Monday, October 17, 2005

Judy Bond?

Norman Solomon tiptoes up to a fairly obvious possibility about General Judy the First Amendment Martyr - that she was acting as a Pentagon intelligence agent in the runup to the Iraq War: Judith Miller, the Fourth Estate and the Warfare State CommonDreams.org 10/17/05.

It now seems that Miller functioned with more accountability to U.S. military intelligence officials than to New York Times editors. Most of the way through her article, Miller slipped in this sentence: "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." And, according to the same article, she ultimately told the grand jury that during a July 8, 2003, meeting with the vice president's chief of staff, Lewis Libby, "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."

Let's replay that one again in slow motion.

Judith Miller is a reporter for the New York Times. After the invasion, on assignment to cover a U.S. military unit as it searches for WMDs in Iraq, she's given "clearance" by the Pentagon "to see secret information" -- which she "was not permitted to discuss" with Times editors.

There's nothing wrong with this picture if Judith Miller is an intelligence operative for the U.S. government. But if she's supposed to be a journalist, this is a preposterous situation -- and the fact that the New York Times has tolerated it tells us a lot about that newspaper. (my emphasis)

Although it's not much more than a suspicion at this point, it is a possibility.

Now, wouldn't that be an interesting twist if Judy Miller were also an undercover intelligence operative?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It certainly seems like the Judi Miller story needs to be re-examined at the Times.  Frankly, I think she has to go, and the Times needs to consider whether others might not need to follow.

Neil

Anonymous said...

Something's rotten about this whole Judy business.  I think the *Times* has badly damaged their credibility.  They had a sorry record pimping the Whitewater non-story, the there was the Lee spy fiasco, then the Jason Blair business.  The Judy Miller/WMD/PlameGate saga is the worst so far. - Bruce