Judy Miller and the damage done (Salon)

[hang a left]

Judy Miller and the damage done

The long-awaited New York Times report uncovered an internal mess that's "bigger than Jayson Blair." And it looks even worse for Scooter Libby.

By Farhad Manjoo


AP Photo/Dennis Cook

New York Times reporter Judith Miller talks to reporters outside U. S. District Court in Washington Friday, Sept. 30, 2005, after testifying to a grand jury investigating the leaking of a CIA operatives identity. Times Executive Editor Bill Keller is at right.

During the past couple weeks, the New York Times has been promising to eventually publish a thorough account of its reporter Judith Miller's run-in with federal prosecutors investigating the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity. On Saturday, the paper finally published that report. Unfortunately, the account, along with a personal statement by Miller herself, raises more questions -- about Miller, the Times, and about the Bush administration's attempts to manipulate the press -- than it answers.

The paper's coverage provides a broad outline of Miller's dealings with I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, and his attempts to discredit Joseph Wilson, the former ambassador who began criticizing the Bush administration's case for war in the summer of 2003.

But the details in the report are mystifying. In particular, it's unclear why the Times allowed Miller -- a reporter whose discredited work on weapons of mass destruction had recently embarrassed the paper -- to be put in charge of the paper's response to investigators looking into the Plame leak. Why did nobody at the newspaper ask to review Miller's notes in the Plame case before she was cleared to make such a high-profile stand for press freedom? The Times account shows that senior management at the paper did not press Miller on her sources and what the sources had revealed to her about Plame; before backing her stance in public and in numerous editorials, why didn't they make sure she wasn't being used by officials in the Bush administration who may have been breaking the law? And then there's the matter of Miller's own unethical actions: The Times' report showed she lied to her editors and agreed to hide Libby's motives from readers. Why is she still working at the paper?

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http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/10/16/times_miller/index_np.html

[motocicleta]

1. Thank you, Salon

For the NYT to ever become a real paper again, they will have to answer these questions.