New Arianna post re Judy Miller-her bizarre relationship with the pentagon

[Pirate Smile]

Judy Miller: How Deep Do Her Connections Run?

The more I'm reading about Judy Miller and her actions leading up to and during the early days of the war, and then through the unfolding Plame-Rove-Libby-Gonzalez-Card scandal, the more I'm struck by the special access and relationships she enjoyed with many of the key players in the Iraq debacle (which, at the end of the day, is really what Plamegate is all about).

For starters, of course, we have her still unfolding involvement in the Plame leak. Earlier this month, Howard Kurtz reported that Miller and Libby spoke a few days before Novak outed Plame -- and I'm hearing that the Libby/Miller conversation occurred over breakfast in Washington. Did Valerie Plame come up -- and, if so, who brought her up? There is no question that Miller was angry at Joe Wilson… and continues to be. A social acquaintance of Miller told me that, once, when she spoke of Wilson, it was with "a passionate and heated disgust that went beyond the political and included an irrelevant bit of deeply personal innuendo about him, her mouth twisting in hatred."

Miller's special relationships go much further than Scooter Libby, Richard Perle and the rest of the neocon establishment. Take her involvement as an embedded reporter during the war with the Pentagon’s Mobile Exploitation Team (MET) Alpha -- the unit charged with hunting down Saddam's WMD. As extensively reported by both Kurtz and New York Magazine’s Franklin Foer, Miller's time with the unit was highly unusual.

-snip-
Foer cites military and New York Times sources as saying that Miller's assignment was so sensitive that Don Rumsfeld himself signed off on it. Once embedded, Miller acted as much more than a reporter. Kurtz quotes one military officer as saying that the MET Alpha unit became a "Judith Miller team." Another officer said that Miller "came in with a plan. She was leading them… She ended up almost hijacking the mission." A third officer, a senior staffer of the 75th Exploitation Task Force, of which MET Alpha was a part, put it this way: "It’s impossible to exaggerate the impact she had on the mission of this unit, and not for the better."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/arianna-huffington/judy-miller-how-deep-do_4845.html

[Beetwasher]

1. Judy Miller's Humongous, Expensive, Disastrous, Pathetic SNIPE HUNT

Holy cow!

[burythehatchet]

2. I'll keep saying it until it's proven

Judy Miller was aware of the forgeries in the first place. She cannot afford to talk. She would be dead within 12 hours.

[rkc3]

5. I was thinking the same thing - she's in jail for her own good.

[Athame]

9. She also has information about the David Kelly affair in GB

He e-mailed her the day before he died about "dark actors playing games."

Editor and Publisher

Miller's 2nd Draft of WMD History

By William E. Jackson Jr.

Published: July 23, 2003

News Analysis

Buried in a July 19 New York Times article ("British Arms Expert at Center of Dispute on Iraq Data Is Found Dead") by Warren Hoge and Judith Miller was a cryptic allusion: Dr. David Kelly referred to "many dark actors playing games" within military and intelligence circles of the British government. Kelly's remarks were included in an e-mail message to a reporter, sent shortly before Kelly committed suicide. The reporter, later identified in news reports, was none other than Miller, a friend of the deceased. As in the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq this past spring, she had become a subject of the news, not just a reporter of it.

The following day, the Times published a story by Miller under her sole byline for the first time since she departed the war zone in May. Entitled "A Chronicle of Confusion in the U.S. Hunt for Hussein's Chemical and Germ Weapons," the lengthy analysis amounted to a mea culpa on the part of the star reporter and an attempt by "the newspaper of record" to play catch-up in covering the most controversial issue following the U.S. invasion of Iraq -- the search for the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that had been cited by the Bush administration as an imminent threat.

In effect, Miller substantially revised her first draft of history, written when reporting from the field as an embedded part of a Central Command search unit, some two months after her widely criticized stories had made the case that evidence of Saddam's unconventional weapons was being found.
>snip<

She's hiding a lot more than her sources, IMHO.

[burythehatchet]

11. I did catch that but haven't fully processed it yet

My instinct, Kelly thought she was an actual reporter and told her stuff he shouldn't have. And I don't even read spy novels.

[in_cog_ni_to]

3. Whoa! I hope Fitzgerald has all this info!

MOBILE EXPLOITATION Team???? Good g-d. How apropos is that? :eyes: What a disgusting little wench she is. I hope she ends up in prison for a LONG, LONG time.

[burythehatchet]

4. my sentiments exactly. I am amazed

when people see her as some kind of 1st amendment martyr. She is neo-con operative, and nothing else. Her right to call herself a reporter was revoked by burythehatchet long ago.

[leesa]

7. Absolutely. She's a BushCo/PNAC tool. Just doing her job.

Is her husband PNAC? Is she?

[meg]

6. Don't take your eyes off of Rove, Bush, Cheney and Libby

for one moment. Sure Judy Miller is scum and its fun to bash her, but don't forget who's really the problem and who's really the danger to our country.

[KittyWampus]

8. Warmongers & Profiteers Will Be Who They Are. Journalists Have A Duty

to call them out and expose the Truth.

BFEE and Neocons wouldn't be possible without a complicit press.

[Pirate Smile]

13. It is amazing how much she is tied in with them.

[dogday]

10. This is just too much

for the dog to handle. A reporter giving orders to soldiers. I think that is so freaking bad and shows just what the SOD thinks about his soldiers.....

[Pirate Smile]

12. kick

[Disturbed]

14. If she is shielding Bolton...

is that Club Fed she is in really safe for her?

Meaning: If she has info how safe is she if she is not trusted to forever not reveal what she knows?

I believe that she deserves at least 20 years in a real prison.