Miller Case Worst than Originally Thought


Earlier, I wrote that New York Times reporter Judith Miller’s case uncovered one of Washington’s worst kept secrets – the tendency of reporters to protect high-ranking government sources. Her subsequent report in the New York Times shows that I understated the problem.

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting ( http://www.fair.org/) has posted an analysis of Miller’s transgressions under the headline, “Miller’s Tale – Can the Reporter – or the New York Times – be trusted.”

FAIR observes, “Miller was plainly deceptive in her dealings with newsroom colleagues. The Times reported that once it became known at least six Washington journalists had talked to White House officials about Wilson’s CIA identity, Washington bureau chief Philip Taubman asked Miller if she was one of those journalists. Miller denied it.

“Miller also claimed to have ‘made a strong recommendation’ to her editor about doing a story about Wilson’s CIA role, but was told no. The Times’ Washington bureau chief at the time, Jill Abramson, said 'Ms. Miller never made any such recommendation.’ The article does not follow up on this remarkable contradiction, but it seems likely that if any of Miller’s editors had received such a suggestion, they would have come forward to back up her story.”

Miller’s least defensible behavior involves her willingness to not only lie about the identity of Lewis “Scooter Libby," Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, but to agree to deliberately mislead her readers.

FAIR reports, “During the course of one of her interviews with Libby, Miller revealed that she agreed to change his identification from ‘senior administration official’ to ‘former Hill staffer.’ Miller reported that she ‘agreed to the new ground rules because I knew that Mr. Libby had once worked on Capitol Hill.’ He did not explain why he made this request, but Miller ‘assumed Mr. Libby did not want the White House to be seen as attacking Mr. Wilson.’ This passage is extremely incriminating; not only does she acknowledge that she was willing to cooperate with a source to mislead readers, but she admits that the purpose of this deception was to conceal the White House’s attack on a critic…”