Janie's got a gun and Judy's got a blog
Thu Nov 10, 2005 at 10:55:01 AM PDT
Janie's got a gun
Janie's got a gun
Her dog day's just begun
Now everybody is on the run
Oh lordy, Judith Miller has a blog and she's not afraid to use it.
Now unbound by her departure from the NYT, does she plunge head first into pre-war intelligence and her part in the misreporting of that intelligence which helped to lead us into war? Of course not. More on the flip...
This blog is about Judy. Judy the victim. Judy the misunderstood. Judy the defender of journalistic standards and the First Amendment. Judy, Judy, Judy. Her name appears so often throughout the blog it makes your head spin.
Jane Hamsher at firedoglake does a nice job of deconstructing Judy's blog posting of her NYT farewell in It's the Judy Miller Show.
Then there's the response Miller posted on her blog in response to Maureen Dowd's beautiful smackdown which contains some real gems.
From Miller's letter to Dowd
To recap our Sunday story, Phil asked a group of reporters in the fall of 2003 whether we thought any of us had been targeted by the Administration as part of a deliberate campaign to put out information about Wilson's wife. I was unaware that any such campaign existed, and if it did, that I did not think that I had been a target of it. That is one of the key issues that the special prosecutor has been trying to resolve for the past two years.
Several paragraphs later
Four, I did urge a senior editor to let me pursue a story on Wilson/Plame. As I told the grand jury under oath, I had proposed soon after my breakfast meeting with Libby on July 8th that the paper try to find out whether what Libby was saying was true or whether it was a potential smear of a whistleblower. I said I had felt strongly that because Joe Wilson's op-ed column had appeared in our paper, we had a particular obligation to do so. I never identified the editor to the grand jury or publicly, since it involved internal NYTimes decisions. But since you did, yes, the editor was Jill Abramson. Obviously, Jill and I have different memories of what happened during that turbulent period at the paper. I gave my recollection under oath.
Hmmm, it seems that Judy could use an editor. She also explains to Maureen Dowd in more detail than than I've seen previously published, how she found the notebook which references the June meeting with Libby. Where was it? Why under her desk of course. Conveniently found while she was on the phone with her lawyer. But according to Miller it had nothing at all to do with the fact that Fitzgerald was questioning her about a June meeting with Libby.
It is true that the special prosecutor asked about whether I had had an earlier meeting with Mr. Libby in June. But as I testified, the discovery of the notebook was prompted by an entirely different matter the special prosecutor had raised. Once again, I found the notebook, which was not covered by the subpoena, as I was searching for additional notes on where I was when I conducted my July 12th interview with Libby. As I told Calame, "Under oath, I had promised the special counsel I would search for any additional notes I might have relevant to Mr. Libby and Plame/Wilson that would clarify whether the notes had been taken in a taxi in D.C. or at my home in Sag Harbor. On my first evening back at the Times while I was on the phone with my lawyer, Bob Bennett, I came upon the notebook as I was looking through a shopping bag filled with notebooks kept under my computer beneath my desk. I discovered that it contained an interview in June with Mr. Libby...I told Bob Bennett what I had found, and he immediately informed the special prosecutor."
Also posted is Judy's whining response to NYT public editor Byron Calame's essay on Judy's journalistic standards.
While you posted Bill Keller's sanitized, post-lawyered version of the ugly, inaccurate memo to the staff he circulated Friday, which accused me of "misleading" an editor and being "entangled" with I. Lewis Libby, you declined to post the answers I sent you to six questions that we touched on during our interview Thursday. Had you done so, readers could have made their own assessment of my conduct in what you headlined as "the Miller mess."
Judy posts the questions and answers below her letter to Calame. Now, back to the whining letter because here Judy becomes positively shrill and starts naming names.
You chose to believe Jill Abramson when she asserted that I had never asked her to pursue the tip I had gotten about Joe Wilson's trip to Niger and his wife's employment at the C.I.A. Now I ask you: Why would I -- the supposedly pushiest, most competitive reporter on the planet -- not have pushed to pursue a tantalizing tip like this?
And apparantly, NYT editors were remiss when they didn't crawl under Judy's desk and search her through her notebooks.
I fail to see why I am responsible for my editors' alleged failure to do some "digging" into my confidential sources and the notebooks. From the start, the legal team that the Times provided me knew who my source was and had access to my notes. I never refused to answer questions or provide any information they requested.
Well, they didn't have access to all the notes now did they. Still, Judy insists it's all the fault of the NYT.
Your essay clearly implies that the Times and I did something wrong in waging a battle that we did not choose. I strongly disagree. What did I do wrong?
Let me count the ways.
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