Posted on 10/22/2005 6:02:54 AM PDT by AliVeritas
New York Times executives "fully encouraged" reporter Judith Miller in her refusal to testify in the CIA leak investigation, a stance that led to her jailing, and later told Miller she could not continue at the paper unless she wrote a first-person account, her attorney said yesterday.
The comments by Robert Bennett came as Executive Editor Bill Keller accused Miller of apparently misleading the newspaper about her dealings with Vice President Cheney's top aide, signaling the first public split between Miller and the management of a newspaper that had fully embraced her in the contentious legal battle.
Bennett, Miller's lawyer, said he argued with Times executives that her agreement with special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to testify before a grand jury did not entitle her to put "in the newspaper" her off-the-record conversations with Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff.
Disputing a lengthy Times story last Sunday in which Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said that "this car had her hand on the wheel," Bennett said Sulzberger and Keller "were making it very clear what they thought she should do. . . . She may be controversial in some things, but the bottom line is she spent 85 days in jail, mostly on a principle which the New York Times fully encouraged her to assert." He added that the executives left the final decision to Miller.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Judith Miller IS a split. Leastways that is what women are called by some people down south.
Looks like Arthur Sulzberger Jr is lost in Miller's Cave.
Judith shoudn't worry. She can probably get a job with jayson blair. :)
Is there any light at the entrance?
Anyone have that great chart of Times stock performance handy?
These big syndicated news organizations seem to be much better at allegations of blame toward others than they are at accepting responsibility for themselves. Curious.
This is eerily reminiscent of how CBS threw Mapes overboard in Memogate.
> [NYT] seem to be doing all they can to smear Miller to deflect their own corporate culpability.
Judy comes across as scatterbrained, obsessed and unprofessional in the stories of the last week. I am beginning to wonder if she isn't really an unwitting pawn in a larger conspiracy hatched by Times bigs. And if that isn't where Fitzgerald ought to be investigating.
Isn't that obstruction of justice?
It sure smells like it, doesn't it?
Were the stories in the NY Times? or one of it's many puppet papers?
She may be a dunce, but she's also a little out of the Times' mainstream Bush bashing agenda, so maybe they are just seizing an opportunity to throw her to the wolves and make themselves look good.
Don't be silly. Laws are for the little people, not MSM reporters!
Its payback time for them no matter the truth.
> Were the stories in the NY Times? or one of it's many puppet papers?
The best was a summary on p. 3 of (I think) Tuesday's WSJ.
Keller is now saying he erred by not sitting Miller down for a debriefing. That's bs. What it looks like is, the Times encouraged her to go to jail to protect a source she can't remember. Why? To get the Administration in trouble, investigated and maybe take out a few Bush lieutenants.
Actually, and disturbing to me, Miller is not at all scatterbrained. She is a Pulitzer winner, and some interviews I have heard, former co-workers , even those pissed at her personally, describe her as uncommonly competent, particularly in this particular field.
For so competent a woman to then testify before the grand jury that she could not remember to whom some of her own notes refer is just too convenient.
My theory is that Judith Miller's "source" revealing Plame was Judith Miller. The two women operate in a small group of people with top level expertise on the subject. I have no evidence, but I believe, just because it hangs together logically, that Miller knew about Plame's employment as a matter of general background that one comes to know in a small community of professionals. Once the story broke, she had to invent a "source" to avoid admitting that she had "outed" Plame, not that the revalation was really that big a deal.
Plame was once, several years ago, a genuine undercover operative in Europe, but the impression given by the press of someone endangered by being "outed" is rubbish. She has worked at Langley as an analyst for about five years. She took no pains to conceal her employer, and has on occasion met friends in the Langley cafeteria.
Miller's stay in jail did not cost her pay or position, in fact earned her near beatification in the press corps. Assuming, as I do, that she wanted to sidestep close scutiny of her "source", that was an effective way to do just that. Three months later, her waffling answers to the grand jury are pretty well buried behind the smoke and mirrors put out during her paid "leave of absence".
Helps to remember, the Novak column that started this sh*tstorm was actually focused on the question of nepotism, ie that Miller had used her position to get her husband appointed to the yellowcake inquiry in Niger. By the way, hubby's infamous report of his inquiry did claim Iraq had not obtained actual product, but clearly stated that Iraq had for some time been trying to obtain back-channel, undocumented ore.
I wonder if the Libs of Sag Harbor are now snubbing Judith when they see her shopping at Schiavoni's IGA or going to a show at the Sag Harbor Cinema or drinking wine at the American Hotel. If Miller attends the Oct. 29th Literary Costume Party at Canio's she'd better make sure she keeps her mask on, 'cause chances are she'll be the topic of angry conversation.
Come as your favorite author, poet, character and read a selection of the work. Refreshments, prizes, general merriment! Don´t miss it!
It looks like she went to jail in order to help the Libs drag out the investigation.
The June 27, 2005 statement at Fitzgerald's website says
"By October 24, 2004... factual investigation...was for all practical purposes completed"
Have you ever heard of a newspaper so unreachable as this one? Apparently Keller's cell phone privileges were jerked and everyone else at the paper now has severe laryngitis. It may be, however, since I had to read the story a few times to get it straight, that even they do not understand clearly what who did and said what to whom when and with what understandings and implications.
She says she did not consider Libby's waiver voluntary until she spoke to him and received a letter urging her to "come back to work -- and life." While Keller and Abramson argued that the Times had a responsibility to level with its readers once Miller was no longer in legal jeopardy, ...
This really confuses me. Do Keller and Abramson actually mean that as long as their reporter is in legal jeopardy because of possible misrepresentation of facts, they can stonewall their readership -- and the special prosecutor -- to protect her when she was the cause of events that placed her in jeopardy? It sure sounds to me like a conspiracy to obstruct justice!
...Bennett contended that the waiver from Libby and agreement with Fitzgerald applied only to Miller's grand jury testimony and not to telling the world about her private conversations with Cheney's top aide. If revealing everything to readers "were the trumping principle," Bennett said, "you shouldn't respect confidential sources." It is not illegal, however, for grand jury witnesses to discuss their testimony.
This is especially confusing to me. Miller's attorney says publishing the complete context of information - revealing confidential sources - is not required of a reporter, which seems reasonable enough. But the article's author then ends the paragraph with a qualification not related to journalistic ethics (*cough*) but legal concerns.
Bennett said it was "absolutely false" to suggest that his client was withholding information, noting that it was a two-year-old conversation that did not seem like "a big deal at the time."
When a NYT-wit is caught with inconvenient inconsistency of facts, it really doesn't matter, eh?
In his memo, Keller said that although he wishes he had pressed much earlier for more information about Miller's encounters with Libby, "in the end, I'm pretty sure I would have concluded that we had to fight this case in court. For one thing, we were facing an insidious new menace in these blanket waivers, ostensibly voluntary, that administration officials had been compelled to sign."
Only at the NYT would the management find waivers that permitted facts to be known, the light of day to illuminate matters, the fresh air of unimpeded press to carry truth inspiringly into the public forum as an "insidious new menace"! If the administration had compelled its employees to sign such waivers, that should not be a journalistic ethical concern (*cough*) affecting decisions about revealing the facts. And if the press revealed felonious proceedings by revealing ostensibly confidential sources, let civil rights attorneys settle all self-incrimination matters. This gets goofier all the time.
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