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"I thought that Judith Miller covered the Middle East for the NYT and supported the WMD assertion."

Miller also risked her life--traveling to Kurdistan--to get interviews and hard evidence on Saddam's and "Chemical Ali"'s use of mustard, sarin and nerve gas to murder thousands of Kurds. Miller's insistence that Iraq possessed, and was developing, weapons of mass destruction put her at odds with the quirky Times publisher and chairman Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr. When she refused to participate in the lynching of Karl Rove, in the Plame affair, she was judged politically unreliable by Sulzberger and fired. This was after spending three months in lock-up for not revealing sources. Miller's books and articles on WMD represent some of the rare, objective journalism produced by the Times since the politically partisan "Pinch" took over the Times. When Sulzberger, as publisher, fired Miller, he removed the ethical and organizational "wall" that is supposed to separate the newsroom from corporate management. Sulzberger has spent more than a decade staffing the Times news/editorial department with the most superficial, mediocre propagandists in the industry. Arthur "Punch" Sulzberger Sr. was a World War II Marine who served in the Pacific. He was a traditional liberal and a businessman. "Pinch" was a draft dodger, a trust-fund hippie and a Vietnam protester. He has turned the most august newspaper in the world into a cheap, embarrassing political pamphlet. His lame business practices have sent the Times Company on a course with fiscal disaster.

The whole rest of the U.S. establishment news media would not make a pimple on Judith Miller's ass.

I know that everything that you say about Miller is true, but I still don't get her involvement in the warning that Muslim finacial group that they were about to be raided. I always thought that her refusal to testify in the Muslim terrorist support case caused her harsh treatment in case against Rove.

Thanks, Brad, for the good summary of Judith Miller's situation. Miller was known at the Times to have good administration contacts, including in the VP's office. I think there was an expectation that when all was said and done her testimony would bring down Rove and Cheney, too. When this turned out not to be the case she was kicked out of the clique at the newsroom. She was on borrowd time anyway at that point.