"All that is old and already formed can continue to live only if it allows within itself the conditions of a new beginning."
Judy Miller: Secret Agent, Ma'am?
Posted 4:32 p.m., Oct. 16, 2005
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Is there now evidence that Judith Miller, the New York Times reporter who spent 85 days in jail for "protecting a source" has acted as an agent of the government?
The New York Times today belatedly published a story intended to set the record straight on one of the most confusing episodes in the history of American journalism--what in the hell was Miller doing in jail? A perplexed and skeptical public has been told from the beginning that it was all about protecting principle.
To hear Miller and the Times tell it, this was the War on Terrorism's Deep Throat story. (In fact, Miller handed out a First Amendment award to Deep Throat just Saturday night.) The official tale: Miller went to jail rather than reveal her source--even though that source had given her the same waiver on her confidentiality pledge that he had given to a passel of other reporters.
For reasons that still defy understanding, Miller, alone among journalists affected, chose to believe that waiver was coerced. (And by her own account, she did nothing for an entire year to find out for sure.)
I must say, as a journalist, I find her posture appealing, despite my reservations about anonymous sources. I'd love to believe that Judy Miller was standing up for my right to rely on confidentiality when I need it. But the story has far too many gaps in it. And today's Times, which should have clarified the situation for all time, instead (perhaps disastrously) poses more questions than answers.
Now, for instance, in Miller's own write-up of Plamegate, also published today, the reporter claims not to have learned the identity of outed CIA agent Valerie Plame from Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Scooter Libby, but from some other source. She doesn't remember who. Her notes don't tell her.
Got incredulity?
Arriana Huffington, who has shoved harder than anyone to get the Times to cough up the real story on this crazy episode, sneers that Miller's memory gap over who gave her this information is a little like Woodward and Bernstein claiming to forget who Deep Throat was.
Can You Keep a Secret?
That's not even the most astonishing thing about the Times' revelations today. Get a load of this section of Judy Miller's don't-say-too-much tell-all.
"In my grand jury testimony, [special prosecutor] Fitzgerald repeatedly turned to the subject of how Mr. Libby handled classified information with me. He asked, for example, whether I had discussed my security status with Mr. Libby. During the Iraq war, the Pentagon had given me clearance to see secret information as part of my assignment "embedded" with a special military unit hunting for unconventional weapons."Mr. Fitzgerald asked if I had discussed classified information with Mr. Libby. I said I believed so, but could not be sure. He asked how Mr. Libby treated classified information. I said, Very carefully.
"Mr. Fitzgerald asked me to examine a series of documents. Though I could not identify them with certainty, I said that some seemed familiar, and that they might be excerpts from the National Intelligence Estimate of Iraq's weapons. Mr. Fitzgerald asked whether Mr. Libby had shown any of the documents to me. I said no, I didn't think so. I thought I remembered him at one point reading from a piece of paper he pulled from his pocket.
"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."
-- Judith Miller,
"My Four Hours Testifying"
New York Times
Oct. 16, 2005Ivo Daalder, a Brookings Institution senior fellow and former Clinton administration security council staffer, raises major questions in a brief post at the TPMCafe blog today.
"I had no idea journalists could receive security clearances--and I had no idea that the mainstream media would allow their reporters to have such clearances. After all, one of the most important obligations of a person receiving security clearances is not to reveal that information at any time, while one of the most important obligations of a reporter is precisely to reveal information the public has a need and right to know."Can someone explain why this glaring conflict of interest is acceptable? And does anyone know whether Miller's clearance was an exception or whether this is a common practice in journalistic circles, be it today or in the past? And, finally ... could it be that this fact becomes the key to Libby's defense?"
-- Ivo Daalder,
"Miller's Security Clearance"
TPMCafe.com
Oct. 16, 2005Let's be frank here, though I can legitimately call myself a journalist, I don't swing in Miller's circles. I've never had a byline in the New York Times. I've never even been jailed, nor have I ever worked for an organization whose managers would take me out for a massage, manicure, martini and steak dinner upon my release had I ever ended up in such a predicament. I'd be lucky to get treated to a hamburger and a slap on the back at Fuddrucker's.
So I can't answer Daalder's questions. I don't know if it would be normal for a reporter to gain special security clearance to report from the field in wartime.
Retired CBS News national security correspondent Bill Lynch might be expected to know, though. And in a letter to the Romenseko blog today, he called the security clearance issue "an enormous journalism scandal" in Plamegate.
"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. ..."
A security clearance means keeping a tight lip so that you don't sink the ship. It also generally means you're working for, or on behalf of the government.
"Security clearances may be requested on individuals in the following categories whose employment involves access to sensitive government assets:
- Members of the military
- Civilian employees working for the [U.S. Defense Department] or other government agencies
- Employees of government contractors
Being a reporter doesn't mean going out of your way to sink the ship, but it does mean putting crucial information out into the public domain, not lending a hand to keep the government's secrets. That said, it can be assumed that most reporters wouldn't need the catalyst of a special security clearance to avoid giving up information that could get Americans killed. History bears that out.
Further, Miller's clearance--by her own description--was all about accompanying a special military unit working to find weapons of mass destruction in-country in Iraq. And Plamegate, remember, is all about WMD. It's about what was done to former diplomat Joe Wilson's wife after Wilson discredited an administration claim about Iraq's attempts to procure uranium from Niger in order to jumpstart its WMD program.
Miller never wrote a story about Plamegate, and apparently never intended to. But in the runup to war, she wrote or co-wrote five of the six New York Times stories that puffed up the WMD threat, stories the Times later recanted after it became clear they were built on fantastical claims by administrations officials and shady Iraqi expatriates--including one guy named "Curveball."
These very stories, essentially planted by the Bush administration, were then used by Cheney on "Meet the Press" to justify the rush to war.
So why, in the summer of 2003, was Judy Miller speaking on the subject of Wilson and his wife with Scooter Libby, if not to collect information for an article? Were they just shooting the breeze? Just idle gossip? Possibly, but seems like both of these people are a bit too busy for that. So why?
There is still not enough information in the record to answer that question. Indications, instead, are that Miller is trying her damndest to deflect the question.
Seems to me, though, that this special clearance issue raises an at least minimally credible alternative to Miller's version of events, at least with regard to her imprisonment. After all, it seems highly doubtful, as some have said, that she would volunteer to spend 85 days in jail, sleeping on thin mats laid on a concrete slab, simply to ressurect her image after the Times/WMD debacle of 2002.
Perhaps Miller wasn't worried about betraying confidences, as she claims, but was afraid of being put in a position of having to reveal classified information to a grand jury?
And wouldn't that desire to maintain clean hands on her security clearance also potentially explain the sudden appearance of The Invisible Man--Miller's "real" source for learning Plame's identity? You know, the guy she just can't seem to remember?
And given that we now know Miller had access to government secrets, isn't it in the least bit possible that the secret source Judy Miller is now protecting is, in fact, herself?
I am not knowledgable enough to know the ins and outs of receiving or abiding by national security clearances. But Miller's own story, as she tells it, strongly suggests that special prosecutor Fitzgerald is very interested in gaining a better understanding of this baffling element of this most perplexing story.
A Final Note
The Society of Professional Journalists, of which I am a member, is planning to hand Judith Miller its prestigious First Amendment Award at its national convention on Tuesday.
I'd like to make a request of the SPJ: Suspend the award.
It may be that Judith Miller deserves it. But there are an awful lot of questions about whether she was working to protect the interests of a free press, or whether she was acting in her own interests, or in the interests of the government that had given her special access to its secrets.
I would request that SPJ investigate this case prior to committing itself to this award, possibly tainting it for all time. SPJ frequently launches investigations in the interests of journalism, for instance when university administrations crack down on campus reportage--and it doesn't always find in favor of reporters.
This is a case where that kind of investigation is more than merited.
My proposal? Hold off on giving this award to anyone until 2006. If Judy Miller is telling the truth, it is hard to imagine a more deserving case of protecting press freedoms will emerge next year. She could legitimately recieve the award--with all due apologies--in 2006.
If she is being evasive, if she is protecting the wrong interests in this case--comforting the comfortable rather than the afflicted--she doesn't deserve any reward.
-- Kevin Featherly
