Month: October 2005

by Col. Patrick Lang (Ret.)

“Ms. Miller’s revelation that she was granted a DoD security clearance while embedded with the WMD search team in Iraq in 2003.

This is as close as one can get to government licensing of journalists and the New York Times (if it knew) should never have allowed her to become so compromised. It is all the more puzzling that a reporter who as a matter of principle would sacrifice 85 days of her freedom to protect a source would so willingly agree to be officially muzzled and thereby deny potentially valuable information to the readers whose right to be informed she claims to value so highly.

One must assume that Ms. Miller was required to sign a standard and legally binding agreement that she would never divulge classified information to which she became privy, without risk of criminal prosecution. And she apparently plans to adhere to the letter of that self-censorship deal; witness her dilemma at being unable to share classified information with her editors.” (Editor & Publisher)

Col. Patrick W. Lang (Ret.), a highly decorated retired senior officer of U.S. Military Intelligence and U.S. Army Special Forces, served as “Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East, South Asia and Terrorism” for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and was later the first Director of the Defense Humint Service. Col. Lang was the first Professor of the Arabic Language at the United States Military Academy at West Point. For his service in the DIA, he was awarded the “Presidential Rank of Distinguished Executive.” He is a frequent commentator on television and radio, including PBS’s Newshour, and most recently on MSNBC’s Hardball and NPR’s “All Things Considered.” His CV and blog are linked below the fold.

Folks who still adhere to the “Koolaid” version of history profess to despise the New York Times. They see the Times as a bastion of leftist influence in America. I don’t care for the Times much myself but in my case it is because it is a New York newspaper, a different complaint.

Judy Miller is/was part of the conspiracy that Mr Fitzgerald is investigating. That is why she is “playing games” with him. She has to camouflage a couple of things This is just opinion on my part.

1. She was an active participant in the plot to smear the Wilsons and discredit them in the eyes of the American people. She still is. Why? I really don’t know or am unwilling to give an opinion.

2. She used the NY Times as a vehicle for propagandizing the American people to whip them up for the Iraq war on the basis that Iraq was, in effect, Nazi Germany come again, and that this time the pseudo Nazis were going to provide the Jihadi nuts across the world with nuclear weapons with which to attack us at home. To obfuscate this point of performance, she went to jail for contempt hoping to emerge from this “soulless” place (down the street from my house in Alexandria and run by one of my neighbors, the sheriff) as a champion of press freedom for whom all would be forgiven.

She should be indicted along with her neocon Jacobin and Mayberry Machiavellian pals. They were all in this together.

She called me up once at the point in history at which her BS about the Iraqi WMD program was falling apart. She tried to get me to “sign up” to the idea that “it must have been true.” I told her that I did not wish to participate in her fantasy life. She was disappointed. Given Wilson’s experience, I have to wonder what she was trying to “set me up for.”

Just my opinion.

Pat Lang

Personal Blog: Sic Semper Tyrannis 2005 || Bio || CV
Recommended Books || More BooTrib <a href="Posts

Novel: The Butcher’s Cleaver (download free by chapter, PDF format)


“Drinking the Kool-Aid,” Middle East Policy Council Journal, Vol. XI, Summer 2004, No. 2

After reading Judith Miller’s account of her dealings with “Scooter” Libby, I am left with one question for the people operating the NYTs: Do you really expect me to continue reading your publication and assign any credibility to the stories that you publish?

I almost picked up the phone and canceled the subscription on the spot.  But I simmered down.  Maybe the NYTs still serves some function in my life, as an inspiration to my fiction writing.

But honestly.  How do they employ a liar.  Defend a liar as a standard bearer in the fight for freedom of the press and investigative journalism.  And allow a liar three-quarters of a page in the Sunday paper to talk about how she lied, and to whom.  Did Jayson Blair get this opportunity?

Am I over the top?  You be the judge:

A fellow blogger wrote me angry that the NY Daily News is reporting that the leftist blogsphere is being soft on Bloomberg. If true, this disgusts me. Are we being soft on someone who donates $7 million to the RNC, thus supporting Bush, DeLay, Abu Graib torture and Karl Rove’s exploitation of 9/11? Is the liberal blogsphere dropping the ball on NYC? Those of you who aren’t in NYC (and even some who are but aren’t intimately connected with local politics) may not realize how the NYC political scene is drifting towards the red at an alarming rate. If we let this continue, NY State may no longer be blue. Are we failing to hold the line in NY?

Almost simultaneously with the web publishing her own account of her involvement in the Valerie Plame Affair, New York Times reporter Judy Miller spoke at an awards ceremony by the California First Amendment Coalition (CFAC) at Cal State, Fullerton, close to Richard Nixon’s childhood home. Miller presented an award to `Deep Throat,’ Mark Felt, just after the keynote speech by her attorney, Floyd Abrams, who also defended The Times in the Pentagon Papers case, when the paper was somewhat at odds with a Republican Administration, rather than carrying water for one.

Deep Throat ~= Batman

Both Abrams and Miller attempted to equate her with Woodward, Bernstein and Felt as a courageous defender of the First Amendment. Both fell short. Felt’s grandson, Nick Jones, who accepted the award on behalf of his grandfather, did much better with a different equation.

King George the Usurper, already a criminal conspirator per the Coup de 2000, isn’t the only one worried these days; his favorite pet and fellow theocrat, Tony Blair, has some worries himself with Plamegate about to make both mens’ lives hell, the kind of nagging worries that don’t go away, the kind that criminal evidence in the public domain brings.

[Update: 10:11 EDT Condi starts wagging on this side of the pond..] So, yes, the wagging begins.

Today tensions escalated sharply with Iran.