The REAL Meaning of the Karl and Judy Show

With all the talk about the unfolding political scandal that is Plamegate, there is far too little discussion about the journalistic scandal that undergirds it---namely the unholy deals that Washington reporters make in order to receive leaked information from high level government sources.  The WaPo touched on the issue briefly in a column by Mark Feldstein this past Sunday, which alluded to the  “…dirty little secret of the Washington press corps,  a kind of unspoken conspiracy in which reporters conceal not only their sources' identities but more importantly the underlying motives for the leaks….”

Nowhere has the “dirty little secret” been more in evidence lately, than in the person of NY Times Judy Miller, who---if Marc’s friend Arianna Huffington is right---may have been, not just the recipient of leaked information about Valerie Plame, but herself a major league leaker.

According to Arianna’s theory, Miller was made furious by Joe Wilson’s July 6, 2003 NY Times op-ed that called into question the Bush administration's rational for the Iraq invasion and, by extension, cast a shadow on Miller’s own 2-years’ worth of reporting on Iraq’s purported WMDs, a series of Nightmare Nukes stories among her most influential pieces. 

(For example, remember it was Miller who co-wrote a piece in which administration officials said that Iraq had attempted to import aluminum tubes for nuclear weapons, a spurious claim that Vice-President Dick Cheney quickly repeated on Meet the Press, thereby completing the Faustian loop.)

It's possible that at this point, says Huffington, a very piqued Miller (who is evidently known for her nasty piques) may have called one of her intelligence sources to find out about this Wilson guy who was spitting in her journalistic punch bowl, learned about his CIA wife, then passed this useful information on to Scooter Libby and possibly Karl Rove....who then made dandy use of it.

• “….Sure, she first got the info from someone else, and the odds are she wasn't the only one who clued in Libby and/or Rove (the State Dept. memo likely played a role too)… but, in this scenario, Miller certainly wasn't an innocent writer caught up in the whirl of history. She had a starring role in it….”

Yesterday, Huffington continued this train of thought by asking “How Deep do her Connections Run?”

• “….I’m struck by the special access and relationships she enjoyed with many of the key players in the Iraq debacle (which, at the end of the day, is really what Plamegate is all about).”

Arianna got much of her information from an exhaustively and juicily reported June 2004 New York Magazine profile of Miller, written by Franklin Foer, which details the astonishingly cozy relationships between Miller and a string of high-ranking officials in and around the Bush administration, some of whom she’d been cultivating for "several decades.”

However accurate (or not) Arianna's Judygate musings turn out to be, Foer’s piece is worth reading in its entirety, especially now, in the light of the source/reporter waltzes and revelations that seem to grow more dizzying daily.  It’s worth it---less for the colorful Judy stories (which admittedly are entertaining)---but more for Foer’s insightful rundown on how, for their own shameless and shameful reasons, Miller’s editors at the NY Times allowed her dubiously-sourced, and ultimately incorrect articles to run unchecked and unchallenged.

******************************************************************

• NOTE:  Okay. I suspect this guest blogger gig is a fiendish plot on Marc’s part designed to make everyone pathetically grateful for his return.  Nonetheless, I’ll be showing up here for the next week to provide topics.... and I count on the rest of you to put meat on these various bones using your characteristic wit, intelligence, insight and (occasionally quarrelsome) humor.

xo:  Celeste AKA Rosedog

Comments

[GM Roper]

Rosedog, WONDERFUL start. This part: "shameless and shameful reasons, Miller’s editors at the NY Times allowed her dubiously-sourced, and ultimately incorrect articles to run unchecked and unchallenged." can apply to a whole lot more folk than Miller.

Access is it's own devil; "As long as I have access, who cares!" would apply above and to CNN and Saddam's Baghdad and a host of other areas.

[richard lo cicero]

Rosedog the problem is endemic in Washington where the famous "Beltway" miasma lives. In DC "Everyone" in the in-crowd (the Kool Kids) knows Novak. He appears at benefits - rather like Arianna who is a local Kool Kid herself - and is regularly on CNN. Yet, until recently, no one wanted to ask him about his part in this fiasco. And would any of them accept the answer that he'll tell all at the proper time from non newstypes in the crosshairs.

Judy Miller was led around bt the nose by Achmed Chalibi as the the NYT axknowleged in their mea culpa. We have several accounts of her, to put it mildly, bizare behavior over the WMD storry, including her experience as an "embedded" reporter. Like Jeff Gerth she got it wrong on a major story; but unlike Jayson Blair she and Gerth are still there. I'll leave Gerth for others like Joe Conason but it seems to me that Miller had to know something was wrong.

So what was wrong. The kool kids have their own world view and it is never necessary to change that view. The kids decided that Gore was a loser and so knocked him down while building up Bush. See Eric Alterman and Mark Crispin Miller. Why? I think it was he was veep to Bill Clinton and the kids HATED him. Bill simply was not one of them and the most revealing article on this was the notorious Sally Quinn piece deploring the loosening of standards! A real eye opener considering the source. So the kids all told us the country had "Clinton Fatigue" with no evidence that the only politician who could be compared to a rock star "fatigued" the country. And we were told that GWB was "popular" because he was a regular guy! Really? He was popular with the kool kids that's all.

Note that I haven't gone into the crimes of Plame/Rove gate. They've been presented well elsewhere. No, the crime is a public that is treated to Mcnews because those in the know consider them to be too dumb to get the whole story. And they wonder where their audience has gone!

[too many steves]

Where is Hercule Poirot when we need him most?

I read about this, I think and think and think about it, I try to understand motives (who wins and what do they win), I even try to solve the puzzle from the inside out, and, still the pieces don't all fit together. I guess I'm not smart enough or clever enough (or both) to solve it.

But I do have a question: Is it possible, in the world of news gathering and reporting, for a reporter (Miller in this case) to create a story (outing of Valerie Plame) based on non-existent anonymous sources? That is to say, could Judy Miller exact her revenge on Joe Wilson by writing the story about Valerie Plame based solely on her own personal knowledge while (falsely) identifying the source as some "unamed Administration official" when, in fact, she is the source? Or are their editorial checks and balances that would prevent such a thing from happening?

And rlc, I agree and don't see how such an incestuous environment such as exists in Washington between the journalists and the various officials could ever produce what we all would agree is the truth.

[NeoDude]

Does anybody know how many leaks I. F. Stone used?

[reg]

Thanks for that NY Magazine link...I'd never seen that one and look forward to checking it out.

I've been very suspicious of St. Judy since she became central to this drama. Josh Marshall, linking to the Arianna post, said he'd been hearing similiar stuff.

As murky as this case appears in some of its aspects, I think that sometimes things are what they are. Seymour Hersch has been nursing anonymous sources inside the system for years. Bob Novak has been nursing anonymous sources inside the system for years. At times Hersch has probably gotten stuff wrong or skewed and sometimes Novak gets stuff right. But nobody with an IQ above room temperature would look at the span of the two men's careers, the stories they've broken, the seriousness of their commitment to in-depth reporting without fear or favor and their impact on the journalistic culture over the decades and have trouble telling the tough, iconoclastic reporter from the news whore crafting a career from Beltway Buzz.

A big piece of this picture doesn't rest on simple nostrums like "access is it's own devil" - because all of the best journalists nurse a variety of insider sources and protect their identities - but on the integrity, judgement and saavy in detecting spin of the individual journalists involved. A big part of the problem is what rlc describes - the Beltway island in which the lines are blurred between the world of the reporters and the world of those they report on. A journalistic culture in which even a relatively decent soul like Gwen Ifill sees fit to spend her off-hours cooking dinner for Condi Rice and Bob Woodward has gone from meeting Deep Throat in a parking garage to become the official scribe for official Washington's sanitized version of itself, as in his books on the Bushniks, is hopelessly corrupt and far removed from the old adage about "comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable." And the arrangement serves the interests of those in power mostly seamlessly. It takes an unbelievably hubristic poke in the eye, like the exposure of shameless Rove-McClellan deceit soiling the carpet of the sacred pressroom preserve for several score of Washington's press wonders before these guys get steamed at the bullshit. On most days they're having it for breakfast.

[reg]

"Does anybody know how many leaks I. F. Stone used?"

I'm not at all sure Stone had access to a lot of leaks. I remember reading somewhere a comment by Stone in which he said much of what he reported he got by simply reading official documents with a critical eye. Stone mostly worked harder than the rest and wasn't afraid to inform his reporting with his values. Of course he had the benefit of working completely outside of the established press when he published his newsletter. In some ways he is the model for the best of the bloggers. Of course, the difference between Stone and 99% of bloggers is that he was a working journalist all of his life, had a great journalist's skills, and had a very broad historical and philosophical perspective tempered with a large dose of humility. He didn't satisfy himself with writing random opinion or ephemera and he didn't do it for a hobby.

[rosedog]

Richard, l. c.---well said: the Cool Kids thing is a big part of what you're calling the McNews problem.

During the Carter era, I briefly traveled with the White House press corps and being a somewhat naive outside the beltway writer, I could actually see the bell jar of groupthink that enveloped most of those reporting in DC. Yet, the startling part to me was that this same groupthink seemed to be invisible to nearly everyone who was a regular. (Certainly there were exceptions, but it was pretty prevalent.)

As to Miller, hell, yeah, she had to know something was wrong with Chalabi if she bothered to check---which would have, of course, required that she step outside the limitations of her I-Get-It-And-You-Don’t, neo-con shaded worldview. Actually a quick call to anyone at the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs at the State Department would have at least given her an occasional countervailing opinion, even if she chose not to believe it.

For example, during 2002, the State Department was holding regular meetings with a half-dozen Iraqi-American exile groups, talking about the country’s post-invasion future, Chalabi and his INC prominently among the exile groups. During that time, I talked to some of the State guys working on the so-called “Future of Iraq” project and---both off and on the record--they were very vocal about the fact that they viewed Chalabi as a pretty much a rich, nattily dressed blow-hard with a really big entourage. Furthermore, although Chalabi was pushing hard for an American invasion, and gave the impression that his view was the prevailing one in country, those at State said otherwise. “I'd venture to say that four out of five Iraqis oppose an invasion,” one Near East Desk Deputy Director told me back in October 2002, “not because the end is wrong, but because we, the United States, are incapable of doing it correctly."

I also interviewed a number of people from non-INC Iraqi expatriate groups, and they pretty much told me the same thing about Chalabi---and about their fears for the invasion, which now turn out to have been prescient.

Now if from Topanga Canyon, California, a non-mid-east expert like me could find out in a couple of phone calls that folks in a position to know---both in country and out---considered Chalabi a charleton, surely Ms. Miller from her exalted perch could have….you know….better checked her sources.

In reporting a dramatic story with a strong POV, which both Miller and Sy Hirsch have done repeatedly over the years, there can be the temptation to shave the dice---not so much to falsify stuff, but to avoid the material that doesn't fit your thesis. A good editor should be the fail-safe that prevents a reporter falling victim to his or her own blind spots or competative excesses. (Of course, at the other extreme, a bad editor destroys the ability to draw any conclusions at all by demanding that the reporter "balance" facts, as if truth was to be found in the teeter-totter approach to reporting, with equal weight placed on both sides of any issue----a subject that we've all discussed in past threads on Marc's blog.)

Evidently Miller's editors made few demands on her other than she continue to deliver scoops that the WaPo didn't have. In part this seems to be because they were reluctant to cross her, but also because, as the NY Mag piece outlines, then NY Times editor Howell Raines saw her as his biggest star, so was willfully ignorant regarding her factual failings.

And, Reg, you make the point well (better than I have, actually). It isn't the notion of cultivated sources that's the problem. Any good reporter has them. But some reporters make unholy deals with themselves and their sources, blurring ethical boundaries in the process. Judith Miller (and now Bob Woodward, for that matter, as you point out) is guilty of exactly that.

PS: Too Many Steves.... Sure it's possible for Judy Miller to make up sources if an editor isn't alert. That was the deal with the Jayson Blair and Steven Glass scandals. But, I don't believe that's within Miller's MO. Her sins are more as Richard says above, in believing herself to be the Coolest of the Cool Kids, opposing opinions be damned.

[rosedog]

PS: Thanks, GM. ; - )

[Gabriel]

Great debut...Let's give Mr. Cooper the month off.

[josh gibson]

"But nobody with an IQ above room temperature would look at the span of the two men's careers, the stories they've broken, the seriousness of their commitment to in-depth reporting"

Novak a serious reporter? Gimme a break Reg, it's no wonder you liberals lose so often, you bend over backwards so much you end up falling on your head with such claims. And Novak's 'contribution' is even remotely close to Hersch? Hardly. Go check out "Right Wing Noise Machine" on Novak, the guy is a political operative for the RNC, end of story.

[richard lo cicero]

Re I.F. Stone:

I recall that Stone used public sources like congressional testimony and various reports by both Governmental and non-governmental agencies as his prime material. The late Michael Harrington wrote that everything you need to know to indict governmental policy was available in their own reports. So True

I recall that Sy Hersh and Bob Novak both have many "Sources" - in Hersh's case in the National Security Community. You have to evaluate their valifity over the years. I think Novak has become more erratic since the death of his partner Rowland Evans who did little "Shoeleather" reporting but had good insticts over what was true or not. Evans and Novak was required reading for anyone wanting to get an insight into GOP thinking.

Hersh reminds me of another DC figure who also avoided the Kool Kids - Jack Anderson. The former Drew Pearson legman broke more stories than anyone else back in he 70's and he was a stay-at-home Mormon who said that he deliberately didn't schmooze with his subjects for just that reason. Seemed to work. But Anderson came up in a different time and well . . .

[reg]

josh gibson - I must have truly written a terrible sentence in comparing Hersch and Novak, because the point I intended to make about Novak was precisely the one you state...you were supposed to come out of that one with my having asserted that Novak had none of the qualities mentioned, but was a "newswhore crafting a career on Beltway Buzz." Sorry if it wasn't more clear. I have a habit of going over the cliff with some of my sentences...

[reg]

Y'all will no doubt pick this up yourselves, but I just happened over to HuffPost and read this bit of background on St. Judy.

ARRIANA: Judy, to the dismay of many of her colleagues, never played by the same rules and standards as other reporters. One source e-mailed to give me some examples of this pattern: "In Feb 2003, Judy was in Salahuddin covering the Iraqi opposition conclave. Iraqi National Congress spokesperson Zaab Sethna told a reporter who was also there that Judy was staying with Chalabi's group in Salahuddin (the rest of the reporters had to stay 30 minutes away in crappy hotels in Irbil), and that the I.N.C. had provided her with a car and a translator (Did the New York Times reimburse them?). The I.N.C. offered another reporter the same, but he turned it down. Judy had just arrived in a bus convoy from Turkey, big footing C.J. Chivers, who was also there covering the story for the Times. While everyone else on the buses had to scramble for accommodations, she was staying in a luxurious villa loaned to the I.N.C. by the Kurdish Democratic Party...

[Jay Byrd]

"I’m struck by the special access and relationships she enjoyed with many of the key players in the Iraq debacle (which, at the end of the day, is really what Plamegate is all about"

Arianna's cool, but this strikes me as an example of a tendency among journalists to make everything about journalists. What this is really about, it seems to me, is employing the full force and resources of the federal government at the personal service of those who supposedly serve us, and how this has come to be accepted. I've seen numerous stories about how Rove and Libby got together to do "damage control" after Wilson's editorial came out, without even hinting that this is an abuse of power, regardless of what steps they took.

[The_DC_Sniper]

"Novak a serious reporter?"

Yeah, I agree with you. There are no such things as marked and unmarked terms in the English language. That's why after a friend of mine saw Episode III, I didn't ask, "How good was it?" as that would have implied that it was good so instead I asked "How neutral was it?"

Seriousness, like goodness, is not an analog quality whose presence you can measure by degree, it's a *binary* one that is either present in full or completely absent. I mean, something is either totally serious (or perfect in its goodness) or it's completely frivolous (or irredeemably bad), right? There's no "middle ground." Therefore when reg asks us to examine the seriousness of a reporter's writing, he is not implying that another reporter's writing might somehow be "more serious"(?!), but is, in fact, implying that writing of the reporter in question is journalism of the first order.

This post is itself evidence of my claim because it should be clear to anyone reading it that it's either totally serious or completely frivolous.

[reg]

Related news on how intel was "fixed" to suit the desired narrative regarding Iraq's supposed nuclear programs.

http://tinyurl.com/bca3u

[Jay Byrd]

The Sniper's hyperlogical linguistic nitpicking, with its formulaic positive/negative voice reversal sarcasm, repeatedly misses its target, whizzing past largely unseen. When noticed at all, it is mostly the way one notices the "pop" of a gun shooting blanks from far far away.

[Jay Byrd]

> Related news on how intel was "fixed" to suit the desired narrative regarding Iraq's supposed nuclear programs.

This is a drop in the bucket. Remember Hussein Kamel?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussein_Kamel

[reg]

"This is a drop in the bucket."

Yeah, in a bucket that's so full it's starting to spill over.

[Jay Byrd]

But is it a drop in a bucket on a camel's back? :-)

[Teh_DC_Sniper]

"The Sniper's hyperlogical linguistic nitpicking, with its formulaic positive/negative voice reversal sarcasm, repeatedly misses its target, whizzing past largely unseen. When noticed at all, it is mostly the way one notices the 'pop' of a gun shooting blanks from far far away."

Hyperlogical-- ooh, a devastating criticism. In fact, I am so crushed that all I can do is recognize and say, "Pnwage!!!!!11 j00 r teh ub3r!!!!!oneone!! Ph33r teh J4y 8yrd!!!eleventy-one"

[Nell]

May be too late to be read, but the alternative is to comment off-topic on a newer thread: The American Society of Journalists and Authors rescinds its earlier decision to give Judith Miller a 'Conscience in Media' award.

Wonder if Marc will reconsider his staunch defense of Miller's decision to stay mum?

This quote from an member of the committee who resigned rather than award Miller seems relevant:

Anita Bartholomew, a freelance journalist who has contributed to Reader's Digest, wrote in a resignation letter, "The First Amendment is designed to prevent government interference with a free press. Miller, by shielding a government official or officials who attempted to use the press to retaliate against a whistleblower, and scare off other would-be whistleblowers, has allied herself with government interference with, and censorship of, whistleblowers. When your source IS the government, and the government is attempting to use you to target a whistleblower, the notion of shielding a source must be reconsidered. To apply standard practices regarding sources to hiding wrongdoing at the highest levels of government perverts the intent of the First Amendment.”

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001008093

[Jay Byrd]

"Wonder if Marc will reconsider"

Is there a precedent?