The Kos post sourced by SusanHu certainly does raise some interesting questions about Judith Miller. At this point it would seem that there are more questions than answers, but it is starting to look as if Judith Miller’s role in this developing story is much more profound, perhaps even sinister, than that of an honest journalist being pursued for her confidential sources by a by a dogged prosecutor. MORE BELOW:
Fitzgerald has long been criticized for going after Miller, who, after all, never wrote a story about the Plame affair. I always assumed, as did others I’m sure, that Miller filed a story, but that the Times declined to run it (after all, outing a CIA agent for no good reason is generally frowned upon by the media, especially when the outing is being done by administration officials in the furtherance of a political agenda). Like every one else I assumed Fitzgerald was after Miller’s sources. The new element in this to me is that:
Miller apparently had some contact with someone at the White House on or about July 6, 2003, the day Joe Wilson’s op-ed piece appeared in the New York Times revealing that he had investigated the yellow-cake rumors for the CIA and found them to be untrue. We also know from recent news stories that the Times is not in a position to do what Time, Inc. did relative to Cooper, namely turn over its reporter’s (Miller’s) notes. That is because the Times says they do not have Miller’s notes. To me that suggests that Miller never filed a story after all. Surely if she did she would have had to supply background and documentation to her editors if the story were to be considered for publication. So if Miller never filed a story, just what role did she play in this affair? Why was she in contact with an unnamed “government official” regarding this story on or about July 6th?
The Downing Street Memos and Minutes prove what we really knew all along: that the White House was “fixing” the intelligence in order to justify going to war with Saddam. The major element of that fix was a pr campaign to convince the public that Saddam had a major WMD program. More than any one else, Judith Miller was the primary instrument of that pr campaign, landing story after story prominently in the pages of the New York Times (often on Page One) seeming to make the case for the Bush administration that Saddam was a genuine threat. We know, thanks to leaked e-mails revealed by Howard Kurtz in The Washington Post, that one of her primary sources was Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress, darling of the Neocons who merited the coveted seat next to Laura Bush at the 2004 State of the Union address.
So if Miller did not file a story but was in touch with a “government official,” presumably in the White House, when the Plame story was being leaked, just what was her role? Did she aid and abet the White House in getting this story into print? One thing we know for certain is that Karl Rove told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews immediately after Robert Novak broke the Plame story that Valerie Plame was “fair game.” While that conversation, revealed by Matthews and never denied by Rove, does not prove Rove was involved in the leak, it certainly proves he was in the loop.
All of this brings to mind another story that Judith Miller may have played a larger role in than her readers realize. You may recall the story of David Kelly, the British scientist and expert in WMD, who committed suicide in July 2003 while being investigated as the possible source for a BBC story that suggested (of all things) that the Blair government had doctored the intelligence about Saddam’s WMD programs.
Judith Miller filed a story about Kelly on July 21, 2003:
Scientist Was the ‘Bane of Proliferators’. The article painted a sympathetic portrait of Kelly and hinted that he believed Saddam did indeed maintain a WMD program despite the fact that no evidence of it had yet been found. Nothing in the article suggested that Miller had had contact with Kelly, nor that she had ever known him. Her story concluded with this passage:
Thanks to news articles written by others we know more about those e-mails than Judith Miller revealed to readers of The New York Times.
Jamie Macaskill, for example, filed a story in The London Sunday Mail on July 20, 2003 entitled: Dark Actors Playing Games:
Dr Kelly revealed his fears shortly before killing himself after being dragged into the row over the Government’s justification for war in Iraq.
In an email to American author Judy Miller, sent just before he left his home for the last time, he referred to “many dark actors playing games”.
But, according to Miller, Dr Kelly gave no indication he was depressed or planning to take his own life.
He told her he would wait “until the end of the week” before deciding his next move following his traumatic appearance before a House of Commons select committee…
In fact, Judith Miller apparently knew David Kelly rather well. She had quoted him in several of her earlier articles going back to 1998, and according to the Globe article referenced above, Kelly had helped her write her book about Weapons of Mass Destruction published several years before.
One would have thought that Miller would have regarded her relationship with Kelly as well as her contact with him just before his death as “scoop” material. Instead she failed to let her readers even know that she had enjoyed a long and close association with him. Even more odd, she left out the provocative e-mail he had written her just
prior to his death while writing about a more innocuous one sent to an “associate.”
I find Miller’s behavior in the Kelly story rather odd, to say the least. Unlike the Plame story, Miller did ultimately write about Kelly, but she camouflaged her own involvement and left much of what she knew out of the piece. I can’t pretend to know what role Miller played in the Plame saga, but I am now wondering whether she is being looked at as a possible accessory, rather than as a journalist who is protecting her sources. If that is the case, her efforts to rally the journalistic community to her aid represent a cynical charade.
how interesting…………..?????????? and what more is there to this story?
God, Jerry, this is like a complex game of Clue.
Do you have theories on why Miller hid her connections with Kelly?
Do you think there’s any possibility that Kelly did not commit suicide? (I know that’s the kind of question that can be ridiculed, but I say we keep ourselves open to the possibility of “dark” forces at work.)
Why did Kelly continue a relationship with Miller who’d, by that time, exposed her Neocon predilections?
I’ve never been a fan of the black helicoptor conspiracy theories, and the roll of tinfoil in the pantry is getting close to its end, but I’ll pull off another piece here, fashion it into a chic chapeau to say that I’ve also never believed Kelly committed suicide. It doesn’t ring true, there are far too many conflicting bits and pieces. And I definitely don’t like the level of “investigative” journalism that’s gone into looking at it.
Now that we are beginning to know more, it seems even less likely.
(Oooh, must sign off now. Am getting radio signals from Mars.)
I think Kelly was tormented and somewhat naive. I don’t want to speculate about whether Kelly commited suicide or not, but one has to wonder. As far as Miller, I won’t speculate as to her motives, but it is obvious her relationship with Kelly was less than a completely honest one, and that obviously is also true of her relationship with her readers.
Bob Brigham has a post rich with sources at MyDD called
Treasongate.
It includes a transcript of his appearance on Air America earlier this year and discusses just about everyone except Miller. He’s mentions Gannon, Rove, Bolton, Novack, Cooper, Libby, Bush, Wilson, Plame, and Bolton.
Jerry cross-posted this at DailyKos
Her Iraq coverage didn’t just depend on Chalabi. It also relied heavily on his patrons in the Pentagon. Some of these sources, like Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, would occasionally talk to her on the record. She relied especially heavily on the Office of Special Plans, an intelligence unit established beneath Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith. The office was charged with uncovering evidence of Al Qaeda links to Saddam Hussein that the CIA might have missed. In particular, Miller is said to have depended on a controversial neocon in Feith’s office named Michael Maloof. At one point, in December 2001, Maloof’s security clearance was revoked. In April, Risen reported in the Times, “Several intelligence professionals say he came under scrutiny because of suspicions that he had leaked classified information in the past to the news media, a charge that Mr. Maloof denies.” While Miller might not have intended to march in lockstep with these hawks, she was caught up in an almost irresistible cycle. Because she kept printing the neocon party line, the neocons kept coming to her with huge stories and great quotes, constantly expanding her access.
link
I actually think the Miller story is far more sinister. She has long been a dyed-in-the-wool committed Neocon who should never have been permited by the Times to report on this subject.
For example, she was for some time represented by Benador Associates, a Neocon PR firm and speakers Bureau with close associations to The American Enterprise Institute. Benador represents many prominent Neocons including Charles Krauthammer, Michael Ledeen, Laurie Mylroie, Richard Perle,
Richard Pipes, and James Woolsey, among others.
In 1990 she co-authored “Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf” along with Laurie Mylroie, a prominent member of the AEI who claims that Saddam was involved in both World Trade Center attacks, and whose work has been warmly endorsed by the likes of Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and James Woolsey.
She was for some time closely associated with Daniel Pipes “Middle East Forum,” a Neocon organization at the forefront of the movement advocating “regime change in Iraq. She wrote numerous articles for its magazine and was a member of its Speakers’ Bureau.
In short, Miller was closely tied to the people and organizations whose agenda she was advancing in the pages of the Times.
even dated Les Aspin in the early 80’s, who later became Defense Secretary under Clinton. She has been connected to the military/industrial complex on a bipartisan basis for 25 years.
She is married to Jason Epstein of The New York Review of Books. Seems like an odd match.
One could leave the addressing info and change the text. Only if the investigators checked both ends would the changes be noted. And if only small changes were made those might not even be noted unless put side by side. It would be risky if there was a sizable investigation but if suicide was the operable method of demise then the investigation would not be so intense. And doesn’t the email to JM seem to indicate a despondency and a helplessness that would lead to suicide?
There was always little about “Plamegate” that made much sense — particular how it’s been cast as a story about journalists’ right to protect their anonymous sources. But, man, this is really turning into an astonishing story! I just hope we’ll learn half of what really happened.
Anyway, thank you for this excellent diary. It’s an outstanding complement to great posts from digby and Bilmon(3 of ’em) today, which are not to be missed.
Thanks. I’m flattered. Those other posts really got me thinking about just what Miller’s role in this story really was. All of a sudden it dawned on me that she, not her sources, might be the target of the subpeona. So many pieces of the puzzle begin to fall into place if that is the case.
I’ve been suspiciously following Miller for about three years, but all of a sudden I think her role is becoming clearer.
Thaks, very good analysis. It would explain why Miller is a part of the Plame inquiry and why she was soft on the Kelly story.
The Source of the Trouble
I just posted this link and some comments at DKOS. This all rather fascinating.
I posted this one in response (and support):
Miller’s popularity (none / 0)
Miller clearly didn’t qualify for Ms. Personality. This passage from An article by Jeff Kurtz in the 6/25/03 Washington Post says a lot about both her pushy style and her government access:
One military officer, who says that Miller sometimes “intimidated” Army soldiers by invoking Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld or Undersecretary Douglas Feith, was sharply critical of the note. “Essentially, she threatened them,” the officer said, describing the threat as that “she would publish a negative story.”
An Army officer, who regarded Miller’s presence as “detrimental,” said: “Judith was always issuing threats of either going to the New York Times or to the secretary of defense. There was nothing veiled about that threat,” this person said, and MET Alpha “was allowed to bend the rules.”
by jpol on Mon Jul 4th, 2005 at 05:29:44 PDT
[ Parent | Reply to This ]
Thank you! I’m reading it now.