…for Judith Miller. And I’m far from alone in this; read the letters from Salon.com’s readers.
They sure sound pissy, don’t they?
Well they might. I would be too, if I were an American reading of how the Fourth Estate betrayed my country and its trust so egregiously.
It’s bad enough that Miller is the hack responsible for peddling BushCo’s lies about Saddam’s nonexistent WMD in the New York Times. Now she’s been found guilty of sheltering a criminal, someone who leaked CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity to the media. Plame, a NOC (non-official cover) agent, is the wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had the audacity to tell the truth as uncovered by his own investigation: that Saddam Hussein did NOT buy yellowcake uranium from Niger, nor did he have a nuclear weapons program in place to use it. Since Plame had no official ties to the government (hence the NOC designation), she was particularly vulnerable to potential assassins. Had she been killed as a result of her blown cover, the person who blew it would be as responsible for her murder as the killer himself. Maybe more so, since to knowingly permit a murder is tantamount to ordering one.
So Judith Miller, in knowingly peddling a false WMD story, is not only a liar herself; in refusing to reveal who leaked Valerie Plame’s identity to her (and five others), she’s covering the ass of someone who wanted Valerie Plame dead as revenge for her husband’s honesty. BushCo’s lies are lethal to anyone who stands in their way, it seems. But they can’t shield Ahmed Chalabi’s pet stenographer from prison, so thank Nemesis for small mercies.
Still, don’t look for any big displays of integrity on Miller’s part now. According to CBS’s Jim Stewart, Miller has said, “I won’t testify. The risks are too great. The government is too powerful.”
Without testifying, still, she’s let it pretty much slip who the evil leaker was. It’s clearly the power behind the Dimwitted Dauphin’s throne. Can you say TURDBLOSSOM?
I knew you could.
It doesn’t do for any reporter to be so tight with a criminal administration that she’s willing to cover for it. This is not about Miller’s free speech rights, but about her role in a criminal conspiracy. A source who’s guilty of a crime doesn’t deserve to be kept confidential by any reporter. That’s a serious breach of journalistic ethics–right up there with knowingly filing false news. It’s one thing to guard a whistleblower’s identity, and quite another to cover for a callous would-be murder conspirator.
So I shed no tears for Judith Miller. She gives journalists a bad name. They’re already hurting as it is, seeing how big corporate owners are hamstringing them at every step, and right-wing blogtards are dogging them in the hopes of pulling another “Rathergate”. They don’t need the likes of her to rob them further of credibility.
Book ‘er, Dano. And don’t be too gentle with the ‘cuffs.
