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July 29, 2005
Judith Miller Bizarro Watch
There has been much pulling of hair and gnashing of teeth over the circumstances that recently sent NY Times bigfoot reporter Judith Miller to jail, where she currently sits.
Many on the left decried her incarceration after she failed to reveal her White House source in the ongoing Karl Rove/Valerie Plame investigation that churns onward. Reporters must be protected from being legally compelled to reveal sources, otherwise nobody would blow the whistle, is how the reasoning goes, and it's an absolutely legitimate argument.
Miller's actual involvement in the Plame case is still unclear, though it's tough to imagine a straight shooter like the independent investigator Fitzgerald locking her up without knowledge of something more than we know now.
Perhaps more important is Miller's role as a champion of the now-discredited Iraqi National Congress member Ahmed Chalabi in the run-up to the Iraq War, and as an "embedded" reporter with the U.S. Military's MET Alpha team's fruitless search for Iraqi WMD.
As one reexamines Miller's past and present behavior, the story moves from odd to totally bizarre. Just how deep her involvement goes in the emerging White House scandal is intriguing, to say the least.
Arianna Huffington reminds us of Miller's past in relation to her current predicament. She cites several pieces from Howard Kurtz, the Washington Post's media reporter (always fun to rag on the competition), and a long but utterly fascinating piece from the June 2004 New York Magazine by Franklin Foer -- read it.
What emerges is a driven, megalomaniacal reporter who clearly crossed line after ethical line in her quest to gain access and be first.
More curious is the Times' continued defense of Miller. Outrage at her recent jailing in the name of protecting a source is understandable, but lauding her as a "hero" given her litany of documented transgressions defies belief. So much for "liberal" bias.
Posted by houtopia at July 29, 2005 01:11 PM