Burying the lies on Iraq war: Judith Miller and the New York Times make a deal

Both sides agreed to keep silent on the size of Miller’s golden parachute, but it is rumored to be in the high six figures.

One of the conditions of the settlement was reflected in the pages of Thursday’s Times in the form of letter published on the newspaper’s editorial page under the headline “Judith Miller’s farewell.” It consists of a self-serving and evasive defense of her record.

Miller wraps herself in the flag of the First Amendment, presenting herself as a martyr in the struggle to defend freedom of the press and the “right as a journalist to protect a confidential source.”

This is an important principle, and one cannot always pick and choose the issue over which it must be defended.

It is one thing, however, to resist government coercion to reveal the identity of a whistle-blower who has exposed official malfeasance or to protect one who has risked his or her job in order to provide the public with needed insight into affairs of state that have otherwise remained hidden. It is quite another to shield one of the most powerful men in Washington from prosecution for criminal acts.

It is by no means clear who or what Miller was protecting in her decision to go to jail for 85 days rather than answer questions from Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald on her discussions with vice-presidential chief of staff I. Lewis Libby, who now faces criminal perjury and obstruction of justice charges.

The issue at stake—the deliberate leaking of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame by Libby and others—was a government attempt to punish a genuine whistleblower, her husband, Joseph Wilson, who revealed that the administration had deliberately lied about Iraq attempting to buy uranium in Niger.

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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/nov2005/mill-n11.shtml