The reason Judy was unaware of "a deliberate, concerted disinformation campaign to discredit Wilson" is because there wasn't one -- outside the fevered minds of Chris Matthews, Andrea Mitchell, Tim Russert et al.
If the Bush White House had wanted to discredit Joe Wilson, they could've blown him out of the water. Instead, when asked, they simply passed along a tidbit that explained how it wasn't Cheney who had sent Joe to Niger and suggested that reporters "consider the source". <> It was a low key effort to "set the facts straight", well short of the scorched earth policies of previous administrations.
Surprisingly, the flakey Miller actually seems to have had a clear understanding of what was going on.
Here's the passage I find unusual:
...I didn't know that Judy had been one of the reporters on the receiving end of the anti-Wilson whisper campaign. I should have wondered why I was learning this from the special counsel, a year after the fact. (In November of 2003 Phil Taubman tried to ascertain whether any of our correspondents had been offered similar leaks. As we reported last Sunday, Judy seems to have misled Phil Taubman about the extent of her involvement.) This alone should have been enough to make me probe deeper.What does he mean, "...I was learning this from the special counsel..."? Did Keller testify? We've been told throughout that everything he learned, he learned from Miller.
And he says he learned whatever it was "a year after the fact". What fact? He seems to be referring to Miller's original interviews in June/July 03. But that would mean Keller is saying he learned it from the prosecutor a year later: July 04. But that can't be. Miller was already on her way to jail by then (July 6th).
That entire passage is just plain confusing (or intentionally obscure). I keep going back and re-reading it, but can't make any sense of it. Am I reading too much into it? Or is there some "there" there?