Sunday, October 16, 2005
Judy speaks
From Salon's War Room, 16 October 2005 -- they wade through the muck so we don't have to. Just amazing how the Times giddily descended to the level of the Cheney/Rove/Bush administration. Wotta bunch of mendicants....
"But Miller says that she told Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor investigating the leak, that Libby was not her source for Plame's identity, and that she cannot recall who the source was."
Only one word: Amazing, just amazing. Well, incredible and unbelieveable, too.
"'It is also difficult, more than two years later, to parse the meaning and context of phrases, of underlining and of parentheses' contained in the notebooks, Miller writes. 'As I told Mr. Fitzgerald, I simply could not recall where ["Valerie Flame"] came from, when I wrote it or why the name was misspelled.'"
Please. Maybe Judy also misremembered about the WMDs, that she was actually told there weren't any but, you know, in her excitement she misrecalled what she had been told.
"Miller recounts three interviews she conducted with Libby around the time Wilson began questioning the accuracy of the administration's claim that Saddam Hussein once sought uranium from Niger. The first of these interviews occurred on June 23, 2003, a few weeks before Wilson published his account of his trip to Africa, while the second and third took place in the days after Wilson went public. In these interviews, Libby, whom Miller calls 'a good-faith source who was usually straight with me,' defended Cheney from charges that he'd cooked up pre-war intelligence, and attempted to smear Wilson and his wife, whom Libby told Miller worked at the CIA."
Can Judy really believe this utter crap? "Good faith source??" An apparatchnik using an overly ambitious reporter for his own ends, not to, God forbid, get the truth to the public would, in a paper of record, be more accurate. I man, of course, a real newspaper of record, not the Schulzberger/Keller parody of one (BTW, Okrent established that the Times never claimed to be th newspaper of record, hence allowing Judy's water carrying for the administration.)
"At one point, Libby asked her to attribute any information that he gave her on Wilson to a 'former Hill staffer.' But if Libby told her anything about the White House, she was to identify Libby as a 'senior administration official.' Miller says she recognized why Libby wanted this arrangement: 'I assumed Mr. Libby did not want the White House to be seen as attacking Mr. Wilson.' Amazingly, she agreed to the arrangement -- a move that clearly violates a cardinal rule of journalistic ethics (correctly identifying your sources and their motives), and calls into question the high-minded rhetoric Miller has been spouting for more than a year.
But really, what's the problem how Libby's IDed? Whatever the ID, it's all lies.
"There is, indeed, much here to disappoint people who've long defended Miller as a martyr to press freedoms. Miller operated with unusual autonomy at the paper, essentially doing whatever she wanted on whatever story she chose, and keeping her editors in the dark about her actions. Though Miller told Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and Bill Keller, the paper's publisher and its executive editor, that her source was Libby, she gave them no indication of what he'd said to her. The paper reports: 'They did not review Ms. Miller's notes. Mr. Keller said he learned about the 'Valerie Flame' notation only this month. Mr. Sulzberger was told about it by Times reporters on Thursday.'"
Amzaing. Really, Pinch and Keller are simply unbelievable idiots. Certainly completely untrustworthy with the responsibility of producing quality journalism.
"Sulzberger says of Miller, 'This car had her hand on the wheel because she was the one at risk.'"
So Pinch put the Times at risk too. Suggestion: Now that Judy's all defended, how about, well, maybe her tint at the Times should, you know, end. I'm sure Fox News would hire her in a second, such a big name water carrier for the administration.
"For now, though, it's this statement from Sulzberger that we find most telling. The Times' reports make clear that Miller's hands weren't entirely clean in this affair; while she was not -- as some of her fiercest critics suggest -- the source of Plame's identity, she was certainly willing to curry favor with Wilson's critics in a way that does not speak well of her journalistic ethics."
Or the Times' competence or anything about the Times. Pinch's sole qualification when he took over was being his daddy's son and after all these years, that's still his only qualification. Like W., he's had disaster after disaster without a single success.
"That higher-ups at the Times were willing to let Miller dictate how the paper should handle its run-in with the prosecutor -- and, consequently, to let her affect how the paper covered Washington's biggest scandal in years -- suggest a profound misstep. The decision may ultimately have damaged the paper's reputation more deeply than the Jayson Blair affair."
This has not been an example of a need for a shield law.
Again, the Times is the most complete journalistic publication around. Factually trustworthy, it's not any longer. And yes, I guess I'd say Judy's more an example of that than the Jayson Blair farce. But both show the modern trend of just not editing any more, not supervising reporters whether supervision's needed or not.
And the consumers lose.
Of course, in Judy's case, the Times' approval was a big help in going into iraq -- another Shiite Islamic republic is desperately needed in the Middle East, especially one that, unlike Iran, is a true center for terrorists.
And this is what Pinch and Keller so desperately need to blindly -- blindly -- defend.
Did I say "amazing" yet?
And sad.
And the consumers are the biggest losers in this. Well, us and the Iraqis.
But I'm sure Pinch and Keller still don't get it.
"But Miller says that she told Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor investigating the leak, that Libby was not her source for Plame's identity, and that she cannot recall who the source was."
Only one word: Amazing, just amazing. Well, incredible and unbelieveable, too.
"'It is also difficult, more than two years later, to parse the meaning and context of phrases, of underlining and of parentheses' contained in the notebooks, Miller writes. 'As I told Mr. Fitzgerald, I simply could not recall where ["Valerie Flame"] came from, when I wrote it or why the name was misspelled.'"
Please. Maybe Judy also misremembered about the WMDs, that she was actually told there weren't any but, you know, in her excitement she misrecalled what she had been told.
"Miller recounts three interviews she conducted with Libby around the time Wilson began questioning the accuracy of the administration's claim that Saddam Hussein once sought uranium from Niger. The first of these interviews occurred on June 23, 2003, a few weeks before Wilson published his account of his trip to Africa, while the second and third took place in the days after Wilson went public. In these interviews, Libby, whom Miller calls 'a good-faith source who was usually straight with me,' defended Cheney from charges that he'd cooked up pre-war intelligence, and attempted to smear Wilson and his wife, whom Libby told Miller worked at the CIA."
Can Judy really believe this utter crap? "Good faith source??" An apparatchnik using an overly ambitious reporter for his own ends, not to, God forbid, get the truth to the public would, in a paper of record, be more accurate. I man, of course, a real newspaper of record, not the Schulzberger/Keller parody of one (BTW, Okrent established that the Times never claimed to be th newspaper of record, hence allowing Judy's water carrying for the administration.)
"At one point, Libby asked her to attribute any information that he gave her on Wilson to a 'former Hill staffer.' But if Libby told her anything about the White House, she was to identify Libby as a 'senior administration official.' Miller says she recognized why Libby wanted this arrangement: 'I assumed Mr. Libby did not want the White House to be seen as attacking Mr. Wilson.' Amazingly, she agreed to the arrangement -- a move that clearly violates a cardinal rule of journalistic ethics (correctly identifying your sources and their motives), and calls into question the high-minded rhetoric Miller has been spouting for more than a year.
But really, what's the problem how Libby's IDed? Whatever the ID, it's all lies.
"There is, indeed, much here to disappoint people who've long defended Miller as a martyr to press freedoms. Miller operated with unusual autonomy at the paper, essentially doing whatever she wanted on whatever story she chose, and keeping her editors in the dark about her actions. Though Miller told Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and Bill Keller, the paper's publisher and its executive editor, that her source was Libby, she gave them no indication of what he'd said to her. The paper reports: 'They did not review Ms. Miller's notes. Mr. Keller said he learned about the 'Valerie Flame' notation only this month. Mr. Sulzberger was told about it by Times reporters on Thursday.'"
Amzaing. Really, Pinch and Keller are simply unbelievable idiots. Certainly completely untrustworthy with the responsibility of producing quality journalism.
"Sulzberger says of Miller, 'This car had her hand on the wheel because she was the one at risk.'"
So Pinch put the Times at risk too. Suggestion: Now that Judy's all defended, how about, well, maybe her tint at the Times should, you know, end. I'm sure Fox News would hire her in a second, such a big name water carrier for the administration.
"For now, though, it's this statement from Sulzberger that we find most telling. The Times' reports make clear that Miller's hands weren't entirely clean in this affair; while she was not -- as some of her fiercest critics suggest -- the source of Plame's identity, she was certainly willing to curry favor with Wilson's critics in a way that does not speak well of her journalistic ethics."
Or the Times' competence or anything about the Times. Pinch's sole qualification when he took over was being his daddy's son and after all these years, that's still his only qualification. Like W., he's had disaster after disaster without a single success.
"That higher-ups at the Times were willing to let Miller dictate how the paper should handle its run-in with the prosecutor -- and, consequently, to let her affect how the paper covered Washington's biggest scandal in years -- suggest a profound misstep. The decision may ultimately have damaged the paper's reputation more deeply than the Jayson Blair affair."
This has not been an example of a need for a shield law.
Again, the Times is the most complete journalistic publication around. Factually trustworthy, it's not any longer. And yes, I guess I'd say Judy's more an example of that than the Jayson Blair farce. But both show the modern trend of just not editing any more, not supervising reporters whether supervision's needed or not.
And the consumers lose.
Of course, in Judy's case, the Times' approval was a big help in going into iraq -- another Shiite Islamic republic is desperately needed in the Middle East, especially one that, unlike Iran, is a true center for terrorists.
And this is what Pinch and Keller so desperately need to blindly -- blindly -- defend.
Did I say "amazing" yet?
And sad.
And the consumers are the biggest losers in this. Well, us and the Iraqis.
But I'm sure Pinch and Keller still don't get it.
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