All Miller, all the time

Well, it’s finally here. The New York Times, as promised, has published a long overview of Judith Miller’s role in the Valerie Plame investigation, as well as a first-person account by Miller of what she told the grand jury. At 5,900 and 3,600 words, respectively, we should learn much. We don’t. For now, a few observations:

1. Miller’s refusal to cooperate with her colleagues’ attempt to set the record straight is stunning. This paragraph from the main story says it all: “In two interviews, Ms. Miller generally would not discuss her interactions with editors, elaborate on the written account of her grand jury testimony or allow reporters to review her notes.”

2. The lead story is suffused with personal contempt for Miller. Her grotesquely wrong stories claiming that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was a veritable hotbed of unconventional weapons and terrorist gangs is fair game, as is the weirdly disturbing manner in which she conducted herself with Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby. But I’m not sure what to make of this:

TIMES: Inside the newsroom, she was a divisive figure. A few colleagues refused to work with her.

“Judy is a very intelligent, very pushy reporter,” said Stephen Engelberg, who was Ms. Miller’s editor at The Times for six years and is now a managing editor at The Oregonian in Portland. “Like a lot of investigative reporters, Judy benefits from having an editor who’s very interested and involved with what she’s doing.”

In the year after Mr. Engelberg left the paper in 2002, though, Ms. Miller operated with a degree of autonomy rare at The Times.

Douglas Frantz, who succeeded Mr. Engelberg as the investigative editor, said that Ms. Miller once called herself “Miss Run Amok.”

“I said, ‘What does that mean?’ ” said Mr. Frantz, who was recently appointed managing editor at The Los Angeles Times. “And she said, ‘I can do whatever I want.’ “

Ms. Miller said she remembered the remark only vaguely but must have meant it as a joke, adding, “I have strong elbows, but I’m not a dope.”

It’s one thing for New York magazine to mock your personal life, as happened last year. It’s quite another to be subjected to this kind of treatment in your own paper. I’m still thinking about whether it was warranted, but it doesn’t seem to me that relevance is firmly established.

3. The biggest anti-Miller bombshell comes from Miller herself:

MILLER: Mr. Fitzgerald [a reference to Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor] asked about a notation I made on the first page of my notes about this July 8 meeting, “Former Hill staffer.”

My recollection, I told him, was that Mr. Libby wanted to modify our prior understanding that I would attribute information from him to a “senior administration official.” When the subject turned to Mr. Wilson, Mr. Libby requested that he be identified only as a “former Hill staffer.” I agreed to the new ground rules because I knew that Mr. Libby had once worked on Capitol Hill.

That, folks, is close enough to a lie by any standard, and Miller was willing to go along with it – to deceive her readers on behalf of a source.

Howard Kurtz, in the Washington Post, blandly calls it a “journalistic issue” and claims the “former Hill staffer” description is “technically accurate.” I suspect Kurtz will do better than that once he’s had time to think about it.

In a fierce commentary for Editor & Publisher calling on the Times to fire Miller, Greg Mitchell has this to say about Libby’s request: “This was obviously to deflect attention from the Cheney office’s effort to hurt Wilson. [Bush critic Joseph Wilson is Plame’s husband, and a leading theory is that the White House blew Plame’s CIA cover in order to retaliate against Wilson.] Surely Judy wouldn’t go along with this? Alas, Miller admits, ‘I agreed to the new ground rules because I knew that Mr. Libby had once worked on Capitol Hill.'”

This much is sure: Miller admits she was willing to lie to her readers, and she seems even now not to realize how serious that is. Not good.

4. We still don’t know how Fitzgerald glommed on to Miller in the first place. Remember, Miller never actually wrote a story about the Plame matter, unlike Time magazine’s Matt Cooper and, of course, syndicated columnist Robert Novak. This doesn’t reduce her legal exposure, as some of the more reductive analyses would seem to suggest, but it certainly makes you wonder how Fitzgerald knew that she had received information about Plame. Perhaps Fitzgerald himself will tell us when he finally issues his report.

Finally: As you might expect, Jay Rosen is threatening to pull an all-nighter. If you’re staying up, tune in here.