Judith Miller is a former reporter for The New York Times and author of four books on the Middle East, biological weapons and the Holocaust. For information on her prosecution for refusing to reveal sources to federal prosecutors, see the news section of this Web site or the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.



In this section:

• Best of the Web -- I've Got a Secret

• NEWS??

• Judy Miller Defends Leaker -- Of Harry Potter Ending!

• Judy on Fox News Discussing Terrorism, Iraq, etc. (includes link to Video)

• Was Judith Miller’s Trip to Jail Necessary?

•

•

• OPINION CONCERNING THE LIBBY DECISION ...

• The Libby Verdict: The serious consequences of a pointless Washington scandal

• Conservatives see a scapegoat in Libby


Month of:
• June 2008
• July 2007
• April 2007
• March 2007
• November 2006
• April 2006
• December 2005
• November 2005
• October 2005
• September 2005
• August 2005
• July 2005
• June 2005
• May 2005





Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War
by Judith Miller, William Broad, Stephen Engelberg
Simon & Schuster, 2001




God Has Ninety-Nine Names: A Reporter's Journey Through a Militant Middle East
by Judith Miller
Simon & Schuster, 1996




Created and maintained pro-bono by Joshua Tanzer, web developer and journalist in New York City.

• Resume
• Web site
• Contact

Judith Miller's Farewell

To the Editor:

On July 6 I chose to go to jail to defend my right as a journalist to protect a confidential source, the same right that enables lawyers to grant confidentiality to their clients, clergy to their parishioners, and physicians and psychotherapists to their patients. Though 49 states have extended this privilege to journalists as well, for without such protection a free press cannot exist, there is no comparable federal law. I chose to go to jail not only to honor my pledge of confidentiality, but also to dramatize the need for such a federal law.

After 85 days, more than twice as long as any other American journalist has ever spent in jail for this cause, I agreed to testify before the special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald’s grand jury about my conversations with my source, I. Lewis Libby Jr. I did so only after my two conditions were met: first, that Mr. Libby voluntarily relieve me in writing and by phone of my promise to protect our conversations; and second, that the special prosecutor limit his questions only to those germane to the Valerie Plame Wilson case. Contrary to inaccurate reports, these two agreements could not have been reached before I went to jail. Without them, I would still be in jail, perhaps, my lawyers warned, charged with obstruction of justice, a felony. Though some colleagues disagreed with my decision to testify, for me to have stayed in jail after achieving my conditions would have seemed self-aggrandizing martyrdom or worse, a deliberate effort to obstruct the prosecutor’s inquiry into serious crimes.

Partly because of such objections from some colleagues, I have decided, after 28 years and with mixed feelings, to leave The Times. I am honored to have been part of this extraordinary newspaper and proud of my accomplishments here – a Pulitzer, a DuPont, an Emmy and other awards – but sad to leave my professional home.

But mainly I have chosen to resign because over the last few months, I have become the news, something a New York Times reporter never wants to be.

Even before I went to jail, I had become a lightning rod for public fury over the intelligence failures that helped lead our country to war. Several articles I wrote or co-wrote were based on this faulty intelligence, and in May 2004, The Times concluded in an editors’ note that its coverage should have reflected greater editorial and reportorial skepticism.

At a commencement speech I delivered at Barnard College in 2003, a year before that note was published, I asked whether the administration’s prewar W.M.D. intelligence was merely wrong, or was it exaggerated or even falsified. I believed then, and still do, that the answer to bad information is more reporting. I regret that I was not permitted to pursue answers to the questions I raised at Barnard. Their lack of answers continues to erode confidence in both the press and the government.

The right of reply and the obligation to correct inaccuracies are also the mark of a free and responsible press. I am gratified that Bill Keller, The Times executive editor, has finally clarified remarks made by him that were unsupported by fact and personally distressing. Some of his comments suggested insubordination on my part. I have always written the articles assigned to me, adhered to the paper’s sourcing and ethical guidelines, and cooperated with editorial decisions, even those with which I disagreed.

I salute The Times’s editorial page for advocating a federal shield law before, during and after my jailing and for supporting as recently two weeks ago my willingness to go to jail to uphold a vital principle. Most of all, I want to thank those colleagues who stood by me after I was criticized on these pages. My response to such criticism can be read in full on my web site: JudithMiller.org.

I will continue speaking in support of a Federal shield law. In my future writing, I intend to call attention to the internal and external threats to our country’s freedoms – Al Qaeda and other forms of religious extremism, conventional and W.M.D. terrorism, and growing government secrecy in the name of national security – subjects that have long defined my work. I also leave knowing that The Times will continue the tradition of excellence that has made it indispensable to its readers, a standard for journalists, and a bulwark of democracy.


Posted by Judith Miller | November 09, 2005


Bill Keller's Letter to Judy Miller

Dear Judy,

I know you’ve been distressed by the memo I sent to the staff about things I wish I’d done differently in the course of this ordeal. Let me be clear on two points you’ve raised.

First, you are upset with me that I used the words “entanglement” and “engagement” in reference to your relationship with Scooter Libby. Those words were not intended to suggest an improper relationship. I was referring only to the series of interviews through which you ­ and the paper ­ became caught up in an epic legal controversy.

Second, you dispute my assertion that “Judy seems to have misled” Phil Taubman when he asked whether you were one of the reporters to whom the White House reached out with the Wilson story. I continue to be troubled by that episode. But you are right that Phil himself does not contend that you misled him; and, of course, I was not a participant in the conversation between you and Phil.
I wish you all the best for the future.
Regards,
Bill



Original article

Posted by Judith Miller | November 09, 2005


Response to Byron Calame's Article

Barney,

I’m dismayed by your essay today. You accuse me of taking journalistic “shortcuts” without presenting evidence of what you mean and rely on unsubstantiated innuendo about my reporting.

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.”
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? Soon after my breakfast meeting with Libby in July, I did so. I remember asking the editor to let me explore whether what my source had said was true, or whether it was a potential smear of a whistleblower. I don’t recall naming the source of the tip. But I specifically remember saying that because Joe Wilson’s op-ed column had appeared in our paper, we had a particular obligation to pursue this. I never identified the editor to the grand jury or publicly, since it involved internal New York Times decision-making. 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 did not take that personally, though she never chose to discuss with me our different recollections about my urging her to pursue the story. Without explanation, however, you said you believed her and raised questions about my “trust and credibility.” That is your right. But I gave my recollection to the grand jury under oath.

My second journalistic sin in your eyes was agreeing to Libby’s request to be considered a “former Hill staffer” in his discussion about Wilson. As you acknowledged, I agreed to that attribution only to hear the information. As I also stressed, Scooter Libby has never been identified in any of my stories as anything other than a “senior Administration official.”

The third “troubling” ethical issue you raised – my access to secret information during my embed in Iraq – had been fully clarified by the time you published. No one doubts that I had access to very sensitive information or that I did work out informal arrangements to limit discussion of sensitive intelligence sources and methods to the most senior Times editors. Though there was occasionally enormous tension over whether and when I could publish sensitive information, the arrangement ultimately satisfied the senior officers in the brigade hunting for unconventional weapons, the Times editors at the time, and me. It also led to the publication of my exclusive story that debunked some of my own earlier exclusives on the Pentagon’s claim that it had found mobile germ production units in Iraq.

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. No one indicated they had doubts about the stand I took to go to jail.

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? Your essay does not say. You may disapprove of my earlier reporting on Weapons of Mass Destruction. But what did the delayed publication of the editor’s note on that reporting have to do with the decision I made over a year later, which the paper fully supported, to protect our confidential sources? I remain proud of my decision to go to jail rather than reveal the identity of a source to whom I had pledged confidentiality, even if he happened to work for the Bush White House.

The Times asked me to assume a low profile in this controversy. I told everyone that I had no intention of airing internal editorial policy disputes and disagreements at the paper, as a matter of principle and loyalty to those who stood by me during this ordeal. Others have chosen a different path, ironically becoming “confidential sources” themselves.

You never bothered to mention in your essay my decision to spend 85 days in jail to honor the pledge I made. I’m saddened that you, like so many others, have blurred the core issue of that stand and I am stunned that you refused to post my answers to issues we had discussed on your web site at the critical moment that Times readers were forming their opinions.

Judith Miller

Posted by Judith Miller | November 09, 2005


Responses to Byron Calame's Questions

To: Byron Calame
From: Judith Miller

Responses to your Questions:

Oct. 20, 2005


Why did I not cooperate fully with fellow reporters on stories about the Valerie Plame inquiry?

1) I cooperated fully with Don Van Natta’s team for its story, despite being under considerable legal pressure not to do so. I spent over four hours talking to Don, first in a 90 minute on-the-record interview which my lawyer monitored because I was still under a contempt of court order. After the order was vacated, there were further on-the-record and background interviews which I gave while struggling on deadline to complete my own account of my grand jury testimony and writing testimony for the Senate Judiciary Committee which had asked me to testify on the Federal shield law. I complied with all of the team’s requests except for its demand for access to my notebooks. I declined to provide these not only because my lawyers objected, but because the paper told me I was being treated in this project not as a fellow Times reporter, but as any subject of a Times story would be. These notes were part of what I went to jail to protect, and I was not about to share them with anyone who was not authorized to see them.

Why did I keep drifting back into national security reporting after Bill Keller took me off the beat?

2) I was not a loose cannon or insubordinate, self-assigning reporter. The reason I kept I kept writing about Iraq and weapons after my embed in Iraq had ended was that I was assigned to cover the Oil for Food scandal, which involved both Iraq and unconventional weapons, and to cover counter-terrorism efforts in New York, which also involved both topics.

How did I find the second notebook?

3) I found the second notebook I testified about only after I was released from jail. During my grand jury testimony, there had been some confusion over whether redacted notes of an interview I had done with I. Lewis Libby and which I provided to the special prosecutor were taken on July 12 at my home in Sag Harbor or during a briefer discussion with Mr. Libby earlier in the week. Under oath, I had promised the special counsel I would search for any additional notes I might have relevant to Mr. Libby and my Plame/Wilson testimony. 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 that were kept under my computer at my desk. Though the notebook was too early to be covered by the subpoena, I discovered that it contained an interview in June with Mr. Libby. Deciphering my notes, I was astonished to see it showed that Mr. Libby and I had discussed Joe Wilson and his trip to Niger, as well as his wife, two weeks before Mr. Wilson had published his attack on the Administration in The Times. I told Bob Bennett what I had found, and he immediately informed the special prosecutor.

Was I telling the truth when I said I couldn’t remember who first told me the name Valerie Plame?

4) As I told the grand jury under oath, I cannot remember who first told me the name of Joe Wilson’s wife, or “Valerie Flame,” another name which appears in my notebook. I cannot remember when or why I wrote that misspelled name in my notes. The name is free-floating, separated by two pages from the end of an interview with Mr. Libby. It is not embedded in any other interview. I spoke to dozens of people when I returned from Iraq about a wide variety of WMD topics that I wrote about. I was not at all focused on the Wilson story and certainly had no idea that two years later Wilson’s wife would be at the center of a major political scandal and grand jury investigation. I cannot specifically recall having discussed Mr. Wilson’s wife with anyone other than Mr. Libby. No other sources on that subject are cited in my notes. But there were people with whom I discussed sensitive information for stories on other subjects that The Times did publish, and unless Mr. Fitzgerald had agreed to focus his questions to me on Mr. Libby and the Plame/Wilson affair, I could not have testified.

Why did you agree to change the attribution of Scooter Libby for a story?

5) I never did, and never would have identified Scooter Libby in print as a “former Hill staffer.” Mr. Libby has never been identified in any story I have written as anything other than a “senior Administration official.” While I was prepared to listen to what he had to say based on that attribution, I would have attempted to confirm the information he was providing through other sources, preferably on the record, or gone back to him to renegotiate a more appropriate attribution had I decided to write a story.

What was your assignment in Iraq and did you have access to secret information that was not shared with readers?

6) As part of my assignment with the soldiers who were hunting for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, I regularly had access to secret information. As a condition of this assignment, like other reporters embedded in sensitive posts, I signed a non-disclosure agreement which gave the military authorization to screen copy I wrote to prevent the disclosure of sensitive sources and methods. Because senior officers of the Exploitation Task Force were so concerned that this sensitive information not be casually discussed in my newsroom, I assured them that I would limit discussions of the most sensitive intelligence sources and methods to senior news executives. Reporters like me remained bound by these commitments after their embeds ended. Unlike many other newspapers and reporters, the Times and I noted the existence of such agreements in stories whose publication had been delayed by military review.

Posted by Judith Miller | November 09, 2005


Letter to Maureen Dowd

October 23, 2005


Dear Maureen,
I’m glad you always liked me. But in the interests of journalistic accuracy at a very sensitive time for The Times and for me, I wish you had checked some of these damaging assertions about me before you printed them. If you had, there are seven specific mistakes you could have avoided. As important, you could have avoided creating a false and damaging impression that I had tried to cover up for a crime, or that I had convenient memory lapses at the behest of the administration. Just to remind you, I never went to see Scooter Libby to hear character assassination against Joe Wilson. I was trying to get to the bottom of the intelligence failures that were very important to me because they had led to my publishing several incorrect stories based on that intelligence. As my Sunday story stated, the question I put to Libby was this: “was the intell slanted?” The Joe Wilson discussion that day, and in subsequent interviews, was a small part of a much larger story I was trying to understand and tell so that I could offer readers who had trusted my earlier reporting, and whom I wanted to trust my future reporting, a more complete account of what had gone wrong in U.S. policy and intelligence.

As for the specific errors in your story, they include the following: First, I never intended to, nor did I mislead Phil Taubman, as I told both Barney Calame, the public editor, whom I asked to post my responses on his website, and Bill Keller, as Kit Seelye reported in her story today. 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.

Two, it is completely untrue, as you say in your reference to me as badly needing a “leash,” that I was an insubordinate, self-assigning reporter who kept “drifting back” into areas from which I was barred. I kept writing about Iraq and weapons because I was assigned to cover the Oil for Food scandal, which involved both Iraq and unconventional weapons, and to cover counter-terrorism efforts in New York, which also involved both topics. Bill Keller and your close friend, Jill Abramson, approved both of those multi-story assignments.

Three, as I also told Calame, Scooter Libby has never been identified in any of my stories as anything other than a “senior Administration official,” and never would have been identified in print in one of my stories in any other way. I accepted the attribution for the sole purposes of listening to the information, not publishing it. While I was prepared to listen to what he had to say based on that attribution, I would have attempted to confirm the information he was providing through other sources, preferably on the record, or gone back to him to renegotiate a more appropriate attribution had I decided to write a story.

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.

Five, I have already addressed the “Valerie Flame” issue publicly in my answers to reporters at the Senate hearing on the shield law. And again, as I told Calame, “more than two years later, I cannot remember when or why I wrote that misspelled name in my notes. The name is free-floating, separated by two pages from the end of an interview with Mr. Libby and written in a different color ink from my Libby interviews. It is not embedded in any other interview. I spoke to dozens of people when I returned from Iraq about a wide variety of WMD topics that I did write about. I don’t know why you and Tina doubt my word, but you should know that I gave this account under oath as well.

Six, the Associated Press story which you cited is untrue. While A.P. did not call to check, you might have. 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.”

Seven, as far as “nailing me to a chair to extract the entire story of my escapade,” my lawyers tell me that senior management of the Times, including Bill Keller, were briefed on all important aspects of this case where I was concerned. I held nothing back at such meetings and answered all questions they put to me. I remember that Bill attended several of these sessions.

I agree with you that reporters must be more than stenographers. The same is true of columnists. I hope you will correct the record soon.
Judy

Posted by Judith Miller | November 09, 2005