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It's the Judy Miller Show!

Now that Judy has said goodbye to her beloved cohorts at the NYT, she flips one to us, her faithful readers, on her blog.

Says Miller:

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.

...which would not have applied to you.

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.

Name one. Just one. One person at the Times who was so offended by your betrayal of the First Amendment that you could no longer remain there, Judy. Just one. That's all I want, just one name.

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.

You mean all that Indiana Jones shit from Bagdad was not intended as self-aggrandizing camp and melodrama? Wow, to think that was an accident. The mind reels at what you could achieve if you actually tried, Judy.

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.

...although you yourself have never accepted anything approaching responsibility in the matter other than acknowledging you were lied to. When are we finally going to have a chorus of "I was proved fucking wrong?"

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.

Yes, if only you'd been allowed to go back to Iraq, pin a few more medals on and churn just a bit more bullshit, everything would've been made clear. How dare your editors reign you in after all your shoddy reporting. After all, you once made a comment at Barnard to the effect that you might be a complete credulous dupe. I guess you were proved fucking right on at least one point.

The right of reply and the obligation to correct inaccuracies are also the mark of a free and responsible press.

Yeah. And we're still waiting.

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.

...which would not have applied to you.

I will continue speaking in support of a Federal shield law.

...which would not have applied to you.

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.

Why don't you start with telling everybody what the hell went on? Maybe take a crash course in the Roseanne Barr School of Repressed Memory Recovery and figure out who else was indicated in your notes? How you "forgot" about the June 23 meeting with Scooter Libby and had to have a bit of assistance (under threat of indictment) and suddenly remembered in a flash of inspiration?

There are many, many services you could render to the country and to posterity just by coming clean, Judy. Employment opportunities look scarce as Wingnuttia gets ready to use far worse words than "entanglement" as they assault your credibility to save Scooter and the administration. Those powerful men you love so much are poised to tear you to shreds. I think you need some new friends.

Some honest self-appraisal and a little candor would be a good start.

posted by Jane Hamsher @ 11/09/2005 07:28:00 PM