Posted on 10/22/2005 7:53:24 PM PDT by Saynotosocialism
New York Times reporter Judith Miller speaks during the 2005 SPJ Convention & National Journalism Conference in Las Vegas Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2005. Miller, who was jailed 85 days for refusing to reveal a source, defended her decision to go to jail to protect the source and told a journalism conference Tuesday that reporters need a federal shield law so that others won't face the same sanctions. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong) WASHINGTON -- In the latest fallout from the CIA leak investigation, reporter Judith Miller and The New York Times are engaging in a very public fight about her seeming lack of candor in the case.
In a memo to the staff, Executive Editor Bill Keller says Miller "seems to have misled" the newspaper's Washington bureau chief, Phil Taubman, who said Miller told him in the fall of 2003 that she was not one of the recipients of a leak about the identity of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame.
Miller says Keller's criticism is "seriously inaccurate."
"I certainly never meant to mislead Phil, nor did I mislead him," Miller was quoted as saying in a Times story Saturday.
According to a Times story on Oct. 16, Miller told Taubman two years ago that the subject of Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson and Wilson's wife, Plame, had come up in casual conversation with government officials, but that Miller said "she had not been at the receiving end of a concerted effort, a deliberate organized effort to put out information."
In recent weeks, Miller testified to the grand jury in the leak probe that she had discussed Wilson and his wife in three conversations with Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby in June and July of 2003.
Keller wrote that if he had known of Miller's "entanglement" with Libby, he might have been more willing to explore compromises with the prosecutor who was trying to get her testimony for the criminal investigation into the leak of Plame's identity.
Miller spent 85 days in jail for refusing to cooperate with Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald. She was freed on Sept. 29 when she finally agreed to testify.
Responding to Keller's criticism, Miller told the newspaper, "I was unaware that there was a deliberate, concerted disinformation campaign to discredit Wilson and that if there had been, I did not think I was a target of it."
"As for your reference to my 'entanglement' with Mr. Libby, I had no personal, social or other relationship with him except as a source," Miller said.
Underlying the issue is Miller's own flawed prewar reporting on Iraq.
Her stories pointing to the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq helped clear a path for the administration's arguments in favor of going to war. No weapons of mass destruction have been found, and Keller said he regretted waiting a year before confronting problems with Miller's reporting.
In his memo, Keller wrote that the newspaper in the summer of 2003 had just been through the trauma of the Jayson Blair episode, in which a reporter was found to have fabricated articles, resulting in the departure of the Times' executive editor and managing editor.
"It felt somehow unsavory to begin a tenure by attacking our predecessors," Keller wrote. By waiting more than a year, he said, "We allowed the anger inside and outside the paper to fester. Worse, we fear, we fostered an impression that the Times put a higher premium on protecting its reporters than on coming clean with its readers."
Op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd weighed in with further criticism in Saturday's Times. "Sorely in need of a tight editorial leash, (Miller) was kept on no leash at all, and that has hurt this paper and its trust with readers," Dowd wrote.
If Miller returns to covering national security issues, Dowd wrote, "the institution most in danger would be the newspaper in your hands."
In a column written for Sunday's editions of The Times, public editor Byron Calame wrote, "It seems to me that whatever the limits put on her, the problems facing her inside and outside the newsroom will make it difficult for her to return to the paper as a reporter."
So, in spite of the fact that the intelligence services from France, Britain, Germany, Israel, Egypt, Jordan, et al. plus 98 members of the US Senate (including the Dems), President Clinton and Vice-President Al Gore - all thought that Iraq had WMD's - little Judy Miller was supposed to report all on her own that Iraq did not have them?
The Times is really pathetic.
Anyone seen this? http://cryptome.sabotage.org/plame-eyeball.htm ... at the bottom of the page: JACQUELINE C WILSON, 55, 4612 CHARLESTON TER NW, WASHINGTON, DC 20007 (202) 3429888, in the center VALERIE WILSON
4612 CHARLESTON TER NW
WASHINGTON DC 20007
(202) 342-9888
I find this strange.
now this is what i call interesting ? without prying , how did you find this ?
Just a lot of googling.
What do you think it signifies?
This bitter old hack epitomizes all the reasons why this fish wrap is headed down "zee twalette"
Weird....The ex-wife has the same address as Joe, but Valerie has a different home address than Joe....Very Strange.
He's 55, she's 42. Must be a father fixation or something.
Valerie has a WATERGATE address???
That's her stupid front company.
excellent ! nice to see folks are honing their skills in case there is a showdown. hello new york times---sorry but this is not 1974. it's not even 1984. technology changes everything.
Why does the EX-wife have the sae address as Joe on Arlington in DC?
Wait a second...my husband is 66...I'm 46. It's not unusual.
I have no idea. The Watergate address is where Joe and Valerie lived before they purchased the new house. I have searched forever for anything on the second wife, and this is the first mention I've found. But would a covert agent's address (this is the Valerie Plame address from before 1998 at the Watergate) be so readily available that any fool (me) could find it on the net? In addition, since Wilson also lived there with her, wouldn't the "bad guys" she was trying to hind her secret life from, put this together as easily as I did.
Beats me. Are you thinking something kinky?
You're right. I had remembered some connection with Watergate, but guessed wrong.
But was there a three-some? LOL
I guess I see your point. Not exactly covert.
A strange threesome indeed. A French spy, Jaquelynm Wilson. A CIA agent, Valerie Wilson and lying Joe Wilson with his french connections.
Bet Fitz is on top of this.
No....but it IS wierd that the ex wife is listed as living there. Maybe it's HER house that Joe and Valerie are living in!!
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