titanic and iceberg

The Titanic has hit an iceberg.

Judith Miller and her lawyers, in concocting this self-serving excercise in elision and obfuscation, and the editors of the New York Times, in delivering it to their readers, have sent a clear message to the broader public: find a life raft, quick.

A newspaper has no higher obligation to its readers than the timely reporting of the truth. The New York Times just officially said goodbye to all that. Whether we look at Miller's hiding behing her notes, her hiding of her notes, her obfuscation of her sources even as she purported to reveal one, or that misspelled name...Valerie Flame...written on a note pad, but, essentially, according to Miller, signifying nothing...there could hardly be a more sordid or less satisfying outcome to the "paper of record" coming clean. If this is the best they have to offer, and indeed, that seems to be the case, their readers shouldn't be the only ones looking to the life boats.

"the notes"

Typically, a reporter's notes form the backbone of his or her reporting. Journalists investigate, they report...and the first step of that process is inquiry and the gathering of information, in the form of notes and recordings, to be considered for the public record. That's all been turned on its head.

Judith Miller, who we must assume hid some of these notes from Patrick Fitzgerald, is now, in turn, hiding behind them and playing an elaborate charade of memory games around them. Her notes, rather than serving her memory, now have a mysterious power over the suddenly senile reporter who wrote them:

"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

And this passage later in the piece:

"And as I told the grand jury, I did not recall - and my interview notes do not show - that Mr. Libby suggested that Ms. Plame had helped arrange her husband's trip to Niger. My notes do suggest that our conversation about Ms. Plame was brief."

These passages represent a low point in journalism at the New York Times. I doubt that Miller alone wrote them. They are pure legalese. They read like the work of an attorney, and surely were vetted or reworded by one. What they mean, in no uncertain terms, is that Judith Miller's candor with the reading public will be limited strictly to written evidence, or testimony about it, that has been presented before a grand jury and vetted by her lawyers, no more, and no less...even to the point of straining credulity:

"It is also difficult, more than two years later, to parse the meaning and context of phrases, of underlining and of parentheses. On one page of my interview notes, for example, I wrote the name "Valerie Flame." Yet, as I told Mr. Fitzgerald, I simply could not recall where that came from, when I wrote it or why the name was misspelled."

She wrote those notes, She did that reporting. She would have known, the moment Robert Novak's article appeared, and certainly after David Corn speculated about the legal issues involved, exactly how important those notes would be. But that means nothing here. Judith Miller has essentially "forgotten" everything about this story that isn't in her notes. How convenient for her and whatever agenda she serves. How inconvenient for her readers and the truth...and how significant for our judgments of the course of action chosen by the New York Times these last years.

the "sources"

Ms. Miller has always been clear that "protecting her sources" was her paramount concern. We've been given no information to make a good judgment about that. She may simply be protecting herself and her own interests. (Just as we now learn Bill Keller protected Miller and her source from New York Times reporters investigating this story.) Upon Miller's release from prison, the NYT reported crisply:

"Ms. Miller said she believed the agreement between her lawyers and Mr. Fitzgerald "satisfies my obligation as a reporter to keep faith with my sources." She added: "I went to jail to preserve the time-honored principle that a journalist must respect a promise not to reveal the identity of a confidential source. I chose to take the consequences - 85 days in prison - rather than violate that promise. The principle was more important to uphold than my personal freedom. "

We are being asked to believe both that Miller "forgot" the existence of some critical notes...including those that mention Plame...and then, once compelled to testify about those notes in her second trip to the grand jury, that Miller "forgot" who was the source of that name in the first place. We're being asked to believe this even though Miller had been using the rationale of "protecting her source" with the legal system and her editors all along, and, as we are told, had conveyed that name to her editor and lawyer. That's more than extremely convenient, it defies common sense.

Not only does the phrase "I can't recall" represent classic legal weasel words...(and not words we are used to hearing repeatedly from New York Times reporters discussing a major story)...but, essentially, Judith Miller is saying she went to jail to protect a source whose name she now effectively chooses not to remember.

Of course, Scooter Libby could easily be both Miller's source for Valerie Plame's name and the person she named as her own source to her lawyer and editor. It could also be someone else. We don't know. And from today's reporting, unlike Matthew Cooper's straightforward account, we can't know. That seems to be a situation the New York Times is resigned to leaving us with. That is deeply troubling and at the core of this story.

Judith Miller's account of her testimony reads as simply the legal limits of her obligation to tell the truth to a grand jury empanelled to decide if crimes where committed by members of our government. The New York Times, in allowing Miller to merely repeat this limited strategy, in effect, has endorsed it. That endorsement means, in my view, that the New York Times is vouching for the "properness" of protecting Miller's sources and Miller herself...currently a very questionable and troubling proposition. What if Bolton or Cheney or Hadley or Libby is shown to have been gaming the system and to have been a source of Millers? (Judith Milller certainly indicates that Libby was attempting to do just that.)

Reading these two articles, we have no clearer picture of Judith Miller, her testimony, and her sources than we did going in. In fact, I would argue, in some ways we know less. (The Times did not even report on the biggest internal story here...the discovery of the notebook with Plame's name, and the motivation of Miller's second go round of testimony.) The waters have been muddied, perhaps deliberately so, and no amount of "extra" information makes up for that extraordinary lack of frankness and clarity. That's not reporting, and it's not the journalism we deserve from the Times.

In essence, Miller is now herself more of a discredited source in this story...a player in it with her own motivations and defense counsel...than she is a journalist worthy of our trust. It is not at all clear that the New York Times is currently equipped to deal with that. Common sense tell us that ethical journalists should have nothing to hide, even from sources intent on gaming the system. That is not the terrain we are operating on here.

"Valerie Flame"

"Mr. Fitzgerald asked me about another entry in my notebook, where I had written the words "Valerie Flame," clearly a reference to Ms. Plame. Mr. Fitzgerald wanted to know whether the entry was based on my conversations with Mr. Libby. I said I didn't think so. I said I believed the information came from another source, whom I could not recall.

Mr. Fitzgerald asked if I could recall discussing the Wilson-Plame connection with other sources. I said I had, though I could not recall any by name or when those conversations occurred."

I've reread the passage where this occurs in Miller's account...it is listed beneath the heading "The Second Libby Meeting"...but is not clearly placed on July 8th. Greg Mitchell's E+P article, linked above, notes that the name was in the notes that were "discovered" later, and that the date of her making that note is not clear at all.

It occurs to me that that misspelled name will be quite important going forward. It stands out. Just as "the notes" have become this fetishized agent of history independent of their author's failing memory...I think what the notes will boil down to is that scribbled name. Not "Wilson's wife" or "Wife works and Winpac"...but Valerie Flame. That stands out.

Intelligent people do all sorts of things. Sometimes the smartest folks come to rely on their wits and brain power to get them out of fixes. Scribble this....fail to recall that. Now, this brilliant woman who was the top reporter for one the great newspapers of the world is forgetting more than Ronald Reagan during Iran Contra when he'd begun to enter the fog of Alzheimer's.

That doesn't cut it. (Even so, seeing that name on the page must give a rapid heartbeat. Would Judith Miller pass a lie detector test?...I doubt it.) You see, if we go back to the dates in question, she is asking us to believe that when Novak's article appeared mentioning Valerie Plame on July 14th that she didn't look at her notes from...that week..or, at the most, two weeks earlier? Right.

There's much to write about this sordid episode. (Including the mention, again, of the Vice President here.) One thing that occurs to me is that Special Prosecutors are not in the business of pursuing the conduct of the fourth estate. Even if Judith Miller lied her ass off, it's not really the business of the law to investigate reporters doing their job. The special prosecutor's duty is to ascertain if crimes were committed by our government. The Judith Miller affair is something that's between the New York Times and its readers.

The sound you hear. Of metal bending and creaking...of water flooding into the steerage...is the sound of something unsinkable foundering...and the unthinkable...that the New York Times would be played like a Times Square mark in a game of three-card monte ...repeatedly...is there for all the world to see. Judith Miller's article is a disgrace. The fact that no one at the Times had the ability to call her on that directly is even more disgraceful.

All bets are off. This is the best the New York Times had to offer.

Judith Miller is a con. The NYT, in addition to being her mark, got played to be her shill, apparently, without even knowing it.

If you ask me, that metallic groan you hear tonight is the sound of the Titanic struggling in deep water.

The iceberg, now visible as merely the Miller brouhaha, is that much larger, and more important, story...of Iraq, WMD, the Plame leak, the dealings of the White House Iraq Group and their possible involvement in a cover up...a story that the New York Times has lost all credibility in covering.

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