Judy Miller: Iceberg to the Grey Lady

Does anyone understand what the hell the New York Times is doing? I've been a reader of the Grey Lady as the nation's paper of record for about 20 years now, but what's going on here makes no sense at all. Judy Miller is the iceberg that has managed to sink the Times ship.

How could one person manage to do this? Well to start with, the Times of late has not been exactly stable. The Jayson Blair fiasco caused all sorts of upheavals there, and into these turbulent waters floated iceberg Judy. She comes out as a star reporter, getting all sorts of scoops from Washington about the WMDs that we were going to war in Iraq over, gets herself assigned as the embedded reported with the guys going hunting, and according to some reports even starts using that position to tell the military guys where to go looking. There's only one problem. No WMDs.

Ouch. The Times suddenly has egg all over it's face because their star was totally wrong. On the plus side, the Times was also the place that broke the story that there were no WMDs with Nicholas Kristof and Wilson, so they tried to make amends, until Episode V: The White House Strike Back, and Judy manages to get tangled up in their attempt to torpedo Joe Wilson, who was shouting from the rooftop that the Emperor has no clothes.

Discrediting your critics is an old story when it comes to damage control, but old ones work well, and what the White House wanted to do was say "Joe Wilson isn't anybody, in fact the only reason he got sent was because his wife got him the job (get him out of the house or something, he was all about screwing up the hedge like some sort of Edward Scissorhands)." Except, his wife didn't work for the CIA, she worked for a consulting firm, that actually was the CIA, meaning her employment there was firmly in the world of "Top Secret" and then some.

Re-enter Judy. I don't think "Valerie Flame" was an error in her notebook at all. Were this Perry Mason, she'd be on the stand getting grilled and break down saying it was her intent all along to help in the discrediting of Joe Wilson. Here's where things get interesting. Judy would have had to know who Joe Wilson was. He'd served as roving ambassador/envoy/troubleshooter for the US government for a very long time having served under both Bush I and Clinton, and was a major player prior to Gulf War I. Inside the Times it would also be known that he was a major source for Kristof's piece first attacking the WMD argument. That of course is an idea that basically shoots big gaping holes in everything Judy had been doing at the Times, so who better to send after Joe than Judy who has every interest in seeing Joe go down.

"Valerie Flame," by that line of reasoning, is a reference for how to deal with the person who is punching holes in everything Judy has done. The ONLY good move the Times makes here is telling Judy she's not going to be the one to write up the bio on Wilson for them as the White House goes on the attack.

So now we come to the present day. Pat Fitzgerald has had Judy in lockup for the last three months and now she finally rolls over. Except, she doesn't. She doesn't recall who first told her about Valerie Plame. This does not hold water. If she doesn't remember, what was the point of refusing to testify? Protecting your source only makes sense if you KNOW WHO YOUR SOURCE IS. Judy claims not to. She agrees to only testify about her meetings with Libby in July, but doesn't bother telling anyone she'd met with him in June. She agrees to turn over redacted notes, but afterwards another notebook magically appears that is materially relevant that was not given. During all of this, the Times was backing her up. Now she's dragging them down.