[Mb-civic] Raw Story: Judy Miller will resign

[Mike Blaxill]

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Unease_pervades_New_York_Times_newsroom_1014.html

Concern pervades New York Times newsroom over
Judith Miller
10/14/2005 @ 1:02 pm
Filed by John Byrne

There’s a feeling of unease at the Times.

Veteran New York Times reporter Judith Miller’s
one-woman crusade to protect her White House
source in a CIA leak inquiry has stirred passions
among Times staffers not seen since the Jayson
Blair scandal, when the unsuspecting paper ran
dozens of fictionalized articles.

Conversations with nearly a dozen Times reporters
revealed a scarred landscape of discontent. Few
reporters were willing to go on the record, but
none who spoke with RAW STORY said they supported
Miller. Many voiced worries that the paper’s
editor, Bill Keller, was sacrificing his own
integrity to protect her.

“I think they’re looking at him in
wonderment, and hoping he can figure a way out of
this,” one veteran reporter said. "Because he's
in a real bind."

“Part of the fear is that there’s a sense
that he might not know very much, but he’s been
forced by circumstance, and possibly by the
publisher, to become a cheerleader rather than
the newsman.”

“I think that pains him greatly,” the
reporter added. “He is a news guy, he’s one
of the best, and to be in a circumstance where
he’s trapped, and he’s carrying somebody
else’s water, and he can’t let the newspaper
do what it does best--which is run with a
story--has to be agonizing for him.”

Miller, who joined the Times Washington bureau in
1977, spent 85 days in jail after refusing to
reveal who told her the name of covert CIA
officer Valerie Plame Wilson. Since her release,
reporters say, she has not been cooperative with
the paper’s investigation into her role in
events surrounding the case. Two reporters allege
there have been newsroom outbursts between Keller
and Miller over her refusal to talk to the
paper’s own reporters.

Others closer to the paper’s planned leak story
declined to go on record about the subject. Some
are hedging their bets on the Times’ hyped
self-examination.

“It’s been impossible to report on it,” one
staffer said.

Several reporters said they didn’t feel
comfortable talking, given their distance from
the story.

Miller was seen as a key asset to the Times in
the last few years as the paper’s terrorism
“expert,” keeping the New York heavyweight
ahead of the Washington Post. Keller, while
acknowledging Miller’s weaknesses, has defended
Miller in the past.

“She has sharp elbows,” Keller wrote in an
email to New York Magazine in 2004. “She is
possessive of her sources, and passionate about
her stories, and a little obsessive. If you
interview people who have worked with Sy Hersh,
I’ll bet you’ll find some of the same
complaints.”

Among Miller's other supporters at the top is
Times managing editor Jill Abramson.

“Judy Miller is a tireless and absolutely
relentless reporter,” Abramson told New York
Magazine. “In the Washington bureau, she was
often the last reporter still working, sometimes
making phone calls until the wee morning
hours.”

While few are talking to the outside, the
newsroom is abuzz with gossip surrounding the
case.

At least two reporters say they’ve heard that
Miller plans to resign after the paper runs their
examination, which most expect Sunday. According
to the Huffington Post, Miller has inked a $1.2
million deal for a tell-all expose.

Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis would not
comment on whether Miller planned to resign. Nor
did she answer questions about whether Miller
would author an expose on her involvement in the
Plame affair once the paper publishes its full
account of Miller's role in the matter.

Miller could not be reached for comment.

Miller’s reporting has also generated alarm
among Times staffers and the Washington press
corps. In particular, reporters have questioned a
piece she wrote on Iraq’s acquisition of
aluminum tubes, which her article asserted could
be used for the development of nuclear weapons.
This turned out to be false.

Her sources have also raised eyebrows -- Iraq
expatriate and current Iraq oil minister Ahmed
Chalabi among them. Some believe Chalabi
snookered the U.S. into attacking Iraq with bogus
tales of weapons of mass destruction. Miller is
also believed to have relied on controversial UN
ambassador John Bolton, who visited her while in
prison.

Due in part to Miller’s reporting, the Times
was forced to issue a public apology for their
sensationalized WMD reporting in 2004. The Times
chose not to mention Miller by name, saying,
“Some critics of our coverage during that time
have focused blame on individual reporters. Our
examination, however, indicates that the problem
was more complicated.”

But one thing is certain: Miller’s public trial
has left a sour taste in reporters' mouths.

“Everybody’s been puzzled the entire time,”
one reporter remarked. “I think the longer she
goes without writing something, without telling
what she told the grand jury, without explaining
what this whole thing has been about, the worse
it gets.”

The Times public editor agrees.

"The lifting of the contempt order against Judith
Miller of The New York Times in connection with
the Valerie Wilson leak investigation leaves no
reason for the paper to avoid providing a full
explanation of the situation," he wrote in a
column Thursday. "Now."

Jason Leopold contributed reporting for this article.