Posted on 10/23/2005 6:10:09 PM PDT by blam
Miss Run Amok stirs up a storm at America's most famous paper
By Francis Harris in Washington
(Filed: 24/10/2005)
Civil war erupted at America's most famous newspaper yesterday, with senior staff exchanging public recriminations over the actions of a controversial reporter nicknamed "Miss Run Amok".
The reader representative of The New York Times, a senior figure in the paper's hierarchy, roundly criticised both its editor and its publisher for their "deference" to the reporter, Judith Miller.
‘Misleading’: Judith Miller
Ms Miller recently spent 85 days in jail for refusing to reveal sources in the affair of the leaked name of a CIA agent, Valerie Plame.
The 57-year-old reporter was then widely described as a journalistic heroine, but a growing army of critics says she was over-protective of sources, who were allegedly in the White House, to the detriment of her paper's interests.
There was already plenty of simmering ill-feeling towards her in the liberal establishment, of which The New York Times is a major pillar, because she allegedly enjoyed an overly close relationship with the White House. She also wrote stories containing inaccurate material about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
Senior staff have now been accused of failing to keep her on "a tight editorial leash".
The affair is proving a very public humiliation for a newspaper which often appears to regard itself as the world's best, and is still recovering from revelations two years ago that reporter Jayson Blair faked stories. That caused the then editor, Howell Raines, to resign.
Under the headline "The Miller Mess", the reader's editor of The New York Times, Byron Calame, wrote: "The apparent deference to Ms Miller by Arthur Sulzberger Jr, the publisher, and top editors of The [New York] Times, going back several years, needs to be addressed more openly."
Mr Calame also suggested that Ms Miller should not be allowed to resume her old job. "The problems facing her inside and outside the newsroom will make it difficult for her to return to the paper as a reporter," he wrote.
Meanwhile, the paper's editor, Bill Keller, sent an e-mail to staff acknowledging that he had been too passive in overseeing Ms Miller's reporting. He also said that she seemed to have misled her bosses about key facts.
That triggered an angry denial from Ms Miller, who said she did not mislead anyone.
A leading columnist at the paper, Maureen Dowd, then joined the fray by attacking both sides. But she reserved her strongest criticism for Ms Miller.
The columnist acknowledged that Ms Miller had spent time in jail rather than revealing her White House sources to investigators, but questioned her true motivation.
Ms Dowd wrote: "People wonder whether her stint in Alexandria jail was part of a career-rehabilitation project."
Ms Miller came to the attention of prosecutors as she researched the affair of Mrs Plame, an undercover CIA agent who was "outed" after her name was allegedly leaked to several reporters by senior White House staff, including President George W Bush's chief strategist, Karl Rove, and Vice-President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, "Scooter" Libby.
The officials were said to be furious at Mrs Plame's husband, a former ambassador, for making what they regarded as untruthful allegations against the White House over the use of intelligence in the run-up to war in Iraq.
That provoked a criminal investigation, with prosecutors demanding that several reporters reveal the details of their conversations with White House officials. A decision on charges - uncovering a CIA agent is a criminal offence - is expected this week.
Although she never wrote a story about Mrs Plame, Ms Miller was asked to testify on her links to the White House. She refused and was imprisoned. Eventually, her key source, Mr Libby, signed a waiver permitting her to speak.
BAM!
Boy...there's a face only a drunkard could love.
BTTT
Thought he did this before she went to jail. Story doesn't mention that now she doesn't recall who her source was.
Boy...there's a face only a drunkard could love.
Exactly what I was thinking....scary! Well, it is Halloween almost.
Although she never wrote a story about Mrs Plame, Ms Miller was asked to testify on her links to the White House. She refused and was imprisoned. Eventually, her key source, Mr Libby, signed a waiver permitting her to speak.
Libby gave her permission to divulge his testimony at least a year ago. Also she did not divulge her "key" source. She did not say where she got the name Valerie "Flame", other than it was not Libby.
No....Maureen's mad at her, the love is gone.
She did not say where she got the name Valerie "Flame",
That's what she wrote.
However, she could have said more to the Grand Jury then we know now.
She could have been forced to tell more and told not to repeat it.
That is true.
She can't talk about grand jury testimony, but I don't think that Fitzgerald could force her to not disclose who gave her the name.
How appropriate this thread be posted by you blam. I have the feeling the entire NY Times may soon become history!
The more these jounalistic whackos trash Miller, the more sympathetic she becomes. They just don't get it.
Problems at the National Inquirer?
Looks like a "mug shot" taken AFTER the mugging. Bwahahahahahaha!
I love it when Rats eat they're own.
"She could have been forced to tell more and told not to repeat it."
A grand jury witness can discuss their own testimony. They are not sworn to secrecy.
That almost cost a keyboard. The people over at teh Telegraph must be enjoying this.
There are Millier like misleading statements though (to use their repeated keyword).
Libby signed that waiver before she went to jail. She still says she doesn't recall her source.
I have speculated on this in another link, but Dowd's comment about Miller's stint in jail is very much insych with my theory. I have come to believe that Judith Miller's "protected source" was Judith Miller. There is no smoking gun to prove this, but it holds together logically.
Miller not only did not suffer any great loss from her time in jail, she avoided questions she has since proven reluctant to answer, and emerged in a state of near beatification as a hero for reporters rights. It seems likely her stunt will result in passage of a reporters' shield law by Congress, no small accomplishment.
I come to this theory after her testimony to the grand jury. This very savvy Pulitzer winner was suddenly befuddled and could not recall to whom her own notes referred. Her answers have been evasive, almost self-contradictory.
She and Plame, both top level specialists in a very limited universe of such people could hardly have been unaware of one anothers' existence and position. It had been several years since Plame had been an undercover anything. Plame was an analyst working a desk in Langley, and was taking no pains to conceal that. She had sometimes invited guests, personal friends outside the agency, to lunch in the CIA cafeteria, not quite the thing James Bond does while trying to maintain his "secret" identity.
Remember that Novak's column, the origin of this little storm, was written to suggest possible nepotistic influence used by Plame to get her husband Joe Wilson retained to investigate this possible connection from yellow cake ore, Niger, and Iraq.
I strongly suspect that Miller wrote of Plame from her own knowledge of Plame's position and perhaps only after the storm arose realized she might herself be accused of "outing" a CIA "undercover" agent. By inventing another source, and going to jail to protect same, Miller earned a bulletproof halo, and cast suspicion on her unknown, and apparantly unremembered "high level White House source". I further believe that the reaction of her superiors at the NYT suggest they have come to the same belief I hold.
To be sure, there is some major "butt-covering" coming out of her paper's bosses. Take it for the theorizing it is, but I'll lay dollars to donuts my theory proves out closer to the truth than anything put out by her bosses.
She can't talk about grand jury testimony,
Not sure about that.
They are not sworn to secrecy.
Yes, but Rove was asked not to discuss his testimony and apparently he has agreed.
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