Treasongate (part 2): Media, a key player in the big story
Robert Novak, well known conservative newspaper columnist, television pundit and Washington insider, was the journalist who identified Plame as an undercover CIA officer in a column he published on July 14, 2004. At the time, Novak wrote that "two senior administration officials" leaked the Plame information to him. Later, he claimed on CNN that "nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this."
But last July, the New York Times reported that Novak had talked with Karl Rove, Bush's top advisor, as he prepared his Plame identity-blowing article. Rove then told investigators that he learned from Novak the name of Plame and then told the columnist, "I heard that, too."
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. The New York Times noted: "White House officials may argue that Rove's conversation with Novak did not amount to leaking the name of the agent. But to critics of Bush, this is splitting hairs, and Rove in effect confirmed her identity, even if he did not name her."
Rove later told Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper that Plame "officially works" for the CIA. Cooper co-authored an article with Novak in Time, indicating that government officials disclosed Plame's name.
Meanwhile, Judith Miller, while a New York Times reporter, didn't write an article about Plame, but she did talk to Libby about the CIA agent's identity. Miller wanted to keep Libby's identity anonymous, but Prosecutor Fitzgerald threatened her, as well as Cooper, with jail, if they didn't reveal their sources. Both Miller and Cooper appealed to the US Supreme Court, but it declined to hear the case.
Time finally decided to cooperate with Fitzgerald, and the magazine turned over relevant material to the special prosecutor, much to the consternation of many journalists who felt Time had caved in to government pressure. Miller still wanted to protect her sources, and she spent 85 days in jail until Libby gave her the go head to reveal the contents of their conversations. Miller, Cooper, and NBC's Tim Russert have testified before the grand jury about the Plame affair, but no one knows if Novak has because he's said nothing about it. Ironically, despite his key role in outing Plame's identity, little attention has been paid to Novak's connection in Treasongate.
In terms of the media players in the scandal, almost all the attention has focused on Miller, even though she did not write one word about Plame's identity. That is largely the result of Miller's controversial role in reporting on the events leading up to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. She was prominent during that period with her newspaper reports that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Her key source, it turned out, was Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi political magician who is now Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq. The Bush administration had no better source in the media than Miller to drum up support and help spin its rationale for going to war with Iraq, charge the journalist's critics.
In a New York Times article, Miller took cover: "I got it totally wrong," she conceded. "ÂThe analysts, the experts and the journalists who covered them, we are all wrong. If your sources are wrong, you are wrong."
Indeed. No reporter has got it so colossally wrong. And while Miller talks about "sources" she got it wrong on her Iraq coverage because she allowed one source, the slick Chalabi, to manipulate her in the direction he wanted her to move. That was toward Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haidari, a concrete contractor and Iraqi exile who claimed the dictator had stashed hundreds of tons of WMDs, including nuclear weapons. Al Haidari failed a CIA polygraph test, but Miller later insisted she knew nothing about that.
One would think that, given the stakes involved, Miller would have done more digging to document the truth about the WMD charge.
In her reporting, Miller seemed to forget that she was a member of the fourth estate, not the first, second, or third. During the Iraq War, Miller was embedded with a special military unit that was hunting for unconventional weapons. Remarkably, as part of her assignment, she was given clearance to see secret information.
During her grand jury testimony, Miller explained that during her (July 8, 2003) meeting with Libby, "I might have expressed frustration with Mr. Libby that I was not permitted to discuss with editors some of the more sensitive information."
Say what? Was Miller an intelligence agent or a newspaper reporter when she went on her embedded assignment? And she couldn't share information with her supervisors at the New York Times! How could they verify that what she was reporting was the truth and not government spin?
It is such revelations that have made Miller a hot button figure among US journalists. Some colleagues view her as hero for going to jail to protect her sources. Many others see her as a stooge of a vicious Bush administration campaign to smear Plame and her husband Joe Wilson.
To give one example of Miller as a flash-point in American journalism -- the Society of Professional Journalists awarded Miller a First Amendment prize at its recent convention in Las Vegas last October. Since then, two SPJ chapters, one in Northern California and the other in Florida, have criticised the Miller award. In an open letter, Peter Y. Sussman, a former president of the Northern California group, and Linda Jue, current vice president, wrote: "We hope to set the record straight on behalf of conscientious journalists around the country who support journalists' First Amendment responsibilities but are deeply troubled by Miller's earlier unprofessional conduct and SPJ's failure to fully apply its own Code of Ethics to this case."
The authors explained: "In this case, the message has been sullied by the ethical misdeeds of the messenger. We deplore the careless and deceptive use of confidential sources, as exemplified in Judith Miller's reporting. We urge journalists to hold each other accountable before the government claims even more sweeping rights to interfere in the editorial process, eroding still further this country's noble ideal of a free press."
The controversy surrounding Miller has thrown the New York Times, once arguably the world's best newspaper, into discord. On three days, from October 21-23, Miller was skewed by her employer. Times editor Bill Keller went on record stating that Miller "seems to have misled the newspaper." One New York Times columnist said it would be better if Miller did not come back to work, citing an October 16 story that revealed the "disturbing journalistic shortcomings (she) seems comfortable taking."
Miller finally decided to get out the kitchen. A few weeks ago, she quit the New York Times after 28 years of service. Rumors flew about the size of Miller's severance package. The feisty reporter has taken to the media trail and embarked on a "redemption tour" to defend herself against her critics.
Meanwhile, the media's connection to Treasongate gets more complicated as it evolves. As I write this column, Bob Woodward, America's most famous journalist, is now part of the Treasongate story. He claims that he learned about Plame's identity and her work at the CIA from a high ranking Bush administration official more than two years ago. Libby, Woodward said, was not his source.
The revelation, if true, would seem to contradict Fitzgerald's claim that Libby was the first to make known to reporters the information about Plame. Libby, however, is being charged with lying to a grand jury and the FBI and not with disclosing Plame's name. Unlike Miller, Woodward has never been embedded, but he, too, kept the information from his bosses at the Washington Post. His reason: "I wanted to protect my sources at all costs," Woodward told CNN.
Only in America, as boxing promoter Don King would put it. And some still wonder why the American press has such a credibility problem. Still, don't expect the Washington Post to pay a fat severance package to Woodward, its mega star, any time soon.