G.I JUDY

SHE HAD HER OWN UNIFORM She had a Top Secret Security Clearance. [story]  She was a “reporter.”  Her career was wounded when her pen and Iraq both exploded alongside an election.  Judith Miller: The Search for WTF continues.

SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY lying down with the dogs of war, censor or sensibility: how could Judith Miller do her job in such an Iraqi desert, where deception lies not in front but within?

COMING HOME the war continued.  PTSD, Post Tikrit Stress Syndrome, took over.  Miller made the madness her friend, her ally.  For some the war never ends.  Officials at the Veterans of Foreign Reporting hospital said they could not comment on Miller’s particular case.  The sign for the hospital was being taken down due to slashed funding of benefits by the Bush administration.

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[Raw Story] Two senior Democrats have called on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to explain an apparent "top secret" clearance given to New York Times reporter Judith Miller while she was on the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, RAW STORY has learned.

The best explanation of Miller's access comes from a New York Magazine article from 2004, which was highlighted on Talking Points Memo today.

THE HERETIK NOTES up to now Rumsfeld is one of the few Bush Administration officials who has not had to comment on Miller’s dubious doings.  Perhaps now he will be caught in the vortex of the swirling sandstorm, or is that sh*storm?

THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS [E&P] E&P columnist William E. Jackson Jr., had first raised this issue in a 2003 column published on E&P's Web site. On Sunday, former CBS national security correspondent Bill Lynch posted his views in a long letter about it at the Romenesko site at poynter.org. Here is the letter:

There is one enormous journalism scandal hidden in Judith Miller's Oct. 16th first person article about the (perhaps lesser) CIA leak scandal. And that is Ms. Miller's revelation that she was granted a DoD security clearance while embedded with the WMD search team in Iraq in 2003.

This is as close as one can get to government licensing of journalists and the New York Times (if it knew) should never have allowed her to become so compromised.

THE HERETIK LAMENTS Miller was given a license to kill news that didn’t fit her story. Or was it the government’s story?  And what will be the Times’s story as more of the back story of Miller comes out?  The editors, including Bill Come Lately Keller, will be taking a killer tanning before they find their permanent place in the sun.

A BEAUTIFUL MIND [Reddhedd /Firedog Lake]  And it looks like Judy Miller didn't really have any super secret clearance for herself after all. According to the Guardian (who got a quote from Pentagon Spokesman Bryan Whitman which essentially details exactly what someone has to go through to get clearance and his snide tone indicates that Judy did no such thing).

NBC came to the same conclusion on La Vida Judy, with Jim Miklaszewski reporting that:

Officials from the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon say they have no idea what New York Times reporter Judith Miller was talking about when she claimed to have been given a "security clearance" while she was embedded with a U.S. Army unit in Iraq in 2003.

Ouch -- "no idea." Not even a "let me check on that and get back to you." Double ouch. Although if Judy were to have been given clearance and then revealed classified information she obtained through her clearance access...well, maybe she'd better put Bob Bennett on speed dial.

THE HERETIK ASKS if we are now to believe Miller made this all up?  Is the Security Clearance Issue yet another Miller exaggeration?  More evidence of what happens when pens attack?   Miller is down, the Pentagon is looking to come up for air.  The military under the Bush administration says it has no idea on this sounds like Scott McLellan talking about Rove and Libby two years ago.

DOUBLE DUH [Howard Kurtz/Wapo] I've been trying to figure out why the Judy Miller saga has become so all-consuming for so many people. . . . Then it hit me. It's the war, of course. We're re-fighting the war through this case.

THE HERETIK THINKS Howard Kurtz must have been asleep during the scenes of the Bush offensive.  Now the White House makes the siege of Stalingrad look like a picnic.

AND WE’VE GOT A CHICKENHAWK DOWN [WaPo] As the investigation into the leak of a CIA agent's name hurtles to an apparent conclusion, special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has zeroed in on the role of Vice President Cheney's office, according to lawyers familiar with the case and government officials. The prosecutor has assembled evidence that suggests Cheney's long-standing tensions with the CIA contributed to the unmasking of operative Valerie Plame.

THE HERETIK SEES the return of Rumsfeld to the field and a WHIG party gone wild.  Chickenhawks are on the grill and everyone will take their shots, but avoid bud chasers. Oy.

MORE TO FOLLOW

Comments

[pissed off patricia]

I looked to my brain to see what I thought of all this and all I found were dozens of question marks.

[Kate]

"Chickenhawks are on the grill". Priceless, Joe.

[eRobin]

Brillian, as always. I especially like "lay down with the dogs of war..." But Miller reminds me more of Stanley Motss from Wag the Dog:

Conrad 'Connie' Brean: Stanley, don't do this. You're playing with your life here.
Stanley Motss: Fuck my life. I want the credit.

[catherine]

WHIG Party gone wild! I love it!

[The Heretik]

eRob, you probably remember Judy's famous "I was f*cking right" moment.

[eRobin]

Certainly. I call her Judy "I was fucking right" Miller at my place. Although I wish I had thought of Queen of All Iraq.

[Pepper]

I don't know why the New York Times didn't fire her in the first place. I've read a lot of people saying that she wasn't exactly the most reliable reporter there in the first place. Why would they have sent a loose cannon with delusions of grandeur off to Iraq?

Hold up. "Loose cannon with delusions of grandeur" describes just about everyone in the administration!