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The Hidden Scandal of Miller’s Security
Clearance. (or some secrets unwind slower than others) We all
remember how Pentagon-certified embedded reporters were promoted like celebrities,
making the case that they would provide good public access. Inevitably, they would write a
sympathetic portrayal of the troops with whom they traveled, slept and ate with,
and often, took enemy fire. Miller’s
testimony seems to have uncovered a long-simmering debate about journalistic
independence, running under the larger CIA leak scandal. Let’s not forget this is an
administration that has frozen out and punished whistle-blowers, rewritten
science and economic reports, rewritten the rules governing enemy combatants, and
specializes in giant black markers addicted to redactions. But the
Pentagon’s plan may have been just a wee bit too clever. It doesn’t help the
White House’s credibility that Scott Ritter’s book, Iraq Confidential, is coming out, concluding that the CIA
used the weapons inspectors as cover for their operations inside Iraq, or the
recent announcement by new CIA chief Porter Goss he will not investigate the
principals who were responsible for failed intel, specifically George Tenet,
who received a medal of honor, not dismissal, even though he was widely blamed.
Regardless of
what you think about the CIA leak case and the political fallout, Americans
should be concerned when there are aggressive moves to silence or compromise a
free press. Even in wartime, national security secrets can be kept without jeopardizing
the checks and balances we hold critical to democratic integrity. Two items
here, the second from Editor and Publisher. Color highlights, italics, mine. KwC from Josh
Marshall @ Talking Points Memo Jim Miklaszewski on the NBC Nightly News blog says no one at the
Pentagon, the DIA or the CIA knows anything about Judy Miller ever having a
security clearance, as she appeared to claim in her
tell-not-very-much piece in the Times. As one Pentagon reporter pointed out to me, embedded reporters will
frequently get tactical information that's classified -- troop locations,
battle plans, etc. But that's information with a very short shelf-life. And
knowledgeable sources doubt that anyone with Miller's background would confuse
that sort of access with the much more specific meaning of getting a security
clearance. That leaves two possibilities. What I'd have to call the less
interesting of the two is that Miller was either speaking
imprecisely or self-aggrandizingly and she really had no more access
than any other embedded reporter in the field who, in the nature of things, listens in on plans of action,
locations, etc. The second possibility is that Miller was given some
special status or special clearance that was, shall we say, off-the-books, a
special status few at the Pentagon or the CIA seem to know about or are willing
now to admit knowing about. But look at the passage in Miller's piece in question: In my grand jury testimony, Mr. Fitzgerald
repeatedly turned to the subject of how Mr. Libby handled classified
information with me. He asked, for example, whether I had discussed my security
status with Mr. Libby. During the Iraq war, the Pentagon had given me clearance
to see secret information as part of my assignment "embedded" with a
special military unit hunting for unconventional weapons. Mr. Fitzgerald asked if I had discussed
classified information with Mr. Libby. I said I believed so, but could not be
sure. He asked how Mr. Libby treated classified information. I said, Very
carefully. Mr. Fitzgerald asked me to examine a series
of documents. Though I could not identify them with certainty, I said that some
seemed familiar, and that they might be excerpts from the National Intelligence
Estimate of Iraq's weapons. Mr. Fitzgerald asked whether Mr. Libby had shown
any of the documents to me. I said no, I didn't think so. I thought I
remembered him at one point reading from a piece of paper he pulled from his
pocket. I told Mr. Fitzgerald that Mr. Libby might
have thought I still had security clearance, given my special embedded status
in Iraq. At the same time, I told the grand jury I thought that at our July 8
meeting I might have expressed frustration to Mr. Libby that I was not
permitted to discuss with editors some of the more sensitive information about Iraq.
Mr. Fitzgerald asked me if I knew whether I
was cleared to discuss classified information at the time of my meetings with
Mr. Libby. I said I did not know. Needless to say, everything here comes through Miller's (perhaps
distorted) account of what happened in the grand jury room. But in her account,
at least, Fitzgerald seems to have been aware of some special status she
enjoyed and made it a point of repeated questioning. Meanwhile, Rawstory.com reports, as you'd
expect, that Miller's attorney Bob Bennett worked closely with her on writing
the piece. And it's hard for me to see where an attorney as shrewd and alert as
Bennett would have allowed Miller to just whip something like this up out of
thin air. After all, she's in enough trouble already. More on Judy Miller's special embed agreement, from Frank Foer's piece in New
York magazine from the summer of 2004: According to Pomeroy, as well as an editor at
the Times, Miller had helped negotiate her own embedding agreement with the
Pentagon—an agreement so sensitive that, according to one Times editor,
Rumsfeld himself signed off on it. Although she never fully acknowledged the
specific terms of that arrangement in her articles, they were as stringent as
any conditions imposed on any reporter in Iraq. “Any articles going out had to be, well, censored,” Pomeroy
told me. “The mission contained some highly classified elements and people,
what we dubbed the ‘Secret Squirrels,’ and their ‘sources and methods’ had to
be protected and a war was about to start.” Before she filed her copy, it would
be censored by a colonel who often read the article in his sleeping bag, clutching
a small flashlight between his teeth. (When reporters attended tactical
meetings with battlefield commanders, they faced similar restrictions.) As Miller covered MET Alpha, it became
increasingly clear that she had ceased to respect the boundaries between being
an observer and a participant. And as an embedded reporter she went even
further, several sources say. While traveling with MET Alpha, according to
Pomeroy and one other witness, she wore a military uniform. When Colonel Richard McPhee ordered MET Alpha
to pull back from a search mission and regroup in the town of Talil, Miller
disagreed vehemently with the decision—and let her opinions be loudly known. The
Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz reprinted a note in which she told
public-affairs officers that she would write negatively about his decision if
McPhee didn’t back down. What’s more, Kurtz reported that Miller complained to her
friend Major General David Petraeus. Even though McPhee’s unit fell outside the
general’s line of command, Petraeus’s rank gave his recommendation serious
heft. According to Kurtz, in an account that was later denied, “McPhee
rescinded his withdrawal order after Petraeus advised him to do so.” Miller guarded her exclusive access with
ferocity. When the Washington Post’s Barton Gellman overlapped in the unit for
a day, Miller instructed its members that they couldn’t talk with him.
According to Pomeroy, “She told people that she had clearance to be there and
Bart didn’t.” (One other witness confirms this account.) 'Hidden Scandal' in Miller Story,
Charges Former CBS Newsman ***************************************** There is one enormous journalism scandal hidden in Judith Miller's Oct.
16th first person article about the (perhaps lesser) CIA leak scandal. And that
is Ms. Miller's revelation that she was granted a DoD security clearance while
embedded with the WMD search team in Iraq in 2003. E&P Staff ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Links referenced
within this article http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001306732 |
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