SubscribeIn a notebook belonging to Judith Miller, a reporter for The New York Times, amid notations about Iraq and nuclear weapons, appear two small words: "Valerie Flame."Also:
Ms. Miller should have written Valerie Plame. That name is at the core of a federal grand jury investigation that has reached deep into the White House. At issue is whether Bush administration officials leaked the identity of Ms. Plame, an undercover C.I.A. operative, to reporters as part of an effort to blunt criticism of the president's justification for the war in Iraq.
Ms. Miller spent 85 days in jail for refusing to testify and reveal her confidential source, then relented. On Sept. 30, she told the grand jury that her source was I. Lewis Libby, the vice president's chief of staff. But she said he did not reveal Ms. Plame's name.
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.
Mr. Fitzgerald asked about a notation I made on the first page of my notes about this July 8 meeting, "Former Hill staffer."
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.
Did Mr. Libby explain this request? Mr. Fitzgerald asked. No, I don't recall, I replied. But I said I assumed Mr. Libby did not want the White House to be seen as attacking Mr. Wilson.
W.M.D. - I got it totally wrong
"You know what," she offered angrily. "I was proved fucking right. That's what happened. People who disagreed with me were saying, 'There she goes again.' But I was proved fucking right."Judith Miller on WMD, May 2004 [via]
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.I think he is.
"Judy," he said. "It's Scooter Libby."
At that breakfast meeting, our conversation also turned to Mr. Wilson's wife. My notes contain a phrase inside parentheses: "Wife works at Winpac." Mr. Fitzgerald asked what that meant. Winpac stood for Weapons Intelligence, Non-Proliferation, and Arms Control, the name of a unit within the C.I.A. that, among other things, analyzes the spread of unconventional weapons.-- Judy Miller
Scoots is going down. Please please please let Rove go with him.
Mr. Fitzgerald asked me to read the final three paragraphs aloud to the grand jury. "The public report of every other reporter's testimony makes clear that they did not discuss Ms. Plame's name or identity with me," Mr. Libby wrote.
The prosecutor asked my reaction to those words. I replied that this portion of the letter had surprised me because it might be perceived as an effort by Mr. Libby to suggest that I, too, would say we had not discussed Ms. Plame's identity. Yet my notes suggested that we had discussed her job.
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.And the most striking part, I think, is that Miller violated every newsroom code by not answering her fellow reporters' questions. I also think it's very telling that the Times' Washington bureau chief contradicts Miller regarding Miller's assertion (to a nameless editor--whom Miller would not identify!) that the Times should do a story on Plame.
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.
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 paper’s long-delayed analysis and saying that readers can make of it what they will.Josh Marshall also raises a really good question:
He should also apologize to all the “armchair critics” and “vultures” he denounced this week for spreading unfounded stories and “myths” about what Miller and the newspaper had been up to. If anything, this sad and outrageous story is worse than most expected. . .
Saturday's Times article, without calling for Miller’s dismissal, or Keller’s apology, made the case for both actions in this pithy, frank, and brutal assessment: "The Times incurred millions of dollars in legal fees in Ms. Miller's case. It limited its own ability to cover aspects of one of the biggest scandals of the day. Even as the paper asked for the public's support, it was unable to answer its questions."
It followed that paragraph with Keller's view: "It's too early to judge."
Like Keller says, make of it what you will. My view: Miller did far more damage to her newspaper than did Jayson Blair, and that’s not even counting her WMD reporting, which hurt and embarrassed the paper in others ways.
The Times should let Miller, like Blair, go off to write a book, with no return ticket. We all know how well that worked out for Blair.
Miller should be fired if for nothing more than this: After her paper promised a full accounting, and her full cooperation, in its probe, it reported Saturday, “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.”
As for Keller’s apology (or more), consider just one of a dozen humbling sentences from the Times story: “Interviews show that the paper’s leadership, in taking what they considered to be a principled stand, ultimately left the major decisions in the case up to Ms. Miller, an intrepid reporter whom editors found hard to control.” . .
This is the woman Bill Keller and Arthur Sulzberger decided to make a First Amendment martyr, tainting their newspaper’s reputation like never before. As their paper’s article reveals, neither asked Miller detailed questions about her conversations with Libby or examined her notes. Keller "declined to tell his own reporters" that Libby was Miller's source, Saturday's article dryly complains. The report also makes clear that he ordered ideas for articles related to the case killed. Most humiliating, the Times had a story about Miller's release from jail ready at 2 p.m. that day -- and it wasn't published until the end of the day, allowing other newspapers (even tiny E&P) to get the scoop.
Miller's actions are inexcusable, and the Times, a great newspaper, is guilty of absolutely shameful conduct, shoddy journalism, and very bad judgment. Both Miller and Keller should be fired.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.I thought about writing a post trying to give some background about whether this is a normal or accepted practice among reporters.
Did Mr. Libby explain this request? Mr. Fitzgerald asked. No, I don't recall, I replied. But I said I assumed Mr. Libby did not want the White House to be seen as attacking Mr. Wilson.
The first part of an answer is to say, no, I would never agree to that sort of sourcing or those sorts of ground rules. And I can't imagine that many other journalists would either. But I think the more revealing detail is that I do not think I've ever even been asked.
I'm certainly not what you'd call a veteran reporter. But I've been doing this for a living for about eight years. And just off the top of my head, thinking it over this evening, I can't come up with a memory of a situation in which a source has asked me to identify them in this way. And by 'this way' I mean in a fashion that is technically accurately but intentionally and willfully misleading.
What happens very often is that you get in wrestling matches with sources over specificity -- with the reporter always wanting more detail and the source usually wanting to keep things as vague as possible.
Occasionally you will end up with formulations that amount to little more than 'said a human being in Washington who was knowledgeable about this subject.'
That's never a satisfactory solution; but occasionally it's unavoidable. And behind it is almost always -- from my experience at least -- a frustrated calculus the reporter has made that the information is illuminating and revealing enough of the truth of the story to justify not being able to give your readers a very clear idea just where you got it. . .
[T]his is probably already more information than most folks want. But in this case it certainly seems as though the tacit bargain between Miller and Libby was that Libby would provide Miller with information in exchange for her assistance in deceiving her readers. And that violates the rule or principle that amounts to the Occam's Razor of journalistic ethics -- fundamental honesty with your readers.
"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.
This is as close as one can get to government licensing of journalists and the New York Times (if it knew) should never have allowed her to become so compromised. It is all the more puzzling that a reporter who as a matter of principle would sacrifice 85 days of her freedom to protect a source would so willingly agree to be officially muzzled and thereby deny potentially valuable information to the readers whose right to be informed she claims to value so highly.
One must assume that Ms. Miller was required to sign a standard and legally binding agreement that she would never divulge classified information to which she became privy, without risk of criminal prosecution. And she apparently plans to adhere to the letter of that self-censorship deal; witness her dilemma at being unable to share classified information with her editors....If Ms. Miller agreed to operate under a security clearance without the knowledge or approval of Times managers, she should be disciplined or even dismissed. If she had their approval, all involved should be ashamed."
[Editor & Publisher | October 16, 2005]
When the subject turned to Mr. Wilson, Mr. Libby requested that he be identified only as a 'former Hill staffer.'
When we agree to anonymity, the reporter's duty is to obtain terms that conceal as little as possible of what the reader needs to gauge reliability. We should distinguish conscientiously between high-level and lower-level executives or officials. We should not use blind attribution -- "sources said," for example -- which is more a tease than a signpost. Attribution should never amount to a truism: since "source" merely means a provider of information, "one source said" is equivalent to "somebody said." And "informed" or "reliable source" is no improvement. (Would The Times quote an uninformed or unreliable one?) The objection is not to the word "source," but to its emptiness without a meaningful modifier: "a Senate source," for example, may be acceptable -- unless, of course, it is possible to tell the reader still more. The word "official" is overused, and cries out for greater specificity.
Trail markers should be as detailed as possible. "United States diplomat" is better than "Western diplomat," which is better than "diplomat." Still better is "a United States diplomat who took part in the meeting." And "a lawyer who has read the brief" or "an executive close to the XYZ Company" is far better than "a person familiar with the case," a phrase so vague that it could even mean the reporter.
Readers value signs of candor.
...
It should go without saying that The Times is truthful.
"[Judith] Miller had helped negotiate her own embedding agreement with the Pentagon—an agreement so sensitive that, according to one Times editor, Rumsfeld himself signed off on it....As Miller covered MET Alpha, it became increasingly clear that she had ceased to respect the boundaries between being an observer and a participant. And as an embedded reporter she went even further, several sources say. While traveling with MET Alpha, according to Pomeroy and one other witness, she wore a military uniform.
When Colonel Richard McPhee ordered MET Alpha to pull back from a search mission and regroup in the town of Talil, Miller disagreed vehemently with the decision—and let her opinions be loudly known. The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz reprinted a note in which she told public-affairs officers that she would write negatively about his decision if McPhee didn’t back down. What’s more, Kurtz reported that Miller complained to her friend Major General David Petraeus. Even though McPhee’s unit fell outside the general’s line of command, Petraeus’s rank gave his recommendation serious heft. According to Kurtz, in an account that was later denied, 'McPhee rescinded his withdrawal order after Petraeus advised him to do so.'
Miller guarded her exclusive access with ferocity. When the Washington Post’s Barton Gellman overlapped in the unit for a day, Miller instructed its members that they couldn’t talk with him. According to Pomeroy, 'She told people that she had clearance to be there and Bart didn’t.' (One other witness confirms this account.)" [New York Magazine]
"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 in her published claim over the weekend that she was given a 'security clearance' when she was embedded with a WMD military team in Iraq.
According to the officials, they know of no instance or circumstance when a reporter has been or would be granted a security clearance for any reason, and don't know that she was given one when she was embedded with the U.S. Army's 75th Exploitation Unit that was tasked with finding Iraqi WMD immediately following the end of major conflict in the spring of 2003.
Normally it takes at least three months of background checks, etc. before anyone is granted a 'SECRET' clearance. There are cases where someone is granted a temporary short-term clearance, for a day, for example, but that is usually extended only to military, DOD or civilian contractors who need to be cleared for specific information on a specific project." [NBC News | October 17, 2005]
"Sparked by today's Washington Post story that suggests Vice President Cheney's office is involved in the Plame-CIA spy link investigation, government officials and advisers passed around rumors that the vice president might step aside and that President Bush would elevate Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice." [US News & World Report | October 18, 2005]
"You touched on the big picture on this story, and Bob Bennett, who is Judith Miller‘s lawyer, said to 'This Week' on ABC yesterday, Fitzgerald is putting together a big case. You just used similar terminology. How big are we talking? I mean, could this actually wind up referencing the whole premise of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, or any of the other justifications for the war there?HOWARD FINEMAN, CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT NEWSWEEK MAGAZINE:
Yes, I think so, I think so, Keith. And in an odd way, I think we‘re going to reargue the run-up to the war in Iraq, and the aftermath of it, all the justifications that were made by Colin Powell and the United Nations that had to do with weapons of mass destruction, because I think the special prosecutor, Fitzgerald, is looking for motivation here. He‘s looking for why the people he‘s been investigating might have wanted to leak Valerie Plame‘s name, why they wanted to intimidate, perhaps, Joe Wilson and his wife. The answer, clearly, is politics." [MSNBC | October 18, 2005]
"Embattled New York Times reporter Judith Miller acted as a 'middleman' between an American military unit and the Iraqi National Congress while she was embedded with the U.S. armed forces searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in April 2003, and 'took custody' of Saddam Hussein’s son-in-law, one of 55 most wanted Iraqis...
Moreover, in one of the most highly unusual arrangements between a news organization and the Department of Defense, Miller sat in on the initial debriefing of Jamal Sultan Tikriti, according to a June 25, 2003 article published in the Washington Post.
The Post article sheds some light on her unusual arrangement in obtaining a special security clearance from the Department of Defense which is now the subject of a Democratic congressional inquiry....
The Post article raises an important question about her role in the outing of a covert CIA agent: was Miller, whose flawed reporting on the existence of WMD’s was scrutinized in mainstream newspapers, truly meeting with Libby in the hopes of pursuing a hot story or was she trying to get information out of him that would help restore her credibility and cover up her errors?" [Raw Story | October 18, 2005]
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posted by scody at 3:15 PM on October 15, 2005