MediaBloodhound

Journalist WHIGs Out

“If your sources are wrong, you are wrong.”
- Judy Miller

Amid all the speculation swirling around Special Councel Patrick J. Fitzgerald’s investigation, one revelation has received especially short shrift from the mainstream media: Judy Miller’s DoD security clearance issued by the Pentagon.

In Miller’s NY Times article where she purported to finally come clean about her involvement in the Plame case, she said, “During the Iraq war, the Pentagon had given me clearance to see secret information as part of my assignment ‘embedded’ with a special military unit hunting for unconventional weapons.” She went on to say, “I told Mr. Fitzgerald that Mr. Libby might have thought I still had security clearance, given my special embedded status in Iraq. At the same time, I told the grand jury I thought that at our July 8 meeting I might have expressed frustration to Mr. Libby that I was not permitted to discuss with editors some of the more sensitive information about Iraq.”

First, it’s important to distinguish the difference between signing a non-disclosure form, which retains a journalist’s ability to report the facts but without giving away sensitive national security information, like, say, announcing to the world where our troops are strategically located (good one, Geraldo). Being issued a national security clearance, however, would prevent a journalist, through a legally binding contract, from reporting any information the government doesn’t want the public to know.

Pravda, American style.

As retired CBS national security correspondent Bill Lynch said in an open letter: “This is as close as one can get to government licensing of journalists," adding, "if any official had ever offered me a security clearance, my instincts would have sent me running. I am gravely disappointed Ms. Miller did not do likewise.”

The NY Times public editor (a.k.a. ombudsman) Byron Calame was one of the only reporters in the mainstream media to cite this troubling alliance, which would not only preclude Miller from reporting certain information without facing criminal charges, but also from sharing such information with her editors who might attempt to verify her sources.

Miller, in an attempt to rebut Calame’s comments and seemingly flailing to save her name now that her bush league WMD reporting has boomeranged as she had never imagined, said in the Sunday Times, “I fail to see why I am responsible for my editors’ alleged failure to do some ‘digging’ into my confidential sources and the notebooks.” Yet she’s already admitted her security clearance caused her to withhold information from her editors.

It’s beginning to make sense why “Miss Run Amok,” Miller’s self-proclaimed title referring to her ability at the Times to work with little or no editorial oversight, may have had more reason to support Bush Administration claims of WMD running up to the war. Why her reporting on WMD - almost solely relying on Pentagon sources and Iraqi defectors and exiles, including Ahmad Chalabi, a convicted criminal and neocon stooge who had hoped land a position in the reconstructed Iraqi government – was, as Maureen Dowd and many others have noted, more stenography than investigative journalism.

Many questions surrounding this issue demand answers. Questions that speak to the heart of a democracy’s ability to sustain itself, and to maintain a separation between the government and the press. What's the exact nature of Judy Miller’s security clearance, does she still hold it, and what's the name of the person who issued it – someone in the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), perhaps? Were any of her superiors at the Times fully aware of this security clearance? And what should determine whether or not Miller is allowed to set foot in a newsroom again: did she knowingly allow this administration to feed her false information to help sell the war in Iraq, and did she omit pertinent facts solely because she was contractually bound by the government to do so?

Another comment by Bill Lynch sums up both Miller’s monumental hypocrisy as well as why we seem to be only scratching the surface of this whole sordid mess: “It is all the more puzzling that a reporter who as a matter of principle would sacrifice 85 days of her freedom to protect a source would so willingly agree to be officially muzzled and thereby deny potentially valuable information to the readers whose right to be informed she claims to value so highly.”

I wonder what Judy’s sources are telling her now.

Hearts of Darkness

There is an art to cronyism.

Overplay your hand and you could wind up with a Michael Brown situation. Underplay and it might lead to an outcry from within to purge the incompetents. On the whole, though, no one does six-degrees (or less) of separation better than the Bush Administration. Of course, such brazen cronyism demands a relatively complicit mainstream media.

Take Bush’s latest nominee for the Supreme Court, Harriet Miers. First, no one can argue her intelligence. In this respect, she is the anti-Michael Brown. She appears to have attained her achievements - prior to her association with Bush - on the merit of her skills and perseverance. For a crony of this White House, that is impressive.

Yet the fact remains she is a crony, deeply embedded in this administration and creepily loyal to our President. She has a record of accomplishment but no public record on where she stands on anything: no legal articles penned and, since she has never been a judge before, no decisions that might point to this.

The mainstream media would have you believe, then, there’s no way of gauging her views. At the same time, and similar to the majority of weak-willed Democrats, they highlight Harriet’s personal qualities and accomplishments but pay little attention to items allowing one to draw sensible conclusions.

Here is some of what we know of her association with the President: Miers first worked for Bush as his staff lawyer when he ran for governor of Texas in 1993, where she helped hide his drunk driving arrest and his National Guard service. Next, she was appointed by Governor Bush to the Texas State Lottery Commission, which – the NY Times (on its front page) and the rest of the mainstream press, initially blindly parroting the White House’s assessment - said “she helped clean up.” (Subsequent reports, one buried on page A20 of the NY Times, suggest that “cleaning up” might have entailed firing anyone investigating improprieties between former GTech lobbyist Ben Barnes and the Lottery Commission; Barnes is the man who allegedly pulled strings so George could fly airplanes in the Texas National Guard rather than in Vietnam.) Miers went on, successively, to become White House Staff Secretary, Deputy White House Chief of Staff and, since the beginning of this year, White House Counsel. Yes, the President’s very own personal lawyer.

Her views on abortion? By mid-life, Harriet, like George, appointed Jesus her Savior-in-Chief and became a born-again evangelical Christian. Apparently, this altered her views on a woman’s right to choose. The Washington Post reported that she belongs to the Valley View Christian Church in Dallas, “where anti-abortion literature is sometimes distributed” and where she’s also a member of their missions committee, which opposes legalized abortion. According to longtime friend Texas Supreme Court Justice Nathan Hecht, Miers has attended at least three anti-abortion rallies since the 1990s. She is also on record as having contributed to Texans for Life. Finally, during her tenure as President of the Texas Bar Association, Miers attempted to persuade the American Bar Association to abandon their support for Roe v. Wade.

Adding insult to injury on the subject of cronyism, the NY Times reported in blasé fashion that Miers enjoys the “occasional Washington girls’ nights out with the likes of Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and former Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman.” But is there any evidence her judgment might being clouded by her close ties to this administration? Former White House speechwriter and conservative commentator David Frum reported on his blog that Miers once told him that George was “the most brilliant man she knew.”

Connecting these dots is not exactly mapping the human genome. But you might think so from the White House press corps and the rest of the mainstream media.

While White House Press Secretary (and Milton of “Office Space” impersonator) Scott McClellan danced around the issue on where Miers stands, the toughest line of questioning the press corps could muster was:

Q: Well, people like Howard Dean, are asking - they’re, like, the jury is still out because they want to know what her opinions are. What would you say to Howard Dean, beyond the spinnage you’re giving now, to give something specific -

MR. McCLELLAN: I’m sorry, beyond what?

Q: The spin -

MR. McCLELLAN: I’m giving the facts.

Q: No, you’re not answering directly, Scott.

MR. McCLELLAN: Actually, I’m giving the facts, April.

Q: No, you’re not answering directly, Scott, about her opinion.

MR. McCLELLAN: Actually, I’m giving the facts. There’s some spin going on from you. (Laughter.)

Q: Okay, so anyway - okay, thank you. So, anyway, on another subject -

McClellan plays a childhood game of “No I’m not, you are!” and this lame stonewalling tactic suffices. Terry Moran of ABC News had a similar fruitless, though even less vigorous, exchange with McClellan before shaking his head like a kid whose parent refused to deliver a reason why he can’t go out and play. Couldn’t one member of the White House press corps ask a simple pointed question, one many Americans were probably thinking, like, uh: Scott, on the heels of the enormous price paid for the President appointing a past crony to a critical position, shouldn’t the onus be on the administration to not only pick the right person but to go out of its way to avoid such blatant cronyism?

By week’s end, the national discourse on Miers had degenerated to the point where the story was no longer will she be objective enough, but rather will she be far enough to the right to satisfy the neo-cons and pro-life lobbyists of the Republican Party. Another baton pass to the media that reeks of Karl Rove. And, like mice to cheese, they and the Democrats pounced on it: the talk shows were jammed with a surreal display of conservatives debating each other over Miers’ right-wing credentials, while members of the party of FDR were lining up to defend the right of the President’s personal lawyer to seek the highest court in the land.

In defending her nomination, Bush said of Miers, “I know her. I know her heart.” He added, “She is not going to change.” So let’s see, her decisions will be ruled by her heart and she will be closed to other views. No matter what unforeseen circumstance presents itself.

Sound familiar?