What the New York Times Doesn't Want You to Know

by emptywheel

On Diane Rehm today (Real Player Windows Media), MoDo (whose speculations have got to have more credibility than mine) agrees with one of my speculations--that Joe Lelyveld, and not Jill Abramson--was giving Judy Miller assignments during the period of the Plame leak. Here's my transcription of MoDo's comment:

Maybe it was Joe Lelyveld who gave her that assignment that she went to Scooter on, which was to figure out what went wrong with her reporting on WMD. And I think he should have been interviewed in that piece. (starts at 36:40)

If MoDo's correct and Lelyveld was in charge of Judy's assignments, by not interviewing Lelyveld the NYT has guaranteed they would not give a clear picture of what Judy was doing when she got "entangled" in the outing of a CIA NOC.

MoDo's speculation fleshes out what we already know (but the NYT won't tell) Judy was doing in the period after she returned from Iraq. The NY Post reported in a June 29 2003 article that editors' concerns about Judy's crummy reporting led them to assign her babysitters:

TIMES BRASS PUTS LEASH ON MILLER

Miller and a Times spokesman insist all is well. But she is now part of a "team" doing reporting on the weapons of mass destruction - a move which at least one source said was triggered by the editors' concerns about her reporting methods.

[snip]

Science reporter William Broad and one other reporter have been teamed with Miller, a source said.

Judy may not have been forthcoming for this NY Post article, but she did confirm the WMD team in her own tell all.

Now I was assigned to a team of reporters at The Times examining why no such weapons had been found.

The babysitters actually precede Lelyveld's return as editor, since Judy's first article with Broad was on May 21 (Lelyveld returned on June 5). But that first article was another credulous transcription of Administration leaks. In her first article with Broad, Judy seems to have been leaked the contents of a CIA white paper proclaiming the famous trailers were mobile weapons labs.We know it was a leak because Judy printed it the NYT later admitted to the anger the leak caused in some corners of the intelligence community.

The details of Mr. Kay's findings have been closely held within the administration as part of a strategy that officials said was intended both to prevent unauthorized leaks and to minimize internal disputes about any emerging findings. Issues related to the Iraqi weapons program have been contentious inside the administration as well as outside, with the State Department's intelligence branch and some officials at the Defense Intelligence Agency taking issue with a report made public in May by the C.I.A. that said mysterious trailers discovered in Iraq were used to manufacture biological weapons. [emphasis mine]

The May 21 article makes it clear, though, that the leak came from the same "senior administration officials" that Judy was so "entangled" with on all the rest of her stories.

United States intelligence agencies have concluded that two mysterious trailers found in Iraq were mobile units to produce germs for weapons, but they have found neither biological agents nor evidence that the equipment was used to make such arms, according to senior administration officials.

The officials said intelligence analysts in Washington and Baghdad reached their conclusion about the trailers after analyzing, and rejecting, alternative theories of how they could have been used. Their consensus was in a paper presented to the White House late Monday. [emphasis mine]

So it appears the CIA reported initial results of the analysis of the trailers, then Libby dutifully reported those early results to Judy. Gee, I wonder if this report was one of the things Fitzgerald showed Judy during her second grand jury appearance? The time Fitzgerald was demonstrating that Libby had leaked classified things to Judy in the past?

In any case, it's the second article with Broad, published two days after Lelyveld arrived, where things get interesting. For the first time, it seems like, Judy's name gets attached to a somewhat balanced article.

Now, intelligence analysts stationed in the Middle East, as well as in the United States and Britain, are disclosing serious doubts about the administration's conclusions in what appears to be a bitter debate within the intelligence community.

Judy still tries to give the story the Administration's spin.

A senior administration official conceded that ''some analysts give the hydrogen claim more credence.'' But he asserted that the majority still linked the Iraqi trailers to germ weapons.

The depth of dissent is hard to gauge. Even if it turns out to be a minority view, which seems likely, the skepticism is significant given the image of consensus that Washington has projected and the political reliance the administration has come to place on the mobile units. At the recent summit meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, President Bush cited the trailers as evidence of illegal Iraqi arms.

But hey, even including an opposing viewpoint is a start. Baby steps first, you know? Both Judy and NYT editors have pointed to this article, incidentally, as a phenomenal thing, Judy debunking her own crappy reporting (I wonder how William Broad feels about this). Just this week, in her response to Calame's column on her, Judy said.

[Exclusive access to secret information] 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.

So it seems, given MoDo's comment of today, we have a pretty clear understanding of what Judy's assignment from Lelyveld was. To provide an explanation of "what went wrong with her reporting on WMD."

This no doubt explains why Judy told Libby (she says in her tell all) that he needed to give her something more than rewarmed Administration lies about WMD. Well, she didn't phrase it exactly that way:

I said I had told Mr. Libby that if The Times was going to do an article, the newspaper needed more than a recap of the administration's weapons arguments.

Lelyveld was apparently monitoring her writing, making sure she was fulfilling the assignment (explaining what went wrong with her writing) rather than channeling disinformation again. And I'm sure he--like the rest of us--can tell Administration BS when he sees it.

I'm still trying to figure out how Judy freed herself from the babysitters in late July. My hunch is that as soon as Keller got appointed, she was given her solo-byline back. And my hunch is that Keller was much more liberal in his definition of figuring out "what went wrong with her reporting on WMD" than Lelyveld. Just his idea of "kicking the issue down the road," you understand.

I wish we had dealt with the controversy over our coverage of WMD as soon as I became executive editor. At the time, we thought we had compelling reasons for kicking the issue down the road. The paper had just been through a major trauma, the Jayson Blair episode, and needed to regain its equilibrium. It felt somehow unsavory to begin a tenure by attacking our predecessors.

Otherwise, I can't understand why Lelyveld, Keller, or Jill Abramson would seriously believe Judy's July 20 article really explains why her reporting was so crummy.

But we're not likely to find this out very easily. As Judy makes clear in her fiery retort to Calame, the NYT is hiding details of the internal editorial policy disputes.

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.

Low profile indeed. Maybe this is why the NYT is in the process of buying Judy off.

Jayson Blair fucked up and tainted the Grey Lady ... and he was fired (actually, apparently he resigned albeit under a good deal of duress). And then Blair went off and wrote a tell-all on the inner workings of his scandal.

But Judy? They're not firing Judy, they're negotiating her departure.

New York Times reporter Judith Miller has begun discussing her future employment options with the newspaper, including the possibility of a severance package, a lawyer familiar with the matter, said yesterday.

The discussion about her future comes several days after the public rupture of the relationship between the Times and Ms. Miller, a 28-year veteran of the paper. Both the editor and the publisher of the Times have expressed regret for their unequivocal support for Ms. Miller when she spent 85 days in jail for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury investigating the unmasking of a Central Intelligence Agency operative.

The negotiations began with a face-to-face meeting Monday morning between Ms. Miller and the publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., said the lawyer familiar with the situation. A spokeswoman for the New York Times declined to comment. Ms. Miller didn't return calls.

Any bets on whether that severance agreement includes restrictions on what Judy can publish about the inner workings of the NYT? Any bets on whether that severance agreement limits what Judy can publish in her future book? Sulzberger seems to be guaranteeing his good friend Judy doesn't tell any more truths in her book than she did in her reporting for him.

Hey Judy? What's the going rate to buy off a martyr for the First Amendment?

---

Speaking of silencing the media, anyone want to bet CBS' Andrew Hayward is stepping down because someone still won't let him show the 60 minutes piece that reveals the truth behind the Niger forgeries? You have to admit the timing is curious, what with the Repubblica scoops. There CBS is, with a piece all done on the Niger forgeries, but no one will let them show it.

Comments

[ccobb]

They are likely negotiating her departure because she's a member of the union at the NYT. Sometimes you gotta take the good with the bad to have empowered workers on the job. I know the same thing would happen in my union (DGA) if a well known director ran amok.

[emptywheel]

ccobb

She may be senior enough not to be a union member. Don't know about that.

But yes, they'd have to negotiate if she were unwilling to resign, as Blair did. I rather suspect they're making it worth her while to resign. Which Judy would no doubt prefer to do anyway, because she values her last shreds of dignity more than she does an unemployment check.

[lukery]

EW - judy herself says that the editor she was referring to was jill (not Joe) in her letter to barney

[emptywheel]

lukery

Look at her article. She says "editors."

My guess is Lelyveld in June, and when that didn't work, Abramson in July.

[antiaristo]

emptywheel,

Iraqi mobile labs nothing to do with germ warfare, report finds

Peter Beaumont, Antony Barnett and Gaby Hinsliff
Sunday June 15, 2003
The Observer

An official British investigation into two trailers found in northern Iraq has concluded they are not mobile germ warfare labs, as was claimed by Tony Blair and President George Bush, but were for the production of hydrogen to fill artillery balloons, as the Iraqis have continued to insist.
The conclusion by biological weapons experts working for the British Government is an embarrassment for the Prime Minister, who has claimed that the discovery of the labs proved that Iraq retained weapons of mass destruction and justified the case for going to war against Saddam Hussein.

Instead, a British scientist and biological weapons expert, who has examined the trailers in Iraq, told The Observer last week: 'They are not mobile germ warfare laboratories. You could not use them for making biological weapons. They do not even look like them. They are exactly what the Iraqis said they were - facilities for the production of hydrogen gas to fill balloons.'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,977916,00.html

Any guesses on who was that scientist? It was later confirmed by the Hutton Inquiry that it was Dr David Kelly

There's a good thread on pulling this all together at
http://p216.ezboard.com/frigorousintuitionfrm10.showMessageRange?topicID=1627.topic&start=41&stop=54

[emptywheel]

Antiaristo

Hmmm. That is interesting. It looks like Kelly would have announced this after Judy's June 7 article (and therefore after some senior intelligence people in the US debunked the trailers, although not definitively). But it is interesting.

[Shalimar]

You have more faith in her good friend Sulzberger than I do. She won't write for the Times again, but I could see her coming out of this with several years of salary and the freedom to write whatever she wants in the future. Sulzberger has been the huge problem at the NY Times. Judy Miller is just a symptom.

[emptywheel]

Shalimar

I don't doubt she'll get several years of salary. But Pinch is under a lot of pressure himself right now (revolt of the relatives! egads!!) I suspect strongly he has been instructed to make sure Judy doesn't cause the family any more embarrassment, whatever the cost.

[jwp]

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