Posted 8:47 AM by Robert

So What's New With Judith? II

It seems that I was closer to the truth of the whole Judith Miller affair than I had dared to hope.

Man Without Qualities (October 2, 2005):

Perhaps, just before the last flickering of institutional memory went out, somebody at the Times - maybe Mr. Bill Keller - woke up to a thought along the lines of:

"Gee, since nobody gives a rat's ass anymore about that Plum affair... (or is it Plume? ... Flame? ... Flambe? ... well, whatever - I'll look it up on Google when I get to the office), maybe there's no point in leaving old what's-her-name, our 1st Amendment heroine (note to self: Google) locked in Fitzgerald's iron mask? Must ask Pinch."

New York Times (October 16, 2005):

In a notebook belonging to Judith Miller, a reporter for The New York Times, amid notations about Iraq and nuclear weapons, appear two small words: "Valerie Flame." .... And when the prosecutor in the case asked her to explain how "Valerie Flame" appeared in the same notebook she used in interviewing Mr. Libby, Ms. Miller said she "didn't think" she heard it from [Libby]. "I said I believed the information came from another source, whom I could not recall," she wrote on Friday, recounting her testimony for an article that appears today.

Yes, as the Times article relates, there has been great frustration in the Gray Lady newsroom over having been scooped again and again on stories relating to Ms. Miller. By the Washington Post. By TIME. By the Man Without Qualities.

Sad, that.