No sympathy for this pair

"Even though I'm a tranquil guy now at this stage of my life, I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors."  - Old Man Bush 04/26/99

Gene Lyons had the occasion as a reporter following the Whitewater scandal to see up close and personal how the New York Times in particular got snookered by a bunch of segregationist yawhoos in Arkansas on the Clinton scandals.  So he isn't showing either a lot of sympathy for the Times or conformity to accepted press corps wisdom on the martyrdom of Judith Miller for the higher cause of protecting Karl Rove and/or other liars who helped to start a needless war.

In this column, he takes a few potshots at Miller and her paper: Journalists are citizens, too Daily Dunklin Democrat 07/20/05.

He reminds us of the significance of this case:

It was Wilson's July 6, 2003, New York Times op-ed article which forced the White House to admit that one of President Bush's key propaganda claims about Saddam Hussein's non-existent nukes was known to be false when he made it. Although certain of Wilson's claims proved less than 100 percent accurate--the crudely forged documents the White House relied upon weren't exposed as such until after he'd made his own report to the CIA--it's worth remembering that President Bush's statements proved to be 100 percent false.

Lyons takes a dim view of the Rove cover stories:

Meanwhile, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said rumors of Rove's involvement were "totally ridiculous." Rove himself denied knowing Valerie Plame's name, a cute equivocation that's completely beside the point. It's like trying to beat a DWI charge by saying you didn't know gin contained alcohol.

Referring to the memo that Rove may have seen that could have been his first source indicating that she held a sensitive position at the CIA, Lyons writes:

Only the claim about Plame's job turned out to be accurate. Rove's lawyer says his client didn't know it was classified information. If so, Rove's defense againsta potential treason charge wouldbe incompetence.

And he's not cutting the New York Times any breaks on this one:

In a haughty tone familiar to anybody who's ever caught the newspaper with its metaphorical pants down, the editors reminded the prosecutor that they're The New York Times, and he's not. "Mr. Fitzgerald's attempts to interfere with the rights of a free press while refusing to disclosehis reasons for doing so, when he can't even say whether a crime has been committed, have exhibited neither reverence nor cautious circumspection."

What rubbish. Reverence, indeed. (To be fair, it's an allusion to James Madison, not a demand to be worshipped.) In making its argument, the Times states it wouldn't print information that "would endanger lives and national security."

So here's my question: In a post-9/11 world, what information could possibly be more sensitive than the identity of a covert agent charged with preventing nuclear proliferation?

Answer: None.

Lyons doesn't comment on this aspect of it, but what did the Times think they were doing when they let Miller print those WMD stories?  Promoting the WMD fraud has certainly cost a lot of lives.  And it has made the US less safe than terrorism than we would have been without the Iraq War.  We can only wish they had developed these scruples when they still might have helped slow the rush to war - they were editorially opposed to the invasion - instead of feeding the war hysteria with Judith Miller's WMD stories that turned out to be bogus.  If she were an ethical reporter, she would have long since told her readers who was lying to her about those claims.  Confidentiality doesn't apply to blatant deception by your sources.

Noting Miller's very outspoken ideological position on Iraq and her role in promoting the phony WMD claims in the pages of the Times, Lyons writes:

What everybody's ignoring here is that [prosecutor Patrick] Fitzgerald already knows Miller's sources. That's not what he wants to ask her. His prosecution brief urging her incarceration stipulates that "her putative source has been identified and has waived confidentiality."

Even editor Bill Keller has conceded that there's no imaginable journalist's shield  law that would protect her. It's Miller's patriotic duty to talk.