Judith Miller should burn in hell

I'm not a particularly religious person but I do so hope there is a hell. If there is Judith Miller, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and Karl Rove should be roomies there. I don't know if anyone is going to be indicted, (my guess is yes to Rove and Libby), but even if special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald takes no action, damage has been done not only to faith in the federal government but to The New York Times as well.

Judith Miller's first-person account of her time before the grand jury is quite simply a joke. Not only does it reveal how in bed she is with this administration (and perhaps with a former Defense Secretary) but how she either has sold her soul to the devil or is the devil herself. Her account is filled with "I believed I may have said but am not sure," "I thought, I might have said" "I cannot recall" etc. etc. It's total nonsense given clearly to protect her bosses Libby and Rove. She also reveals that she was given a security clearance while embedded in Iraq with the military. Excuse me? A security clearance? Since when do reporters get security clearances?

But the single most absurd part of her tale is that while she wrote down the name "Valerie Flame" instead of "Valerie Plame" in her notebook (which she just recently discovered) she claims she can't recall who was her source for the name! We know it was given to her orally rather than having read it somewhere as she mis-heard the proper name. Secondly, it appears in the notebook she used to interview Libby but she can't recall if he gave it to her. This of course was days before Robert Novak wrote his outing piece on Joe Wilson and shortly thereafter all hell broke loose in the press. But this 30 year veteran with the NYT and Pulitzer Prize winner can't recall her source? This is not some trivial detail like what she was wearing at the time but who outed an non-official cover, that is a secret agent, with the CIA. It is impossible to believe. Guess she's hoping for a Medal of Freedom.

Miller's personal account is a disgrace revealing how bad it is inside the beltway. First of all, what business does Rove and Libby have talking to a reporter about CIA employees on matters of national security? Don't they have better things to do with their time? How does a reporter get a security clearance? One of the Libby-Miller meetings was over a two hour breakfast at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington. So while "Scooter" and Judy were munching on $10.00 pieces of wheat toast and $8.00 glasses of orange juice, which you and I probably paid for, the vice president's chief of staff was revealing classified information to a reporter. It's actually humorous that what Libby and Rove claim they were objecting to was nepotism and cronyism in who selected Joe Wilson to go to Niger. And Miller was willing to deceive her readers by agreeing to refer to Libby, the chief of staff for Cheney as "a former Hill staffer" rather than a "senior administration official" since he had worked on the Capitol Hill. He was also former college school student but "according to a former college student" doesn't sound as important. The disgraceful account of her grand jury testimony goes on and on. These people are always the first to tell you how smart they are and how they remember everything and yet under oath they can't recall anything. It's sickening. Miller is obviously protecting Libby and god knows who else. Which raises another question, if she can't recall her source then why did she sit in jail for 85 days? If Libby didn't reveal classified information then why question his waiver to testify? No crime committed right Judy and a waiver to clear things up go testify. The real reasons are probably worse than we can imagine. Unfortunately this time the Rove smear machine went after someone, Plame, whom the law says you can't go after.

In any event, it makes me want to cancel my subscription to the NYT but I can't get home delivery of The Washington Post. I just hope Judy Miller isn't allowed to darken the doorstep of a once great newspaper.