Judith Miller (journalist)
Encyclopedia
Judith Miller is a Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...

-winning American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 journalist, formerly of the New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

 Washington bureau. Her coverage of Iraq's alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction
Weapons of mass destruction
A weapon of mass destruction is a weapon that can kill and bring significant harm to a large number of humans and/or cause great damage to man-made structures , natural structures , or the biosphere in general...

 (WMD) program both before and after the 2003 invasion
2003 invasion of Iraq
The 2003 invasion of Iraq , was the start of the conflict known as the Iraq War, or Operation Iraqi Freedom, in which a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq and toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein in 21 days of major combat operations...

 generated much controversy. A number of stories she wrote while working for The New York Times later turned out to be inaccurate or completely false.

Miller was later involved in disclosing Valerie Plame's identity as CIA personnel
Plame affair
The Plame Affair involved the identification of Valerie Plame Wilson as a covert Central Intelligence Agency officer. Mrs. Wilson's relationship with the CIA was formerly classified information...

. She spent three months in jail for claiming reporter's privilege and refusing to reveal her sources in the CIA leak. Miller retired from her job at the New York Times in November 2005. Later she was a contributor to the Fox News Channel
Fox News Channel
Fox News Channel , often called Fox News, is a cable and satellite television news channel owned by the Fox Entertainment Group, a subsidiary of News Corporation...

 and a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute
Manhattan Institute
The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research is a conservative, market-oriented think tank established in New York City in 1978 by Antony Fisher and William J...

 think-tank. On December 29, 2010, numerous media outlets reported that she had signed on as a contributing writer to the conservative magazine Newsmax.

Early life and education

Born in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 to a Jewish father and an Irish Catholic
Irish Catholic
Irish Catholic is a term used to describe people who are both Roman Catholic and Irish .Note: the term is not used to describe a variant of Catholicism. More particularly, it is not a separate creed or sect in the sense that "Anglo-Catholic", "Old Catholic", "Eastern Orthodox Catholic" might be...

 mother, Judith Miller grew up in Miami
Miami, Florida
Miami is a city located on the Atlantic coast in southeastern Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, the most populous county in Florida and the eighth-most populous county in the United States with a population of 2,500,625...

 and Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...

, where she graduated from Hollywood High School
Hollywood High School
Hollywood High School is a Los Angeles Unified School District high school located at the intersection of North Highland Avenue and West Sunset Boulevard in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles, California.-History:...

. Her father, Bill Miller, was the owner of a famous night club in New Jersey and later in Las Vegas
Las Vegas, Nevada
Las Vegas is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and is also the county seat of Clark County, Nevada. Las Vegas is an internationally renowned major resort city for gambling, shopping, and fine dining. The city bills itself as The Entertainment Capital of the World, and is famous...

. Her sister Susan has a degree in photography from the San Francisco Art Institute. Her half-brother Jimmy Miller
Jimmy Miller (producer)
James "Jimmy" Miller was a Brooklyn, New York-born record producer and musician who produced dozens of albums between the mid-1960s and early 1990s, including landmark recordings for Blind Faith, Traffic, the Plasmatics, Motorhead, The World Bank and Primal Scream...

 was an in-demand record producer during the late 1960s and early '70s, working in support of the Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones are an English rock band, formed in London in April 1962 by Brian Jones , Ian Stewart , Mick Jagger , and Keith Richards . Bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts completed the early line-up...

, Traffic
Traffic (band)
Traffic were an English rock band whose members came from the West Midlands. The group formed in April 1967 by Steve Winwood, Jim Capaldi, Chris Wood and Dave Mason...

, the Spencer Davis Group
Spencer Davis Group
The Spencer Davis Group was a mid-1960s British beat group from Birmingham, England, formed by Spencer Davis with Steve Winwood and his brother Muff Winwood...

 and Delaney and Bonnie, among others.

Judith Miller attended Ohio State University
Ohio State University
The Ohio State University, commonly referred to as Ohio State, is a public research university located in Columbus, Ohio. It was originally founded in 1870 as a land-grant university and is currently the third largest university campus in the United States...

 where she was a member of Kappa Alpha Theta
Kappa Alpha Theta
Kappa Alpha Theta , also known as Theta, is an international fraternity for women founded on January 27, 1870 at DePauw University, formerly Indiana Asbury...

 sorority. She graduated from Barnard College
Barnard College
Barnard College is a private women's liberal arts college and a member of the Seven Sisters. Founded in 1889, Barnard has been affiliated with Columbia University since 1900. The campus stretches along Broadway between 116th and 120th Streets in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in the borough...

 in 1969 and received a master's degree in public affairs from Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....

's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs
Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs
The Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs is a professional public policy school at Princeton University. The school has granted undergraduate A.B. degrees since 1930 and graduate degrees since 1948...

. In 1971, while at Princeton, Miller traveled to Jerusalem to research a paper. She became fascinated with the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, and spent the rest of the summer traveling for the first time to Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

, Jordan
Jordan
Jordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , Al-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya al-Hashemiyya) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing...

 and Lebanon
Lebanon
Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...

. As a correspondent for The Progressive
The Progressive
The Progressive is an American monthly magazine of politics, culture and progressivism with a pronounced liberal perspective on some issues. Known for its pacifism, it has strongly opposed military interventions, such as the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. The magazine also devotes much coverage...

 and National Public Radio, Miller turned her academic interest into a professional one, traveling to the region and cultivating a network of highly placed sources.

New York Times Career: 1977–2002

According to Salon.com
Salon.com
Salon.com, part of Salon Media Group , often just called Salon, is an online liberal magazine, with content updated each weekday. Salon was founded by David Talbot and launched on November 20, 1995. It was the internet's first online-only commercial publication. The magazine focuses on U.S...

, "Since her early days at the Times, when she inserted CIA misinformation into a piece on Libya
Libya
Libya is an African country in the Maghreb region of North Africa bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west....

, [Miller]'s always been a tool of power. She was the voice of the Defense Department
United States Department of Defense
The United States Department of Defense is the U.S...

, embedded at the Times."

Anthrax hoax victim

On October 12, 2001, Miller opened an anthrax hoax letter mailed to her New York Times office. The 2001 anthrax attacks
2001 anthrax attacks
The 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States, also known as Amerithrax from its Federal Bureau of Investigation case name, occurred over the course of several weeks beginning on Tuesday, September 18, 2001, one week after the September 11 attacks. Letters containing anthrax spores were mailed to...

 had begun occurring in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks
September 11, 2001 attacks
The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks (also referred to as September 11, September 11th or 9/119/11 is pronounced "nine eleven". The slash is not part of the pronunciation...

, with anthrax-laced letters sent to ABC News
ABC News
ABC News is the news gathering and broadcasting division of American broadcast television network ABC, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company...

, CBS News
CBS News
CBS News is the news division of American television and radio network CBS. The current chairman is Jeff Fager who is also the executive producer of 60 Minutes, while the current president of CBS News is David Rhodes. CBS News' flagship program is the CBS Evening News, hosted by the network's main...

, NBC News
NBC News
NBC News is the news division of American television network NBC. It first started broadcasting in February 21, 1940. NBC Nightly News has aired from Studio 3B, located on floors 3 of the NBC Studios is the headquarters of the GE Building forms the centerpiece of 30th Rockefeller Center it is...

 and the New York Post
New York Post
The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...

, all in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, as well as the National Enquirer in Boca Raton, Florida
Boca Raton, Florida
Boca Raton is a city in Palm Beach County, Florida, USA, incorporated in May 1925. In the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 74,764; the 2006 population recorded by the U.S. Census Bureau was 86,396. However, the majority of the people under the postal address of Boca Raton, about...

. Two additional letters (with a higher grade of anthrax) were sent on October 9, 2001 to Senators Tom Daschle
Tom Daschle
Thomas Andrew "Tom" Daschle is a former U.S. Senator from South Dakota and former U.S. Senate Majority Leader. He is a member of the Democratic Party....

 and Patrick Leahy
Patrick Leahy
Patrick Joseph Leahy is the senior United States Senator from Vermont and member of the Democratic Party. He is the first and only elected Democratic United States Senator in Vermont's history. He is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Leahy is the second most senior U.S. Senator,...

 in Washington. Twenty-two people were infected; five died. In 2008, as the government's investigation of these mailings focused on Bruce Ivins, who later committed suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...

. The official view is that Ivins acted alone.

Miller was the only major U.S. media reporter, and the New York Times the only major U.S. media organization, to be victimized by a fake anthrax letter in the fall of 2001. Miller had reported extensively on the subject of biological threats and had co-authored, with Stephen Engelberg and William Broad
William Broad
William J. Broad is an author and a Senior Writer at The New York Times.-Awards:Broad has won two Pulitzer Prizes with Times colleagues, as well as an Emmy and a DuPont. He won the Pulitzers for coverage of the space shuttle Challenger disaster and the feasibility of antimissile arms...

, a book on bio-terrorism, Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War
Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War
Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War is a #1 New York Times Nonfiction Best Seller. It was written by The New York Times journalists Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg, and William Broad...

 which was published on October 2, 2001. Miller co-authored an article on Pentagon plans to develop a more potent version of weaponized anthrax, "U.S. Germ Warfare Research Pushes Treaty Limits", published in the New York Times on September 4, 2001, weeks before the first anthrax mailings. Miller also participated in a senior-level bio-terror attack simulation on Oklahoma City
Oklahoma city
Oklahoma City is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Oklahoma.Oklahoma City may also refer to:*Oklahoma City metropolitan area*Downtown Oklahoma City*Uptown Oklahoma City*Oklahoma City bombing*Oklahoma City National Memorial...

 conducted on June 22 and June 23, 2001 called "Operation Dark Winter
Operation Dark Winter
Operation Dark Winter was the code name for a senior-level bio-terrorist attack simulation conducted from June 22–23, 2001. It was designed to carry out a mock version of a covert and widespread smallpox attack on the United States...

"; her role was media reporter/observer.

Islamic charities search leak

Shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. government was considering adding the Holy Land Foundation to a list of organizations with suspected links to terrorism and was planning to search the premises of the organization. The information about the impending raid was given to Miller by a confidential source. On December 3, 2001, Miller telephoned the Holy Land Foundation for comment, and the New York Times published an article in the late edition papers and on its website that day. The next day, the government searched HLF's offices. These occurrences led to a lawsuit brought by US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
Alberto Gonzales
Alberto R. Gonzales was the 80th Attorney General of the United States. Gonzales was appointed to the post in February 2005 by President George W. Bush. Gonzales was the first Hispanic Attorney General in U.S. history and the highest-ranking Hispanic government official ever...

, with prosecutors claiming that Miller and her colleague Philip Shenon had queried this Islamic charity, and another, in ways that made them aware of the planned searches.

New York Times career: 2002–2005

"[T]he very qualities that endeared Miller to her editors at the New York Times—her ambition, her aggressiveness, her cultivation of sources by any means necessary, her hunger to be first—were the same ones that allowed her to get the WMD story so wrong."


Miller was criticized for her reporting on whether Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....

 had weapons of mass destruction
Weapons of mass destruction
A weapon of mass destruction is a weapon that can kill and bring significant harm to a large number of humans and/or cause great damage to man-made structures , natural structures , or the biosphere in general...

. As Salon.com
Salon.com
Salon.com, part of Salon Media Group , often just called Salon, is an online liberal magazine, with content updated each weekday. Salon was founded by David Talbot and launched on November 20, 1995. It was the internet's first online-only commercial publication. The magazine focuses on U.S...

 summarized: "Lying exile grifter Ahmad Chalabi fed her the worst of the nonsense designed to push America into toppling Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...

 (and giving Iraq to him), and she pushed that nonsense into the newspaper of record.... She was hyping bullshit stories about Iraq's WMD
WMD
WMD may refer to:* Weapon of mass destruction, a term used to describe munitions with the capacity to kill large numbers of human beings indiscriminately* Weighted mean difference, a measure in statistical meta-analysis...

 capabilities as far back as 1998, and in the run-up to the war, her front-page scoops were cited by the Bush administration as evidence that Saddam needed to be taken out, right away." On September 7, 2002, Miller and fellow New York Times reporter Michael R. Gordon reported the interception of metal tubes bound for Iraq. Her front-page story quoted unnamed "American officials" and "American intelligence experts" who said the tubes were intended to be used to enrich nuclear material, and cited unnamed "Bush administration officials" who claimed that in recent months, Iraq "stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb". Miller added that
"Mr. Hussein's dogged insistence on pursuing his nuclear ambitions, along with what defectors described in interviews as Iraq's push to improve and expand Baghdad's chemical and biological arsenals, have brought Iraq and the United States to the brink of war."


Shortly after Miller's article was published, Condoleezza Rice
Condoleezza Rice
Condoleezza Rice is an American political scientist and diplomat. She served as the 66th United States Secretary of State, and was the second person to hold that office in the administration of President George W. Bush...

, Colin Powell
Colin Powell
Colin Luther Powell is an American statesman and a retired four-star general in the United States Army. He was the 65th United States Secretary of State, serving under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005. He was the first African American to serve in that position. During his military...

 and Donald Rumsfeld
Donald Rumsfeld
Donald Henry Rumsfeld is an American politician and businessman. Rumsfeld served as the 13th Secretary of Defense from 1975 to 1977 under President Gerald Ford, and as the 21st Secretary of Defense from 2001 to 2006 under President George W. Bush. He is both the youngest and the oldest person to...

 all appeared on television and pointed to Miller's story as a contributory motive for going to war. Miller said of the controversy, "[M]y job isn't to assess the government's information and be an independent intelligence analyst myself. My job is to tell readers of the New York Times what the government thought about Iraq's arsenal." Some have criticized this position, believing that a crucial function of a journalist is independently to assess information, to question sources, and to analyze information before reporting it.

Miller later claimed, based on second-hand statements from the military unit she was embedded with, that WMDs had been found in Iraq. This again was widely repeated in the press. "Well, I think they found something more than a smoking gun", Miller said on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
PBS NewsHour is an evening television news program broadcast weeknights on the Public Broadcasting Service in the United States. The show is produced by MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, a company co-owned by former anchors Jim Lehrer and Robert MacNeil, and Liberty Media, which owns a 65% stake in the...

. "What they've found is a silver bullet in the form of a person, an Iraqi individual, a scientist, as we've called him, who really worked on the programs, who knows them firsthand, and who has led MET Alpha people to some pretty startling conclusions." This turned out to be false.

On May 26, 2004, a week after the U.S. government apparently severed ties with Ahmed Chalabi
Ahmed Chalabi
Ahmed Abdel Hadi Chalabi is an Iraqi politician. He was interim oil minister in Iraq in April-May 2005 and December-January 2006 and deputy prime minister from May 2005 until May 2006. Chalabi failed to win a seat in parliament in the December 2005 elections, and when the new Iraqi cabinet was...

, a Times editorial acknowledged that some of that newspaper's coverage in the run-up to the war had relied too heavily on Chalabi and other Iraqi exiles bent on regime change. It also regretted that "information that was controversial [was] allowed to stand unchallenged". While the editorial rejected "blame on individual reporters", others noted that ten of the twelve flawed stories discussed had been written or co-written by Miller.

Miller has reacted angrily to criticism of her pre-war reporting. In a May 27, 2004 article in Salon, published the day after the Times mea culpa
Mea Culpa
Mea culpa is a Latin phrase that translates into English as "my mistake" or "my fault". To emphasize the message, the adjective "maxima" may be inserted, resulting in "mea maxima culpa," which would translate as "my most [grievous] fault."...

, James C. Moore quoted her: "You know what ... I was proved fucking right. That's what happened. People who disagreed with me were saying, 'There she goes again.' But I was proved fucking right." This quotation was originally in relation to another Miller story, wherein she indicated that trailers found in Iraq had been proven to be mobile weapons labs
Mobile weapons laboratory
Mobile weapons laboratories are bioreactors and other processing equipment to manufacture and process biological weapons that can be moved from location to location either by train or vehicle.-Iraqi Mobile weapons laboratories:...

. That too was later shown to be untrue. It was alleged later in Editor and Publisher that, while Miller's reporting "frequently does not meet published Times standards", she was not sanctioned and was given a freer rein than other reporters because she consistently delivered frequent front page scoops for the paper by cultivating top-ranking sources.

Two influential voices within the New York Times itself weighed in, attacking the accuracy of Miller's reporting and the liberties she took in the sourcing of her stories, which they claimed violated the paper's standards. In an op-ed piece Maureen Dowd wrote that "Judy admitted in the story that she 'got it totally wrong' about W.M.D. 'If your sources are wrong,' she said, 'you are wrong.' But investigative reporting is not stenography. . . Judy told The Times that she plans to write a book and intends to return to the newsroom, hoping to cover 'the same thing I've always covered—threats to our country.' If that were to happen, the institution most in danger would be the newspaper in your hands." (The promised book never materialized.)

In the next day's issue, then–public editor, Byron Calame, wrote, "Ms. Miller may still be best known for her role in a series of Times articles in 2002 and 2003 that strongly suggested Saddam Hussein already had or was acquiring an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction… Many of those articles turned out to be inaccurate." He concluded by recommending that her association with The Times be terminated: "[T]he problems facing her inside and outside the newsroom will make it difficult for her to return to the paper as a reporter."

On November 9, 2005, two weeks after the appearance of these pieces in the Times, Miller announced her retirement from the paper under pressure from the publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr. She contested both Calame's and Dowd's claims and gave no ground in defense of her work, but cited difficulty in performing her job effectively after having become an integral part of the stories she was sent to cover.

Failure to report source controversy

In July 2005, Miller was jailed for contempt of court
Contempt of court
Contempt of court is a court order which, in the context of a court trial or hearing, declares a person or organization to have disobeyed or been disrespectful of the court's authority...

 for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury
Grand jury
A grand jury is a type of jury that determines whether a criminal indictment will issue. Currently, only the United States retains grand juries, although some other common law jurisdictions formerly employed them, and most other jurisdictions employ some other type of preliminary hearing...

 investigating a leak naming Valerie Plame
Valerie Plame
Valerie Elise Plame Wilson , known as Valerie Plame, Valerie E. Wilson, and Valerie Plame Wilson, is a former United States CIA Operations Officer and the author of a memoir detailing her career and the events leading up to her resignation from the CIA.-Early life :Valerie Elise Plame was born on...

 as an undercover CIA officer. Miller did not write about Plame, but was reportedly in possession of evidence relevant to the leak investigation. According to a subpoena, Miller met with an unnamed government official, later revealed to be I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby
Lewis Libby
I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby is a former adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, later disbarred and convicted of a felony....

, Vice President Cheney
Dick Cheney
Richard Bruce "Dick" Cheney served as the 46th Vice President of the United States , under George W. Bush....

's Chief of Staff, on July 8, 2003, two days after former ambassador Joseph Wilson
Joseph C. Wilson
Joseph Charles Wilson IV is a former United States diplomat best known for his 2002 trip to Niger to investigate allegations that Saddam Hussein was attempting to purchase yellowcake uranium; his New York Times op-ed piece, "What I Didn't Find in Africa"; and the subsequent "outing" of his wife...

 (the husband of Plame) published an Op-Ed
Op-ed
An op-ed, abbreviated from opposite the editorial page , is a newspaper article that expresses the opinions of a named writer who is usually unaffiliated with the newspaper's editorial board...

 in the Times criticizing the Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....

 administration for "twisting" intelligence to justify war in Iraq. Plame's CIA identity was divulged publicly in a column by conservative political commentator Robert Novak
Robert Novak
Robert David Sanders "Bob" Novak was an American syndicated columnist, journalist, television personality, author, and conservative political commentator. After working for two newspapers before serving for the U.S. Army in the Korean War, he became a reporter for the Associated Press and then for...

 on July 14, 2003.

On July 16, 2005, The Washington Post reported that Miller could face criminal contempt charges, which could have extended her jail time six months beyond the four months than anticipated. The Post also suggested that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald
Patrick Fitzgerald
Patrick J. Fitzgerald is the current United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois and a member of the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Special Counsel...

 was particularly interested in hearing Miller's version of her encounter with Libby. Filings by Fitzgerald reportedly alleged that Miller's defiance of the court constituted a crime. On September 29, 2005, after spending 85 days in jail, Miller was released following a telephone call with Libby. He had reconfirmed the release of confidentiality which he had given her a year earlier, and which she already knew about. Under oath, Miller was questioned by Fitzgerald before a federal grand jury the following day, September 30, 2005 but was not relieved of contempt charges until after testifying again on October 12, 2005. For her second grand jury appearance, Miller produced a notebook from a previously-undisclosed meeting with Libby on June 23, 2003, several weeks before Wilson's New York Times editorial was published. According to Miller's notes from that earlier meeting, Libby disclosed that Joseph Wilson's wife was a CIA employee involved in her husband's trip to Niger. Miller's notebook from her July 8, 2003 meeting with Libby contains the name "Valerie Flame [sic]". This reference occurred six days before Novak published Plame's name and unmasked her as a CIA operative.

The New York Times published Miller's first-person account, "My Four Hours Testifying in the Federal Grand Jury Room", on October 16, 2005. After the First Amendment claim, she was widely derided for saying that she could not remember who gave her the name "Valerie Plame" but that she was sure it didn't come from Libby. Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer
Ari Fleischer
On May 19, 2003, he announced that he would resign during the summer, citing a desire to spend more time with his wife and to work in the private sector...

 testified, for example, that he was told Plame's name and CIA identity by Libby at lunch on July 7, 2003, one day before Libby's breakfast meeting with Miller. Her conduct in the Plame affair, and her published version of events, again drew fire from Times colleagues. In the op-ed piece cited above Maureen Dowd also wrote: "The Times's story and Judy's own first-person account had the unfortunate effect of raising more questions. As Bill [Keller] said yesterday in an e-mail note to the staff, Judy seemed to have 'misled' the Washington bureau chief, Phil Taubman, about the extent of her involvement in the Valerie Plame leak case. She casually revealed that she had agreed to identify her source, Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney's chief of staff, as a 'former Hill staffer' because he had once worked on Capitol Hill. The implication was that this bit of deception was a common practice for reporters. It isn't."

Miller's grand jury account was her last article in the New York Times, which negotiated a private severance package shortly afterwards. Miller testified as a witness on January 30, 2007 at the trial of "Scooter" Libby, which began in January 2007 and ended with Libby's conviction on four of five counts on March 6, 2007. Libby's sentence was subsequently commuted
Commutation of sentence
Commutation of sentence involves the reduction of legal penalties, especially in terms of imprisonment. Unlike a pardon, a commutation does not nullify the conviction and is often conditional. Clemency is a similar term, meaning the lessening of the penalty of the crime without forgiving the crime...

 by President George W. Bush.

After The New York Times

Since leaving the New York Times, Miller has continued her work as a writer in Manhattan and has contributed several op-ed pieces to The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....

. On May 16, 2006 she summarized her investigations on U.S. foreign policy regarding Libya's dismantling of its weapons programs in an essay spanning two days.

On May 17, 2006, NavySEALs.com and MediaChannel.org published an exclusive interview with Miller in which she detailed how the attack on the Cole spurred her reporting on Al Qaeda and led her, in July 2001, to a still-anonymous top-level White House source, who shared top-secret NSA signals intelligence (SIGINT) concerning an even bigger impending Al Qaeda attack, perhaps to be visited on the continental United States. Ultimately, however, Miller never wrote that story. Two months later, on September 11, Miller and her editor at the Times, Stephen Engelberg, another Pulitzer Prize winner, both remembered and regretted the story they "didn't do".

On September 7, 2007, she was hired as an adjunct fellow of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research
Manhattan Institute
The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research is a conservative, market-oriented think tank established in New York City in 1978 by Antony Fisher and William J...

, a neo-conservative
Neoconservatism
Neoconservatism in the United States is a branch of American conservatism. Since 2001, neoconservatism has been associated with democracy promotion, that is with assisting movements for democracy, in some cases by economic sanctions or military action....

 free-market think tank
Think tank
A think tank is an organization that conducts research and engages in advocacy in areas such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, and technology issues. Most think tanks are non-profit organizations, which some countries such as the United States and Canada provide with tax...

. Her duties will include being a contributing editor for the organization's publication, City Journal. On October 20, 2008, Fox News announced that it had hired Miller. As part of her Fox News duties, she often appears as a panelist on their media analysis show Fox News Watch
Fox News Watch
Fox News Watch is a current events debate program on the Fox News Channel, hosted by Jon Scott.-Format:The show features a panel composed of two conservatives and two liberals, moderated by Scott. Similar in premise to CNN's Reliable Sources, the panel on Fox News Watch discusses how the media...

.

On January 2, 2011 (her 63rd birthday), she appeared on Fox News Watch, Miller criticized Wikileaks
Wikileaks
WikiLeaks is an international self-described not-for-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers. Its website, launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press organisation, claimed a database of more...

' Julian Assange
Julian Assange
Julian Paul Assange is an Australian publisher, journalist, writer, computer programmer and Internet activist. He is the editor in chief of WikiLeaks, a whistleblower website and conduit for worldwide news leaks with the stated purpose of creating open governments.WikiLeaks has published material...

 for releasing classified government documents, calling him a "bad journalist ... [H]e didn't care at all about attempting to verify the information that he was putting out, or determine whether or not it hurt anyone," she said. In 2004, Miller had defended her own New York Times reporting by saying "My job isn't to assess the government's information and be an independent intelligence analyst myself." Following Miller's 2011 comments, American Conservative editorialized, "Rarely do we see hypocrisy with such sparkle!"

Contempt of court

On October 1, 2004, federal Judge Thomas F. Hogan found Miller in contempt of court
Contempt of court
Contempt of court is a court order which, in the context of a court trial or hearing, declares a person or organization to have disobeyed or been disrespectful of the court's authority...

 for refusing to appear before a federal grand jury, which was investigating who had leaked to reporters the fact that Valerie Plame
Valerie Plame
Valerie Elise Plame Wilson , known as Valerie Plame, Valerie E. Wilson, and Valerie Plame Wilson, is a former United States CIA Operations Officer and the author of a memoir detailing her career and the events leading up to her resignation from the CIA.-Early life :Valerie Elise Plame was born on...

 was a CIA operative. Miller did not write an article about the subject at the time of the leak, but others did, notably Robert Novak
Robert Novak
Robert David Sanders "Bob" Novak was an American syndicated columnist, journalist, television personality, author, and conservative political commentator. After working for two newspapers before serving for the U.S. Army in the Korean War, he became a reporter for the Associated Press and then for...

, spurring the investigation. Judge Hogan sentenced her to 18 months in jail, but stayed the sentence while her appeal proceeded. On February 15, 2005, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit unanimously upheld Judge Hogan's ruling. On June 17, 2005 the US Supreme Court declined to hear the case. On July 6, 2005, Judge Hogan ordered Miller to serve her sentence at "a suitable jail within the metropolitan area of the District of Columbia". She was taken to Alexandria City Jail
Alexandria City Jail
Alexandria City Jail is a jail in Alexandria, Virginia, the Alexandria City Jail has housed several prominent prisoners.* Harold Nicholson * John Walker Lindh...

 on July 7, 2005.

Prior to her jailing for civil contempt, Miller's lawyers argued that it was pointless to imprison her because she would never talk or reveal confidential sources. Under such circumstances, argued her lawyers, jail term would be "merely punitive" and would serve no purpose. Arguing that Miller should be confined to her home and could forego Internet access and cellphone use, Miller's lawyers suggested that "impairing her unrestricted ability to do her job as an investigative journalist ... would present the strictest form of coercion to her". Failing that, Miller's lawyers asked that she be sent to a women's facility in Danbury, Connecticut
Danbury, Connecticut
Danbury is a city in northern Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. It had population at the 2010 census of 80,893. Danbury is the fourth largest city in Fairfield County and is the seventh largest city in Connecticut....

, nearer to "Ms. Miller's 76-year-old husband", retired book publisher Jason Epstein
Jason Epstein
Jason Epstein is an American editor and publisher.A 1949 graduate of Columbia College of Columbia University, Epstein was hired by Bennett Cerf at Random House, where he was the editorial director for forty years. He was responsible for the Vintage paperbacks, which published such authors as...

, who lives in New York City, and whose state of health was the subject of a confidential medical report filed by Miller's attorneys. Upon being jailed, the Times reported on July 7, 2005 that Miller had purchased a cockapoo
Cockapoo
A Cockapoo is a cross breed dog, first bred in the United States. It is the cross of an American Cocker Spaniel or English Cocker Spaniel and a Poodle , or of two Cockapoos...

 puppy to keep her husband company during her absence.

On September 17, 2005, the Washington Post reported that Miller had received a "parade of prominent government and media officials" during her first 11 weeks in prison, including visits by former U.S. Republican Senator Bob Dole
Bob Dole
Robert Joseph "Bob" Dole is an American attorney and politician. Dole represented Kansas in the United States Senate from 1969 to 1996, was Gerald Ford's Vice Presidential running mate in the 1976 presidential election, and was Senate Majority Leader from 1985 to 1987 and in 1995 and 1996...

, NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw
Tom Brokaw
Thomas John "Tom" Brokaw is an American television journalist and author best known as the anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News from 1982 to 2004. He is the author of The Greatest Generation and other books and the recipient of numerous awards and honors...

, and John R. Bolton
John R. Bolton
John Robert Bolton is an American lawyer and diplomat who has served in several Republican presidential administrations. He served as the U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations from August 2005 until December 2006 on a recess appointment...

, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

Prison release

After her release on September 29, 2005, Miller agreed to disclose to the grand jury the identity of her source, Lewis Libby
Lewis Libby
I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby is a former adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, later disbarred and convicted of a felony....

, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff.

Secondary case

In a separate case, Federal Judge Robert Sweet ruled on February 24, 2005 that Miller was not required to reveal who in the government leaked word of an impending raid to her. Patrick Fitzgerald, the same prosecutor who had had Miller jailed in the Plame case, argued that Miller's calls to groups suspected of funding terrorists had tipped them off to the raid and allowed them time to destroy evidence. Fitzgerald wanted Miller's phone records to confirm the time of the tip and determine who had leaked the information to Miller in the first place. Judge Sweet held that because Fitzgerald could not demonstrate in advance that the phone records would provide the information he sought the prosecutor's needs were outweighed by a 'reporter's privilege' to keep sources confidential. On August 1, 2006, a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Judge Sweet's decision, holding 2–1 that federal prosecutors could inspect the telephone records of Miller and Philip Shenon. Judge Ralph K. Winter Jr. wrote: "No grand jury can make an informed decision to pursue the investigation further, much less to indict or not indict, without the reporters' evidence".

Pop culture

Her case inspired a movie titled Nothing But the Truth
Nothing But the Truth (2008 film)
Nothing but the Truth is a 2008 American drama film written and directed by Rod Lurie. According to comments made by Lurie in The Truth Hurts, a bonus feature on the DVD release, his inspiration for the screenplay was the case of journalist Judith Miller, who in July 2005 was jailed for contempt of...

, with Kate Beckinsale
Kate Beckinsale
Kathryn Bailey "Kate" Beckinsale is an English actress. After some minor television roles, she made her film debut in Much Ado About Nothing while still a student at Oxford University...

 playing a journalist who refuses to disclose her confidential source to the government. On the January 5, 2010 episode of The Good Wife prosecuters cite Miller's contempt case in an attempt to convince a judge to compel a TV commentator to reveal his sources. But the defense attorneys ask the judge to uphold the Illinois Shield Law, which he does.

Miller appeared on the February 13, 2008 episode of The Colbert Report posing as one of his writers. Other pretended writers were Tiki Barber
Tiki Barber
Atiim Kiambu Hakeem-Ah "Tiki" Barber is an American football running back who is currently a free agent. He was drafted by the New York Giants in the second round of the 1997 NFL Draft. He played college football at Virginia....

, Mikhail Baryshnikov
Mikhail Baryshnikov
Mikhail Nikolaevich Baryshnikov is a Soviet and American dancer, choreographer, and actor, often cited alongside Vaslav Nijinsky and Rudolf Nureyev as one of the greatest ballet dancers of the 20th century. After a promising start in the Kirov Ballet in Leningrad, he defected to Canada in 1974...

, Kevin Bacon
Kevin Bacon
Kevin Norwood Bacon is an American film and theater actor whose notable roles include Animal House, Diner, Footloose, Flatliners, Wild Things, A Few Good Men, JFK, Apollo 13, Mystic River, The Woodsman, Trapped, Friday the 13th, Hollow Man, Tremors, Death Sentence, Frost/Nixon, Crazy, Stupid, Love....

, and Mr. Met
Mr. Met
Mr. Met is the official mascot of Major League Baseball's New York Mets. He is a man with a large baseball for a head. He can be seen at Citi Field during Mets home games, has appeared in several commercials as part of ESPN's This is SportsCenter campaign, and has been elected into the Mascot...

.

She has been cited as the basis of the character "Lawrie Dayne", a US newspaper reporter, in the 2010 film Green Zone
Green Zone (film)
Green Zone is a 2010 American war thriller film written by Brian Helgeland and directed by Paul Greengrass. The film was inspired by the non-fiction 2006 book Imperial Life in the Emerald City by journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran, which documented life in the Green Zone, Baghdad...

 about the failure of US forces to find WMDs following the invasion of Iraq.

Media commentary

Miller was characterized in The Huffington Post
The Huffington Post
The Huffington Post is an American news website and content-aggregating blog founded by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, and Jonah Peretti, featuring liberal minded columnists and various news sources. The site offers coverage of politics, theology, media, business, entertainment, living, style,...

 as a possible co-conspirator with the Bush Administration in the attempt to discredit former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson
Joseph C. Wilson
Joseph Charles Wilson IV is a former United States diplomat best known for his 2002 trip to Niger to investigate allegations that Saddam Hussein was attempting to purchase yellowcake uranium; his New York Times op-ed piece, "What I Didn't Find in Africa"; and the subsequent "outing" of his wife...

, who openly questioned the intelligence used to justify the 2003 Invasion of Iraq
2003 invasion of Iraq
The 2003 invasion of Iraq , was the start of the conflict known as the Iraq War, or Operation Iraqi Freedom, in which a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq and toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein in 21 days of major combat operations...

. Columnist Margaret Kimberly wrote that Miller "isn't protecting a whistle blower. She is protecting someone who retaliated against a whistle blower". Predicting in an August 8, 2005 interview with radio host Don Imus
Don Imus
John Donald "Don" Imus, Jr. is an American radio host, humorist, philanthropist and writer. His nationally-syndicated talk show, Imus in the Morning, is broadcast throughout the United States by Citadel Media and relayed on television by the Fox Business Network.-Personal life:Imus was born in...

 that other employees of the New York Times would soon be subpoenaed by Fitzgerald, James Carville
James Carville
Chester James Carville, Jr. is an American political consultant, commentator, educator, actor, attorney, media personality, and prominent liberal pundit. Carville gained national attention for his work as the lead strategist of the successful presidential campaign of then-Arkansas governor Bill...

 speculated that it was "going to be very interesting to see whether [Miller's] problem is a first amendment [one] — i.e., "I want to protect a source", or a fifth amendment [one] — "I was out spreading this stuff, too"".

In the days since Miller's release from prison and her waiver from a promise of confidentiality
Confidentiality
Confidentiality is an ethical principle associated with several professions . In ethics, and in law and alternative forms of legal resolution such as mediation, some types of communication between a person and one of these professionals are "privileged" and may not be discussed or divulged to...

 from her source, media observers have criticized Miller and the New York Times for not publishing her role in the Plame-Wilson leak, not even to explain why the full story cannot now be revealed. The lawyer for Scooter Libby told the media that Miller was advised over a year ago that she could testify about her conversations with Libby.

Testimony at the Libby trial

On Tuesday, January 30, 2007, Miller took the stand as a witness for the prosecution against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney
Dick Cheney
Richard Bruce "Dick" Cheney served as the 46th Vice President of the United States , under George W. Bush....

's former chief of staff. Miller discussed three conversations she had had with Libby in June and July of 2003, including the meeting on June 23, 2003. In her first appearance before the grand jury, Miller said she could not remember. According to the New York Times, when asked if Libby discussed Valerie Plame, Miller responded in the affirmative, "adding that Libby had said Wilson worked at the agency’s (C.I.A.) division that dealt with limiting the proliferation of unconventional weapons". The trial resulted in guilty verdicts against Libby.

Books

  • One, by One, by One: Facing the Holocaust, Simon & Schuster (1990) ISBN 0-671-64472-6
  • Saddam Hussein & the Crisis in the Gulf (with Laurie Mylroie
    Laurie Mylroie
    Laurie Mylroie is a U.S. author who has written several controversial and heavily criticized books on the subject of Iraq and the War on Terror. Notably, Mylroie contends that the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein sponsored the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and many subsequent terrorist...

    ) Random House USA Inc (1990) ISBN 0-09-989860-8
  • God Has Ninety Nine Names: Reporting from a Militant Middle East", Simon & Schuster (1997) ISBN 0684832283
  • Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War (with William Broad
    William Broad
    William J. Broad is an author and a Senior Writer at The New York Times.-Awards:Broad has won two Pulitzer Prizes with Times colleagues, as well as an Emmy and a DuPont. He won the Pulitzers for coverage of the space shuttle Challenger disaster and the feasibility of antimissile arms...

     and Stephen Engelberg) Simon & Schuster (2001) ISBN 0-684-87158-0

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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