NOW THAT Judy Miller has finished testifying, finished spinning for the cameras on the courthouse steps, finished hugging her dog and finished eating that special meal she wanted her husband to prepare, she needs to do what Time reporter Matt Cooper did and immediately publish a full and truthful account of her involvement in Plamegate.
Because what she -- and the New York Times' publisher and editor -- have said so far just doesn't add up.
The story being pitched to the public -- that Miller was a heroic, principled martyr who sacrificed her freedom in the name of journalistic integrity, then fulfilled her "civic duty" after she "finally received a direct and uncoerced waiver" from her source -- is laughable.
Indeed, it's already been greeted skeptically by 1) my increasingly frustrated sources at the Times; 2) a chorus of voices in the blogosphere, and 3) (and much more significantly) Joseph Tate, Scooter Libby's lawyer, who told the Washington Post that he informed Miller's attorney, Floyd Abrams, a year ago that Libby's waiver "was voluntary and that Miller was free to testify."
It defies credulity for Miller and the Times to keep insisting that Libby's earlier waiver was coerced when Libby says that it wasn't. I don't have much good to say about the vice president's chief of staff, but I don't doubt that he knows the difference between being coerced and acting on his own free will. How deep is the Times' contempt for its readers that it really thinks they'll buy the "Oh, Judy finally has the right waiver" line?
After appearing in front of the grand jury Friday, Miller was asked to describe her role in the case. "I was a journalist doing my job," she said.
But her role is actually much, much more complicated than that. Any discussion of Miller's actions in Plamegate cannot leave out the key part she played in cheerleading for the invasion of Iraq and in hyping the WMD threat. Re-reading some of her prewar reporting today, it's hard not to be stunned by just how inaccurate and pumped up it turned out to be.
During her incarceration, a Times spokesperson described Miller as "an intrepid, principled and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has provided our readers with thorough and comprehensive reporting throughout her career." But a "thorough and comprehensive" look at Miller's career reveals repeated examples of egregious reporting, a startling lack of objectivity, too-close-for-comfort relationships with dubious sources ... and a penchant for far-from-thorough and far-from-comprehensive coverage.
