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Just the facts?

WMDs and Judith Miller

Romenesko is all over one of the more interesting sidebars in the ongoing squawk over WMDs. Jim links to various parties about the interesting way in which the New York Times and Washington Post have approached the fallen cherry tree on the White House lawn.

"I think The Post is more interested in pursuing the story," said New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen, speaking of W.M.D.’s.

The New York Observer's Sridhar Pappu takes a hard look at both newspapers' coverage, including the questionable reporting of Judith Miller, who some have claimed was doing little more than parroting press releases from Ahmed Chalabi.

Of course, The Times has had its share of earth-rattling breaks. There was the monumentally controversial (and much-maligned) April 21 story, in which Judith Miller reported that a scientist in Saddam Hussein’s weapons program stated that the illicit weapons were destroyed just before the war. The piece, however, also disclosed that Ms. Miller had made agreements with military officials not to visit or speak to the scientist directly, and she also submitted her copy to them for approval.

Howard Kurtz is Romenesko's headliner link, however, and Howie the Post columnist throws some gasoline onto the fire:

New York Times reporter Judith Miller played a highly unusual role in an Army unit assigned to search for dangerous Iraqi weapons, according to U.S. military officials, prompting criticism that the unit was turned into what one official called a "rogue operation."

More than a half-dozen military officers said that Miller acted as a middleman between the Army unit with which she was embedded and Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi....

Viewed from one perspective, Miller, a Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent, nationally recognized expert on weapons of mass destruction and co-author of a best-selling book on bioterrorism, was acting as an aggressive journalist. She ferreted out sources, used her long-standing relationship with Chalabi to pursue potential stories and, in the process, helped the United States take custody of two important Iraqis....

"This was totally out of their lane, getting involved with human intelligence," said one military officer who, like several others interviewed, declined to be named because he is not an authorized spokesman. But, the officer said of Miller, "this woman came in with a plan. She was leading them. . . . She ended up almost hijacking the mission."

The Australian press quotes the Columbia Journalism Review's Russ Baker extensively in their Judith Miller coverage.

Exactly who was feeding her information and what their motives might have been remain unclear. On May 26 the Washington Post published an internal New York Times memo in which Miller said the main source for her WMD articles was Ahmad Chalabi, an exiled leader who is close to top Pentagon officials - and who has for years been trying to come up with a justification for an invasion. Miller insists that Chalabi has never been an unnamed source in her Iraqi coverage, yet, in her WMD pieces, he does not appear as a named one either.

Each time Miller produces an article touting terrorist links to WMDs, she almost always mentions that al-Qaeda's capability to deploy or develop these types of weapons has been judged to be crude at best. She also uses plenty of "might haves" and "could haves". Despite this, Miller's "scoops" were picked up by other media and helped drum up support for extreme anti-terrorism measures by the Bush Administration domestically (in the Patriot Act) and internationally (the invasion of Iraq).

Neither Miller or the New York Times looks good in this one. CounterPunch's David Lindorff provides additional background on the Miller-Chalabi affair:

Citing New Yorker writer Seymour Hersh, Kurtz suggests that Chalabi was a key source of WMD "evidence" for the infamously biased "intelligence unit" known as the Cabal set up in the Pentagon by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last fall, when he found he couldn't get what he wanted from the CIA. Kurtz goes on to say, "Chalabi may have been feeding the (New York) Times and other news organizations the same disputed information."

More on Iraq from ITV, Paul Krugman, The Hill, Paul Salopek, The Evening Standard, and The Boston Globe.

—posted by Mark Gisleson

Posted by Steve Perry at June 25, 2003 9:25 AM

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