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SBD
Admiral
Joined: 19 Aug 2004
Posts: 1022
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 Posted: Thu Nov 10, 2005 5:09 am Post subject: Judith Miller Retires From the N.Y. Times |
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| Quote: | WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 9, 2005 Last modified: Wednesday, November 9, 2005 10:51 PM CST
Judith Miller Retires From the N.Y. Times
By DAVID B. CARUSO
NEW YORK - Judith Miller, the New York Times reporter who was first lionized, then vilified by her own newspaper for her role in the CIA leak case, has retired from the Times, declaring that she had to leave because she had "become the news."
Miller, 57, had been negotiating a severance deal with the paper for several weeks.
Miller spent 85 days in jail over the summer for refusing to testify about her conversations with a confidential source. But after her release, she was criticized harshly and publicly by Times editors and writers for her actions in the CIA leak case and for her reporting during the run-up to the Iraq war, later discredited, indicating that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.
"We are grateful to Judy for her significant personal sacrifice to defend an important journalistic principle," Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said in a statement. "I respect her decision to retire from The Times and wish her well."
The Times declined to disclose details of the severance package, but said the paper had agreed to print a letter from Miller in which she defended herself and explained her reasons for leaving.
Miller said she could no longer function as a reporter at the paper, given her unwanted status as a news figure.
"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," Miller wrote in the letter.
Even before her involvement in the CIA case, she added, she had "become a lightning rod for public fury over the intelligence failures that helped lead our country to war." The full text of the letter was available on Miller's Web site, judithmiller.org.
Miller joined the Times in 1977 and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for reporting on global terrorism.
She said she planned to take a break but already had begun to receive job offers. She said she would continue to lobby for passage of a federal shield law that would protect journalists from having to reveal their sources.
The paper had initially been publicly supportive of Miller, and waged a long and costly legal battle on her behalf after she refused to tell a grand jury about conversations she had with I. Lewis Libby, then chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, about CIA operative Valerie Plame. Plame is the wife of a Bush administration critic.
After Miller ultimately decided to testify, saying Libby had given her permission to do so, the Times ran an article depicting Miller as a rogue reporter who battled with editors and colleagues. In a subsequent staff memo, Times Executive Editor Bill Keller said Miller also appeared to have misled editors about her "entanglement" with Libby.
In a memo to the Times staff announcing Miller's departure, Keller lauded her "fierce determination and personal courage both in pursuit of the news and in resisting assaults on the freedom of news organizations to report."
He also circulated a letter he had sent to Miller, in which he clarified that he did not mean the word "entanglement" to imply that she had an improper relationship with Libby. He also softened his earlier statement that Miller had misled a Times editor, acknowledging that the editor in question did not himself claim to have been misled.
Miller told The Associated Press late Wednesday that the Times' decision to release Keller's letter was important. "I'm very glad that The New York Times has cleared this up," she said. "I never misled anyone."
Asked whether she thought some of her Times colleagues had attacked her publicly to settle personal scores, Miller said, "definitely."
"I was very upset by it," she said. "I was very saddened by it."
Libby was indicted last month on charges that he lied to investigators trying to learn whether there was an intentional effort to blow Plame's cover.
On the Net:
Judith Miller: http://www.judithmiller.org
A service of the Associated Press(AP) |
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SBD
Admiral
Joined: 19 Aug 2004
Posts: 1022
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| Posted: Thu Nov 10, 2005 5:14 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | 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
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Schadow
Vice Admiral
Joined: 30 Sep 2004
Posts: 936
Location: Huntsville, Alabama
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| Posted: Thu Nov 10, 2005 5:37 am Post subject: |
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Memo to Judy Miller and Mary Mapes: Please go away. Write your books, appear on Sunday talks until you're not asked anymore (shouldn't take long) but above all, just go away 
Schadow
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Capt, 8th U.S. Army, Korea '53 - '54 |
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LewWaters
Admin
Joined: 18 May 2004
Posts: 4042
Location: Washington State
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| Posted: Thu Nov 10, 2005 6:13 am Post subject: |
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Amazing! She doesn't want to be the news, but doesn't mind making up the news.  |
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GM Strong
Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy
Joined: 18 Sep 2004
Posts: 1579
Location: Penna
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| Posted: Thu Nov 10, 2005 2:18 pm Post subject: |
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Scappleface headlines.
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November 10, 2005
Judi Miller Freed from 2nd ‘Correctional Institution’
by Scott Ott
(2005-11-10) — Reporter Judi Miller was released from The New York Times yesterday on her own recognizance after she received assurances from former vice presidential chief of staff I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby that he approved of her departure.
Ms. Miller, in a letter that appears in today’s edition, called The Times “the second correctional institution from which I’ve been freed in as many months–although I suppose there’s more correction going on in that D.C. jail than at The Times.”
The Pulitzer Prize-winning veteran journalist and free-speech icon recently spent 85 days in a Washington D.C. jail before Mr. Libby told her she could leave that facility.
Despite the isolation from civilization she endured during her 28-year term at the newspaper, she said she had remained in her cubicle as a “matter of principle.”
A spokesman for Mr. Libby said the indicted former top aide to the Vice President wrote a letter to Ms. Miller last week noting, “It’s almost winter now. Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will soon look dead as newspapers. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them.”
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8th Army Korea 68-69 |
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PhantomSgt
Vice Admiral
Joined: 10 Sep 2004
Posts: 972
Location: GUAM, USA
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| Posted: Thu Nov 10, 2005 6:15 pm Post subject: |
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Finally a member of the MSM resigns err... retires in disgrace. Dan Rather should follow her lead.
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Retired AF E-8
Independent that leans right of center. |
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