The Miller Case: From a Name on a Pad to Jail, and Back (Printer-friendly version of an 8-page story)
By DON VAN NATTA Jr., ADAM LIPTAK and CLIFFORD J. LEVY
ALSO UP:
Judith Miller’s “My Four Hours Testifying in the Federal Grand Jury Room” (Printer-friendly version of an 5-page story)
My notes indicate that well before Mr. Wilson published his critique, Mr. Libby told me that Mr. Wilson’s wife may have worked on unconventional weapons at the C.I.A.
My notes do not show that Mr. Libby identified Mr. Wilson’s wife by name. Nor do they show that he described Valerie Wilson as a covert agent or “operative,” as the conservative columnist Robert D. Novak first described her in a syndicated column published on July 14, 2003. (Mr. Novak used her maiden name, Valerie Plame.)[…..]
During my testimony on Sept. 30 and Oct. 12, the special counsel, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, asked me whether Mr. Libby had shared classified information with me during our several encounters before Mr. Novak’s article. He also asked whether I thought Mr. Libby had tried to shape my testimony through a letter he sent to me in jail last month. And Mr. Fitzgerald asked whether Mr. Cheney had known what his chief aide was doing and saying.
My interview notes show that Mr. Libby sought from the beginning, before Mr. Wilson’s name became public, to insulate his boss from Mr. Wilson’s charges. According to my notes, he told me at our June meeting that Mr. Cheney did not know of Mr. Wilson, much less know that Mr. Wilson had traveled to Niger, in West Africa, to verify reports that Iraq was seeking to acquire uranium for a weapons program. …
Jerry Policoff is reading both documents. I may have to leave. Please start reading and provide your feedback here. Hopefully, Jerry will lend his considerable expertise to a review of the two articles.
NOTE: There are also two timelines: Judith Miller and The Leak Inquiry
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Just reported on CNNi :: under Republicans, the question whether going into Iraq was the right thing to do, support dropped 16 pts in one month!
Dissatisfaction is not just creeping in, but hitting hard under true republicans, too bad there are no elections this fall!
I couldn’t find a link yet, only recent poll numbers for Colorado, which shows the support for President Bush’s job approval is dropping. Some remarks:
A 67-year-old southeast Denver woman, who asked not to be named, said the cost of Hurricane Katrina is one of the factors that changed her mind about the wisdom of the war in Iraq.
Part of her increasing distaste for the war “has to do with the increasing needs at home,” said the woman, who is white. She also wasn’t happy with the president’s performance.
“Frankly, I’m a little disappointed,” she said, adding that she voted for Bush twice. The nomination of Harriet Miers as a U.S. Supreme Court justice “is what tipped me over the edge . . . I cannot find too much about Miss Miers that qualifies her in my mind for the highest court in the land”.
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Oui, can you put posts like this in the Open Threads? Thank you.
This was an extremely sad story to read. Really, it had nothing to say, except for the between-the-lines story that The Times blew it and that Miller was no one to go to bat for.
The headline should have been “Once Proud Newspaper Hits Bottom.”
That NYT article must reflect the atmosphere at the paper. It’s disjointed and frankly presents the NYT’s operations as sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. It derides Miller and it demeans her. In the same breath it holds her up as a cause celebre for the 1st amendment.
I don’t know if it comes across that way because the reporters who wrote it have different opinions about her… or what… but it’s a very uncomfortable piece to read.
As for Miller, screw her for not being willing to share her notes with those reporters. What is she hiding? Still? From the people who supported her?
If anyone reading that article doesn’t come away with the feeling that she should be fired, they haven’t read it closely enough.
She doesn’t remember how she ended up writing the name “Valerie Flame” in her notes the day she met with Libby? What kind of bullshit is that beyond just a handy legal defense for not pinning this on Libby? I’m sorry, but this woman will never get sympathy from me.
As for her so-called integrity, she caved on testifying because she didn’t want to spend more time in jail. She admits that. Bring her down from her cross and throw her in a ditch somewhere. Her martyrdom is a farce.
On to her article now…
That has to be bullshit. Novak’s column appeared on July 14th that year – less than one month after she made that scribble about Valerie Flame in her notebook. Does anyone believe she didn’t know at that time exactly who had told her that name? Wouldn’t that have rung a bell with any normal person? Claiming she can’t remember two years later is just crap. It was one of the biggest flipping stories that year. Lying liar…
If he was such an avid consumer then why the hell didn’t his boss, Cheney, know about Wilson’s trip to Niger? Does anyone out there believe that he wouldn’t have brought it up with Cheney? Yeah…I didn’t think so.
I hope she does get fired! She had no business doing the things she has done for her own gratuity for one reason. Others saw right thru her motives. Why in heavens sake did they not see if for what it was a pure unadulterated sham.
Miller has her own agenda for doing the things she does. Judy is only out for Judy not others. If she were three would not have been all that bru ha ha from her on the WMDS and Chalobi. I read the article where the Army ppl she was with in the beginning hated here being there. She is intrusive and she should never have been allowed to do the things she has done.
Her career was and will remain intrusive of others…in fact, not wholly the truth of things only exaltations of things, as only Judy sees it. She is really not factual, for if she was, she would have checked her sources and then she would not have made the mistakes she has made.
Can you tell, I am not on her side of this???? :o) I do not feel one bit sorry for her! She knows what she is doing, or should know.
And why did Libby bring up Wilson’s wife? Answer that one Judy. Obviously, Libby told her more than she revealed in her account.
you got that one right!!!!!!!!!
Did Mr. Libby explain this request? Mr. Fitzgerald asked. No, I don’t recall, I replied. But I said I assumed Mr. Libby did not want the White House to be seen as attacking Mr. Wilson.
Cagey asshole. So now how do we even know that when Novak said “two senior adminstration officials”, he wasn’t talking about someone completely different? Two former admin officials? Who? What’s with these reporters that they can and will blur the identities of their sources like that?
That is incredible…. there’s a world of difference between a “former Hiil staffer” and an “administration official.”
IMHO, that’s unacceptable. That’s unethical. And that’s a f–king lie.
If we readers are supposed to put up with unnamed sources, we at least have a right to know something about their placement in gov’t — and if that much can’t be revealed, then say so. Don’t make up shit like “former Hill staffer.” It’s completely irrelevant that he once was on the Hill .. his current position is all that matters in this context … this didn’t HAPPEN when he was on the Hill.
How can Miller accept that?
This is incredible. She outright admits fabricating a cover story for her source. Scooter says, hey, let’s pretend I’m someone outside of the WH and she says, okay. This is an admission of unethical journalism and she doesn’t even seen to realize it. Or does she? Her whole story is so fucked up with trying to make herself look good that she doesn’t even realize how revealing it is.
I tell ya, the next time I read “senior White House official” or “unnamed administration source,” I’m going to wonder if it was some janitor being interviewed. Ya know, this makes The Hill and Enquirer stuff about Bush falling off the wagon look reputable. Jeez, she’s blown the whole house of pretense on which so-called insider info is based. How is this different from Blair or Glass just making shit up?
That’s the first I’ve ever heard about that practice. I guess we’ll find out just how widespread it is now.
He may have wanted to interpret it like that but the senate report shows that others disagreed and if he was such an “avid consumer” of intel reports, he would have know that.
This is such crap from the NYT and Miller:
From the NYT, we get mealy-mouthed junk about she was a bitch, she was out-of-control, she wouldn’t cooperate with us but, hey, we had to support her on principle. Would that be the CYA principle?
From Miller we get nonsense about not being able to recall who said “Valerie Flame” to her and when. I mean, is she a reporter or what? And my favorite from her, “I was all wrong,” on WMD but a reporter is only as good as their sources. Um, excuse me, you couldn’t investigate the motives of your sources, you couldn’t discern the validity of what they told you? Well, you’re a hack, pure and simple. And I love the way she pretends she wasn’t knifing Scooter in the back while playing her faulty memory game. Jeebus, just the stuff about the back and forth between Tate and Abrams convicts Tate and/or Scooter of Obstruction.
As I said on the Open Thread, my absolute favorite part is Scooter dressed up like a cowboy… out West where the Aspens all turn together. He had to tell her who he was his disguise was so baffling. Har.
If the Grand Jury fails to issue a flurry of indictments all over these people I am going to be flabberghasted. No, I’ll actually start screaming.
Is she that sloppy of a reporter that she doesn’t keep track of which sources tell her what information? Not buying that one, Judy.
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Mr. Fitzgerald asked me if I knew whether I was cleared to discuss classified information at the time of my meetings with Mr. Libby. I said I did not know.
How could she not know? Any reporters out there…?
At least this explains Libby’s odd letter to her (the apens are turning etc):
“Judy,” he said. “It’s Scooter Libby.”
that’s my favorite part of this colossal mind game — imagining Scooter disguised as a cowbody.
Hell, I’m going to watch “Sideways” on HBO. I wait for Booman’s take in the morning.
Funny she didn’t recognize him, and that he just came up on her like that! (I haven’t read that section yet — did he know she was going to be at the rodeo? And what in the hell was she doing at a rodeo? UGH!)
Ditto! And, if there are reruns of Rome on later, I’ll watch those too!
Btw, I was just watching FOX and they’re doing a special on Saddam’s upcoming trial. They showed — in comparison to Abu Ghraib, etc. — what “real torture” looked like under Saddam. Glad to find out!
We need to get Meteor Blade’s take on all of this.
Thanks for posting it so promptly, Susan. These published stories will have legs for weeks if not months. Wow.
Very selective in what information she remembers. Libby wasn’t too concerned discussing classified documents at breakfast with a reporter.
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My notes indicate that Mr. Libby took issue with the suggestion that his boss had had anything to do with Mr. Wilson’s trip. “Veep didn’t know of Joe Wilson,” I wrote, referring to the vice president. “Veep never knew what he did or what was said. Agency did not report to us.”
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As I told Mr. Fitzgerald, Mr. Libby also cited a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, produced by American intelligence agencies in October 2002, which he said had firmly concluded that Iraq was seeking uranium.
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I told Mr. Fitzgerald that Mr. Libby might have thought I still had security clearance, given my special embedded status in Iraq. At the same time, I told the grand jury I thought that at our July 8 meeting I might have expressed frustration to Mr. Libby that I was not permitted to discuss with editors some of the more sensitive information about Iraq.
Mr. Fitzgerald asked me if I knew whether I was cleared to discuss classified information at the time of my meetings with Mr. Libby. I said I did not know.
She went to jail for two months to protect a source whose name she can’t recall?
(and please excuse me for hogging this thread…I will now go and do penance…while napping…)
I hope no one takes Miller’s absurd tale seriously.
The fact that she expects anyone to believe it credible that while Valerie Flame’s(sic) name appears in her notes that she can’t remember who told her that name is so ludicrous it’s insulting. And it’s insulting not only to us, the public, but it’s a direct insult to every responsible news person out there.
Secondly, (and perhaps an even bigger insult to her fellow journalists and newspeople), for her to claim to take at face value the things she recounts Libby saying to her is, if nothing else, powerful confirmation of her lack of objectivity, awareness, and investigative skills as a reporter. This alone would be grounds for any credible news organization on the planet to fire her on the spot for incompetence at the very least.
Millers little fictional piece here is basically a non-story. It’s now just a part of another in a string of very sad days for the formerly great NYT, a publication firmly on the road to ruin thanks to creatures like Miller and her supporters Sulzberger and Keller.
Probably no other reputable major newspaper has raced to the bottom of the integrity scale as quickly and perhaps as thoroughly as the NYT has.
It’s a sad day for us all.
First reactions: On Miller’s account: I noted Fitzgerald’s questions to Miller, about what Cheney knew and whether he was behind efforts to get Wilson. The questions were more revealing than her answers.
On the Times reporting: it confirms leaks yesterday than the newsroom was upset. The emphasis on newsroom attitudes and hostilities is signficant, and there are several instances where the reporters asked Miller questions she refused to answer.
I’d interpret that as a message to Miller not to come back. Though she denies having a book deal, one has been reported, and the Raw Story report yesterday suggested that she wasn’t talking to the Times reporter but saving stuff for her book. So it strongly hints that she would not be welcomed back. If she does go back, they really will have to face the decision of whether to fire her. And she may not be the only one to lose a job there before this is over.
As for the effect on the Plame case, obviously she’s bending over backwards not to incriminate Libby or anyone higher. So there’s no smoking gun here, but—Fitzgerald may have answers to more specific questions that fit together with other testimony. And again, there are those questions he asked about Cheney.
So her newspaper compromises itself for her, spends millions on her legal defense, and she won’t even be straight with the reporters from her own newspaper trying to cover the story about her?
Quite frankly, my dear, I do not give a damn about the NYT’s. They have sacrificed their reputation for this one reporter. It is their problem not ours. They will surely have given up more than reputation when it comes down to the fact that their readership is down because of this. When they can not report the truth, this will tell all of their standing with politics and their position overall.
I do not trust them anymore, what so ever!!!!!!! I am sure I am not alone with this thought either.
Number ONE: The US District Court of Appeals ruling that Cooper and Miller must testify, threw the first amendment protection in this case out the window because of the seriousness of the potential crime committed. The Judges concurred that the reporters were seeking protection to report on a crime while protecting the criminals:
“Had Cooper based his report on leaks about the leaks–say, from a whistleblower who revealed the plot against Wilson–the situation would be different. Because in that case the source would not have revealed the name of a covert agent, but instead
revealed the fact that others had done so, the balance of newsvalue and harm would shift in favor of protecting the whistleblower. Yet it appears Cooper relied on the Plame leaks themselves, drawing the inference of sinister motive on his own. Accordingly, his story itself makes the case for punishing the
leakers. While requiring Cooper to testify may discourage future leaks, discouraging leaks of this kind is precisely what the public interest requires……..
Were the leak at issue in this case less harmful to national security or more vital to public debate, or had the special counsel failed to demonstrate the grand jury’s need for the reporters’ evidence, I might have supported the motion to quash. Because identifying appellants’ sources instead appears essential to remedying a serious breach of public trust, I join in affirming the district court’s orders compelling their testimony. Judge Tatel Febraury 15 2005.No. 04-3138 IN RE: GRAND JURY SUBPOENA, JUDITH MILLER
Excerpt Page 82 and 83
NUMBER TWO: Judy is still spinning for Bush/Cheney Corporation:
Not really even between the lines -the majority of judith’s article/ account of what happened is devoted to continuing to promulgate a defense of the wh for going to war, protect cheney, et. al and attack the CIA
“as i told the grand jury, i recalled Mr. Libby’s frustration and anger about what he called ‘selective leaking’ by the CIA and other agencies from what he recalled as their unequivocal prewar intelligence assessments.” “The selective leaks trying to shift blame to the white house, he told me were part of a perverted war over the war in in Iraq” (what an ironic perversion) AND she is attempting to posit that she had special security clearance as an embedded reported in iraq. AND ‘ VEEP didn’t know joe wilson-never knew what he did or what was said…
Number Three:She is lying- Who does not think she is lying? She learns Flame’s name from another source she can’t recall- she spends months waiting for the Court to decide if her subpeona should be quashed and is not cognizant of every note and detail she has written about the issue?- and suddenly finds a mystery notebook behind door number three?
My apologies-there is not a begining, middle and end to my comment-i only barely skimmed her article, excuse me now, i need to go and throw-up.