work honestly and professionally. This, I'm afraid, will likely resonate negatively in the industry for some time to come. Thanks, Judy. Thanks a bunch. Posted by: Dave McLemore at October 18, 2005 1:39 AM | Permalink Steve, Is loyalty to the US above all else simple common sense in an age of terrorism where I am potentially an American target? Parochial support for war-mongering American idiots? Does a professional insistence on not going native align me with Enlightenment universalist values or mean I must stay native from the US perspective--refuse to seriously explore the limits of a nationalist worldview? How might that conventional wisdom shake out in the scenario Jay has previously raised, say a job like the one at CNN formerly held by Jason Eason? How would you frame the "going native" borderline for a job like that? Jay, My previous comments have surely conveyed my impression that Miller was likely a native neo-con before the shit hit the fan and that I don't expect recent events required much in the way of transformation on her part. The Rude Pundit has a humorous comparison from Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven where a wimpy writer imagines for a minute that he is one of the tough guys with the guns before actual gunfire disabuses him of that fantasy. His take is a lot closer to Steve's. I'm sorry if this comment takes us a little off the Judy Miller theme, but I think it is an important and related issue. If I am an American reporter on foreign affairs or a manager in the bureau of a US multi-national , who is "us" and how do "we" know when "we've" crossed the line? Posted by: Mark Anderson at October 18, 2005 1:41 AM | Permalink Anyone going to the SPJ meeting Tuesday? In response to complaints about the SPJ's plans to give Judith Miller a hero's award, the SPJ board reconsiderd. And decided unanimously to give her the award anyway. Board member Mack McKerral said, "It's not a lifetime achievement award. I could understand people being upset if we were recognizing her work over a period of time, but this is an award for being willing to not reveal a source, willing to spend so many days in jail, and that is how we distinguish it." Of course, she did reveal the source's identity, essentially under considerations that would have made her jail time unnecessary in the first place. And then she acknowledged another source's existence. No names, of course, because she couldn't remember. So why are they giving her that award? Posted by: Dave McLemore at October 18, 2005 2:07 AM | Permalink If I am an American reporter on foreign affairs or a manager in the bureau of a US multi-national , who is "us" and how do "we" know when "we've" crossed the line? Mark, not to trivialize the question - it's a very valid one - but if you're an American reporter overseas, it doesn't really matter how you define 'us.' The folks that you'll be reporting on are already keenly aware that you're American. And will treat you as one of 'them.' Posted by: Dave McLemore at October 18, 2005 2:10 AM | Permalink Miller is trying to re-establish her journalistic credentials after years of being a White House hack (aka "a leak whore"). Oh, woe is me, the big bad government (for whom I was a mindless cheerleader for so long) has turned on me. I'm a martyr for free speech rights now .. right? FU, you disinformation spreading war monger! I hope the feds chew you up and spit you out. Posted by: the3rdoption at October 18, 2005 4:04 AM | Permalink Steve I know about the "Stockholm syndrome" for reporters. But do you really think that explains all of Judy's actions in 2003. Here's what I don't understand...Libby (or whomever) tries to enlist her to write a smear story about a political enemy of the president. Judy, for some reason, neither writes the story Libby wants, nor writes the story that the WH is trying to smear a political enemy. THAT motivation I understand. I understand both reasons for NOT writing either story. What I don't understand it is. Shortly after Novak's column the rumor mills start grinding. Keller must have asked her "say are you one of those reporters the WH talked to about Wilson's wife?" Why does Judy lie to Keller at this point? Why does she NOT tell him? What's her motivation NOT to do so. Is it *really* only to protect her "friend" Libby or the Bush White House? This is the part in the saga I don't understand. Later I *can* fathom why Judy takes over at the Times and determines exactly what Keller and Arthur Sulzberger need to know...because by then its a much bigger deal and she could be "in trouble." But here, at this stage, I don't understand why she would lie to her own boss and not tell him. Is it really because she saw her own interests as the same as Libby's? Is it really that simple? Posted by: catrina at October 18, 2005 8:22 AM | Permalink What I don't understand it is. Shortly after Novak's column the rumor mills start grinding. Keller must have asked her "say are you one of those reporters the WH talked to about Wilson's wife?" Why does Judy lie to Keller at this point? Why does she NOT tell him? What's her motivation NOT to do so. Is it *really* only to protect her "friend" Libby or the Bush White House? Because she isn't one of the Six. I'm trying to get this line together now, but here's my preliminary info on it. Everyone needs to read this Guardian article. I think it clears up why Fitzgerald wanted Judy's notes so badly. Posted by: Tex MacRae at October 18, 2005 10:07 AM | Permalink Yet another never-to-be-published Op-Ed The New York Times's tell-some story on reporter Judith Miller's role in the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame kicked up a cloud of suspicion. It is, for instance, hard to swallow Miller's claim that she forgot how she found out that Plame is the wife of Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson, and it is also a stretch to accept her assertion that she has no idea why a variant of Plame's name appeared in the notebook she used during a conversation with "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. Miller's account of another reference to Plame in her notes, specifically, that she wrote "Valerie Wilson" and drew a box around the name because she might have been trying to get Libby to confirm Plame's identity, is similarly fishy. Miller was, after all, supposedly so unconcerned about this information that she never took note of its source. But the central question begged by the Times' incomplete coverage of this drama was not raised by its own reporters. In fact, it's a question that none apparently dared to ask: Since it seems that Libby did not leak Plame's identity to Miller, was it Miller who first mentioned Wilson's wife to Libby? Although nobody at the Times seems willing or able to examine this angle, it's a tack that turns an improbable mess into a plausible story. If it was Miller who first brought up Plame to Libby, it explains why Libby insisted that Miller's grand jury testimony would help him, since her recollections would show that he had not leaked classified information to the press. Likewise, if the source that Miller is protecting is Miller, it would explain why she so long rejected Libby's waiver of confidentiality, why she sought to limit her testimony, why she initially failed to disclose all of her talks with Libby, why she still refuses to elucidate her pursuit of an article on Wilson, and why she still won't say when or where she first learned about Plame. The Miller-as-source scenario also provides a more plausible reading of her motivations than the First Amendment flag that she has waved since her legal troubles began. As her editors regretfully acknowledged, Miller's silence did not protect any vulnerable whistleblowers, and it certainly did not advance the cause that she claimed to be promoting, which was, in her words, "an independent press that works every day to keep government accountable by publishing what the government might not want the public to know." Instead, as echoed everywhere in the blogosphere, it seems much more likely that Miller tried to bolster her voluminous misreporting on weapons of mass destruction by helping her anonymous and inaccurate government sources bury a damaging critic in a nasty smear campaign. If this theory pans out, the Times will have settled one question: Did the paper recommit itself to journalistic integrity in the aftermath of Jayson Blair? Editors and reporters gave us partial answers as the Miller debacle unfolded. For example, after Miller's prize-winning but truth-losing reports on WMD's in Iraq became too glaringly flawed to defend, her editors admitted that many of her articles were riddled with unwarranted conclusions. In their note to readers, however, they elected not to identify her by name. Readers can judge for themselves whether this granting of anonymity conformed to the paper's current Guidelines on Integrity: "There can be no prescribed formula for [anonymous] attribution, but it should be literally truthful, and not coy." The Times' decision to make a hero out of Miller despite her misreporting on WMD's also obscured the conflict of interest inherent in her simultaneous hawking of Germs, her best-selling book on bio-terrorism. Again, readers can draw their own conclusions about whether the paper's decision to beatify Miller while ignoring complaints about her self-serving yarns about unconventional weapons contradicted the Times' admonition to itself to be "vigilant in avoiding any activity that might pose an actual or apparent conflict of interest and thus threaten the newspaper’s ethical standing." If Frank Rich's October 16 column, "It's Bush-Cheney, Not Rove-Libby," is any indication, the Times has chosen to ward off threats to its ethical standing by deflecting blame for Miller's disinformation to the people who set her in motion. After blasting Dick Cheney's fear-mongering tidings about Iraq’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, Rich notes, in passing, "The vice president cited as evidence a front-page article, later debunked, about supposedly nefarious aluminum tubes co-written by Judy Miller in that morning's Times." But Rich, in a now familiar move, never took Miller to task. Instead, he castigated the White House officials who had apparently managed Miller into spouting distortions designed to rush us into war. Of course, from reading between the lines of Rich's column, one could surmise that he meant to fold Miller into the insulating "layer of operatives" who carried out the Bush administration's PR push for pre-emptive invasion. But if all we can do is speculate about what Rich might have meant or Miller might have done, which is all we can do at this point, then we are left with one certainty: The Times has failed to live up to its pledge to “do nothing that might erode readers' faith and confidence in our news columns.” In choosing to leave readers guessing at the facts of this significant story, the Times may have paved the way for more prizes for Miller, but it gave up its claim to our trust. Susan E. Gallagher, Associate Professor Political Science Department University of Massachusetts at Lowell http://faculty.uml.edu/sgallagher Posted by: Susanekg at October 18, 2005 11:57 AM | Permalink Tex, Posted by: Mark Anderson at October 18, 2005 12:06 PM | Permalink Tex Thank you for the analysis. If accurate it does clear up some of my questions about Judy's motivation. Not all of them, though. What I can't figure out is when and why did Judy "go off the ranch" (or whatever you want to call it) and lie to Keller about what she knew and her involvement. Even if she was second wave and not first wave. And why? At some point I gather her stonewalling seems to be about protecting her reputation. But early on, she wouldn't have been "at fault" for the Plame mess so I don't see why she would mislead her employer about what she knew. It can't just be that she's got security clearance (an issue I think is a red herring). I don't understand what she thinks she is/was protecting. It doesn't seem to be her own reputation because I would argue she's been doing more damage to her rep by witholding. Or am I just looking at this not bass ackwards like Judy would? I just don't understand what's going on in her head. Posted by: catrina at October 18, 2005 12:35 PM | Permalink Before the MSM got snookered by Ms. Miller it got snookered by Joe Wilson. Isn't it a certainty that Wilson is a serial liar-who now claims reporters who were eager to buy his story "misquoted" him? Does anyone believe that a covert CIA agent was outted? Can any of the now agitated press folk name the Administration that didn't "manipulate" the press with leaks to counter those attacking them? Isn't there a distinct probability that a CIA section set out to discredit the Administraion and chose the spouse of an employee to do it? Isn't this kerfuffle something the MSM brought on its' self out of its' loathing of Mr. Bush? Does any sane adult (one not suffering from temporary delusions of hate) think in fifty years historians will writte that we went to war in Iraq because George Bush said Brit intel said Iraq tried to buy yellowcake? If you do please stay away form sharp objects. The press got set up and had because they asked for it. Maybe next time they'll be professional-but it's doubtful. Posted by: kent at October 18, 2005 1:24 PM | Permalink Kent. Big, big exception there. Posted by: RichardAubrey at October 18, 2005 2:29 PM | Permalink What I can't figure out is when and why did Judy "go off the ranch" (or whatever you want to call it) and lie to Keller about what she knew and her involvement. Even if she was second wave and not first wave. And why? Well, RANK SPECULATION WARNING It depends on how knowledge of her involvement came about and I think that general knowledge of Rove's leakage spread first, so that Miller could truthfully deny being one of the six reporters allegedly leaked to by "two senior WH officials." If you reread her story, the info Libby leaked to her (as was the case with Novak as well) was peripheral, almost incidental to her interview. Libby was pushing the info, but Miller was lukewarm about it (whereas Novak snapped it up with glee). Miller even doodled it into another area of her notebook, as if she were keeping it separate from the real interview material. Maybe that allowed Miller to consider herself "not one of the six." In the fall of 2003, after The Washington Post reported that "two top White House officials disclosed Plame's identity to at least six Washington journalists," Philip Taubman, Ms. Abramson's successor as Washington bureau chief, asked Ms. Miller and other Times reporters whether they were among the six. Ms. Miller denied it. Miller seemed not to "get it" when Libby kept dangling the Flame bait. She even mentions being annoyed that Novak scooped her on the story, almost as if she never realized its potential newsworthiness. Of course, the "Wilson's wife"/nepotism angle never made sense to anyone outside hard core neocon circles anyway, so maybe it's to Judy's credit that she didn't jump on the bandwagon. By the time this thing blew up into a national security scandal when Plame's covert status became the issue after Novak's column, maybe Miller thought she could stay out of it, because she never really bit on the story. Just guessing, of course. Posted by: Tex MacRae at October 18, 2005 2:47 PM | Permalink Mark -- Good questions all, re reporters "going native." "When I’m Reporting, I am a Citizen of the World” and with ... "One Tribe in Press Nation: PressThink Wins an Award" (There was a certain irony, duly noted, in Jay winning an award from an organization called "Reporters Without Borders," right after he had raised the question of whether "citizen of the world" is a valid ID for an American journalist in Iraq.) Posted by: Steve Lovelady at October 18, 2005 3:01 PM | Permalink Richard Aubrey: But if there's anybody Judy doesn't want to piss off, it's her sources. I can imagine her selling the whole NY Times down the river, but I have a tough time seeing her double crossing an administration source, which is what she would be effectively doing if she tricked them into giving her classified info. It also occurs to me that since a reporter having classified status is unheard of, Libby wouldn't believe that she had classified status on her word alone. He'd already have to be aware of it or she'd have to show him proof. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that she never had classified status and never convinced any administration officials that she did. Posted by: Mavis Beacon at October 18, 2005 3:01 PM | Permalink By KEN RITTER October 18, 2005, 1:37 PM EDT Posted by: Steve Lovelady at October 18, 2005 3:22 PM | Permalink Normally I wouldn't spend 5 seconds ruminating about the rants of that left-wing hack, Robert Scheer. But the first sentence of his column today grabbed my attention: "Media corporations are arguably the most important yet least examined centers of power in our society." Everything I've ever seen (or heard) by anyone concerned with the Judy Problem, has sworn up and down that Miss Run Amok is an aberration, but how do we know? How will we ever find out how many other Miss (and Mr.) Run Amoks are out there? What will be the catalyst to throw fresh air and sunshine (and maybe some clorox) into the murky world of the press? Who will, or can, do it? Posted by: kilgore trout at October 18, 2005 3:33 PM | Permalink Tex Your rank speculation is as good as any for Judy's motivation. That's the part I never could *get* about her story. She was never the person "in trouble." She didn't break any laws. So why the stonewalling? Why all the hubris? But Tex if your speculation is correct I see Judy kind of like a "Reese Witherspoon-as-Legally-Blonde" kind of clueless. Like the society matron who is such a blowhard she has no idea how not-worldly she really is. Judy-as-a-high-school-ball-player-whose-in-the-World-Series-and-doesn't-flinch-at-her-lack-of-talent. There could be a lovely farcial movie in all this if Cheney really does resign. Posted by: catrina at October 18, 2005 4:04 PM | Permalink " ... how many other Miss (and Mr.) Run Amoks are out there?" -- Kilgore That is the $64 question, and one that keeps editors awake at night.
Posted by: Steve Lovelady at October 18, 2005 4:30 PM | Permalink Hold the champagne, catrina, and be careful what you wish for. In an essay today in Slate, Jacob Weisberg says that the NYTimes should be singled out for denunciation because it demanded John Ashcroft step aside and appoint a special prosecutor. This, after the Times had denounced the out of control special prosecutors who went after Henry Cisneros, Bruce Babbitt, and New York icon, Bill Clinton. But this is different, right? Weisberg says this: "Claiming a few conservative scalps might be satisfying, but they'll come at a cost to principles liberals hold dear: the press's right to find out, the government's ability to disclose, and the public's right to know." Think about it, catrina, when Section 641 of the US Code is used to criminalize ordinary back and forth between government and press, what government official, Democrat or Republican, will want to expose themselves to this sort of jeopardy? Is this really what you want? htp://slate.msn.com/id/2128301 Posted by: kilgore trout at October 18, 2005 4:33 PM | Permalink Lovelady, do I understand you correctly----editors do not know when they have a Miss/Mr./Ms. Run Amok on their hands? Or they do know, but don't know what to do about the Run Amoks? I couldn't tell from your comment. Posted by: kilgore trout at October 18, 2005 5:31 PM | Permalink Kilgore -- Posted by: Steve Lovelady at October 18, 2005 6:01 PM | Permalink Mavis. I think you're right. So that leaves a question unanswered. Posted by: RichardAubrey at October 18, 2005 7:08 PM | Permalink More rank speculation..... the reason that "Valerie Flame" appears in a different part of Miller's notes from the rest of the Libby interview is that "Valerie Flame" was provided by a "former Hill staffer", and not (like the rest of Libby's unattributable information) a "senior administration official." Rove made sure that Cooper considered his leak about Plame to be "double super secret". Libby is providing his information as a "former Hill staffer". Does anyone see a pattern here?.... kilgore You and I might have actually found a common ground. I totally think it will be a bad idea to start up the prosecutions based on the criminal code where ANYONE who gets the classified information is indicted. But I won't know whether to pop the champagne until I see who is indicted for what. DailyKos is calling tommorrow "Fitzmas." Posted by: catrina at October 18, 2005 7:46 PM | Permalink I'm filing this in my confessions folder: "Media corporations are arguably the most important yet least examined centers of power in our society. The owners of the Fourth Estate have a unique ability to direct the searchlight of inquiry upon others while remaining powerfully positioned to deflect it from themselves." - Robert Scheer, Los Angeles Times Syndicated columnist, October 18, 2005. Sheer focuses on owners, but the general thrust of his statement is closer to the awful truth than many of his liberal friends would like to admit; it is also what some conservatives have been saying for years. It would be good for all if media readers and viewers appreciate this. Better if they remember it in that critical moment when they finish reading / hearing a news report and begin to form the conclusion or lession to be drawn from it. Best if they wonder "Is this report leading me to a certain conclusion or lesson?" Thanks, Kilgore, for the pointer. Posted by: Trained Auditor at October 18, 2005 9:04 PM | Permalink "Media corporations are arguably the most important yet least examined centers of power in our society. The owners of the Fourth Estate have a unique ability to direct the searchlight of inquiry upon others while remaining powerfully positioned to deflect it from themselves." - Robert Scheer, Los Angeles Times Syndicated columnist, October 18, 2005. Ahh, Robet Scheer, my favorite wingnut of them all. (No right-wing conspiracy theorist -- not Power Line, not Hewitt, not Limbaugh, not Little Green Footballs, not FreeRepublic -- can match Scheer in his paranoia, though, God knows, they all certainly give it their best shot.) Scheer has cleverly located hiimself at the precise point on the circle where left-wing delusion meets right-wing delusion. (And, don't kid yourself, it is a circle.) " ... most important yet least examined centers of power in our society. Oh, really ? Please. Press criticism is one of the few growth industries in the country. (Good thing, too -- otherwise there would be no Press Think, and I would be out of a job myself.) How many blogs, or newspaper commentators, or cable bloviators, or radio talk show hosts, do you know of that are devoted solely to critiquing the Supreme Court ? Posted by: Steve Lovelady at October 18, 2005 9:42 PM | Permalink Steve, Not that I want to defend Scheer...but he's referring to owners not journalists. Aside from Rupert Murdoch there is little mention or critiquing of the J. Jonah Jamesons of the fourth estate at press critic forums, blogs or whatnots. For some reason, even though publishers like Sulzerberger are largely responsible for the papers' editorial pages they often escape scrutiny. But things have changed, a bit, cause, now, Sulzy is under the microscope, as well. Posted by: Ron Brynaert at October 18, 2005 10:38 PM | Permalink Kurtz nails it in the latest media notes column: as I have been saying less clearly, the Miller fascination is about refighting the war about the war. Miller, WMD trumpeter, must pay for that sin, and the Plame case is the opportunity. I saw on Lehrer a call to reinvesitgate Miller's stories--what stories? The ones on Plame she never wrote? No, the WMD stories, of course. Miller's sin is not just getting it wrong--but getting it wrong with the Bushies as her source. Plenty of things by investigative reporters get published wrong all the time--too often--as a result of the reporter being mostly a funnel for the source, but usually those stories go against the war, not for it. Posted by: Lee Kane at October 18, 2005 11:24 PM | Permalink Josh Marshall links to a very personal and insightful piece on Judith Miller and what passes for contemporary American journalism by Christopher Dickey. Posted by: Mark Anderson at October 19, 2005 1:44 AM | Permalink Digby has an excellent post on Judy Miller as activist journalist with neocon beliefs whose highest priority is raising Bush administration credibility, but who simultaneously and incoherently also continues to mouth the platitudes of journalistic objectivity and balance. Posted by: Mark Anderson at October 19, 2005 10:35 AM | Permalink Steve Lovelady asks How many blogs, or newspaper commentators, or cable bloviators, or radio talk show hosts, do you know of that are devoted solely to critiquing ... Microsoft? Check out Slashdot, Steve. LOL You might be surprised both at the size of their readership and the years of rather obsessive critiques of Microsoft. Not the ONLY topic covered by the techies there, but definitely one of the leading repeat stories .... Posted by: Robin Burk at October 19, 2005 11:30 AM | Permalink The idea that Miller is getting slammed just because she is friendly with the Bush crowd, or seen as doing their bidding, is a big load a crap-- steam still rising. I'm still trying to believe that the Society of Professional Journalists gave her a First Amendment award and that she is off on some victory lap now. When I get through that--believing my eyes--I'll start thinking on it. We don't even know if she had security clearances or not, which would be an over-the-top scandal. Grrrrr... Posted by: Jay Rosen at October 19, 2005 12:49 PM | Permalink Lovelady, it's not the number of one's critics that counts; it's how loud their voices are. Oh, and I completely agree that the ideological spectrum forms a circle - - actually, I think it forms a sphere, which can account for overlapping aspects that include libertarianism and populism. Intersting topic, that. Posted by: Trained Auditor at October 19, 2005 1:38 PM | Permalink My Ten Cents: Truth is the First Casualty of War Judith Miller, who is now vilified for sucking up to the Bush administration and contributing to the false information that led to the war in Iraq, is treated like a hero. The paper's management backed up Ms. Miller through this entire scandal, which seems to suggest that kissing up to the Bush administration is A-OK. They did not back me up while standing up to the Bush Justice Department in covering the Scrushy trial, which seems to suggest a pattern. It just goes to show you that American journalism no longer values seeking the truth and standing up to the powerful. It is all about the money and the celebrity - and to hell with the rest of us little people who still do our best to believe in American values and stand up for the ideals of democracy. Posted by: Glynn Wilson at October 19, 2005 1:50 PM | Permalink Mickey Kaus over at KausFiles reprises Kurtz (the Miller bashing is connected to the war about the war) though he introduces a bit more subtley to the matter. I do think it's possible for two things to be true at once--Miller practiced some questionable journalism, and that has come under particular scrutiny because of the Plame case. The NYT's handling of this journalist has also come under question for real reasons in this high profile matter. But I think anyone who denies that a great deal of the passion against Miller has nothing to do with her WMD reporting is really kidding themselves. There can be multiple causes and motivations and various people can be motivated in differing degrees by any one of them. Taken together, they produce a more perfect storm than any one alone... Posted by: Lee Kane at October 19, 2005 6:54 PM | Permalink PS. It's ironic to see Jay so forcefully arguing for only one possible truth (or at least arguing angrily against a particular alternate truth) in comments so near to his story on the falling away of an objective point of view--or more precisely, a "single truth" point of view. Jay is in one truth on Miller, and not necessarily an incorrect one. You might even say he's the primary guy out there mining that truth. Being so deep in his own mine (as it were), however, I think he is not able to see the entire landscape? I don't know. Posted by: Lee Kane at October 19, 2005 7:03 PM | Permalink Media corporations are arguably the most important yet least examined centers of power in our society. The owners of the Fourth Estate have a unique ability to direct the searchlight of inquiry upon others while remaining powerfully positioned to deflect it from themselves." - Robert Scheer, Los Angeles Times Syndicated columnist, October 18, 2005. "Ahh, Robet Scheer, my favorite wingnut of them all. (No right-wing conspiracy theorist -- not Power Line, not Hewitt, not Limbaugh, not Little Green Footballs, not FreeRepublic -- can match Scheer in his paranoia, though, God knows, they all certainly give it their best shot.)" Steve managed to smear 6 groups in one sentence. LOL. Why do you do that? Don't you realize that everytime you resort to ad hominem, you surrender the field? In shame? If I was on the Left, I'd ask you to get off my team. Posted by: Fen at October 19, 2005 9:39 PM | Permalink One possible truth? What in all creation are you talking about? In what I have written, Judy's crimes are against integrity, collegiality, common sense, ordinary decency and standards of honesty in journalism and as a representative of the Times. Her case as would-be First Amendment hero is examined to see whether it makes sense. If all you see is Bush discontent that's your problem. Posted by: Jay Rosen at October 19, 2005 10:26 PM | Permalink From Today's NYTimes story "Journalists Testify in Favor of Shield Law":
"I told Mr. Fitzgerald that Mr. Libby might have thought I still had security clearance, given my special embedded status in Iraq," Ms. Miller wrote, referring to Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor leading the C.I.A. leak investigation. Some Pentagon officials and journalists questioned whether her arrangement was actually what many journalists covering the Iraq war had: a written agreement to see and hear classified information but treat it as off the record unless an ad hoc arrangement was reached with military hosts. In a telephone interview Wednesday, Ms. Miller said this so-called nondisclosure form was precisely what she had signed, with some modifications, adding that what she had meant to say in her published account was that she had had temporary access to classified information under rules set by her unit. Ms. Miller said that under the conditions set by the commander of the unit, Col. Richard R. McPhee, she had been allowed to discuss her most secret reporting with only the senior-most editors of The Times, who at the time were Howell Raines, the executive editor, and Gerald M. Boyd, the managing editor. When asked if she had ever left the impression with sources, including Mr. Libby, that she had access to classified information after leaving her assignment in Iraq, Ms. Miller said she could not recall. "I don't remember if I ever told him I was disembedded," she said. "I might not have." But she added, "I never misled anybody." >> Posted by: Cathleen at October 20, 2005 11:09 AM | Permalink Here is a copy of e-mail correspondence that I have had with the Society of Professional Journalists regarding the award that they gave to Judy Miller this past weekend: Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2005 19:05:01 -0700 (PDT) Seek Truth and Report It Subject: Out of Office AutoReply: Award to Judith Miller Terry Harper wrote: I will be out of the office until Monday, October 31. From Thursday, October 13 - Thursday, October 20, I will be at SPJ's Convention and National Journalism Conference in Las Vegas. If your matter is urgent, you can reach me on my mobile phone at (317) 513-8121. Following the convention, I will be on vacation until Monday, October 31 when I will return to the office rested, refreshed and ready to respond to your E-mail. All the best,
Dear Mr. Harper, Posted by: Barbara Karol at October 20, 2005 4:04 PM | Permalink |
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