Dereliction Of Judy

The whole Judith Miller/Valerie Plame/Karl Rove/Scooter Libby affair keeps getting curiouser and curiouser. I have written before on this subject, and stated that while outing a covert agent for political purposes is a reprehensible thing to do, this scandal is of little interest to me except in the way it ties into the whole deception of the case for war in Iraq. That's where the Judith Miller portion of this story comes in.

Arianna Huffington blogged about how Miller's colleagues have been suspicious of her journalistic style for at least five years. Craig Pyes, himself a Pulitzer Prize winner, wrote a December 2000 memo in which he stated that he no longer wished to collaborate with Miller. Among other things, Pyes wrote, "She has turned in a draft of a story of a collective enterprise that is little more than dictation from government sources over several days, filled with unproven assertions and factual inaccuracies." Apparently old habits die hard. We now know that the bulk of what Miller wrote about WMD in the run-up to the war was bogus. But the New York Times executives seemed to care little about that, since they could wear their paper's hawkish position as a badge of honour. "[Executive Editor] Howell Raines was thrilled with Judy's WMD coverage, however credulous, because it allowed the Times to slough off the liberal label and present themselves as born again tough hawks -- perfect for the post-9/11 zeitgeist."

The Plame leak investigation has exposed that Miller was quite cozy with several administration officials. But an ambiguity has arisen over the source of Plame's identity. Within Miller's notes of a meeting with Libby, the name "Valerie Flame" (sic) is written down. And yet, Miller claims that she did not get that name from Libby and, further, she does not remember who she got it from. Yeah, right. She's only a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, so why should we be so picky about those small details? Don't we all go to jail over things we can't remember? But all of this falls into the pattern of the apparent symbiotic relationship between Miller and the Bush administration. She can report anything she feels will push the cause, and the administration can cite information published in the Paper of Record to legitimize their case. When the reporting turns out to be false, there is plausible deniability on the part of both the administration and Miller as to who was the original source of the flawed information. (Eric Alterman has an interesting take on all of this too. ) And this is what apparently happened with the Plame leak as well.

My hunch is that some deal will be struck, or some poor low level schlemazel will take the fall (a la Lynndie England) and everyone will wash their hands clean of this situation, without the big picture being exposed. Judy Miller will publish a book about her whole experience, and it will somehow find its way into the non-fiction section. And we will all live happily ever after, except for democracy and the integrity of the fourth estate.