The New York Times editorial on Miller's imprisonment

[WilliamPitt]

Judith Miller Goes to Jail

Published: July 7, 2005

This is a proud but awful moment for The New York Times and its employees. One of our reporters, Judith Miller, has decided to accept a jail sentence rather than testify before a grand jury about one of her confidential sources. Ms. Miller has taken a path that will be lonely and painful for her and her family and friends. We wish she did not have to choose it, but we are certain she did the right thing.

She is surrendering her liberty in defense of a greater liberty, granted to a free press by the founding fathers so journalists can work on behalf of the public without fear of regulation or retaliation from any branch of government.

The Press and the Law

Some people - including, sadly, some of our colleagues in the news media - have mistakenly assumed that a reporter and a news organization place themselves above the law by rejecting a court order to testify. Nothing could be further from the truth. When another Times reporter, M. A. Farber, went to jail in 1978 rather than release his confidential notes, he declared, "I have no such right and I seek none."

By accepting her sentence, Ms. Miller bowed to the authority of the court. But she acted in the great tradition of civil disobedience that began with this nation's founding, which holds that the common good is best served in some instances by private citizens who are willing to defy a legal, but unjust or unwise, order.

This tradition stretches from the Boston Tea Party to the Underground Railroad, to the Americans who defied the McCarthy inquisitions and to the civil rights movement. It has called forth ordinary citizens, like Rosa Parks; government officials, like Daniel Ellsberg and Mark Felt; and statesmen, like Martin Luther King. Frequently, it falls to news organizations to uphold this tradition. As Justice William O. Douglas wrote in 1972, "The press has a preferred position in our constitutional scheme, not to enable it to make money, not to set newsmen apart as a favored class, but to bring to fulfillment the public's right to know."

(snip)

Protecting a Reporter's Sources

Most readers understand a reporter's need to guarantee confidentiality to a source. Before he went to jail, Mr. Farber told the court that if he gave up documents that revealed the names of the people he had promised anonymity, "I will have given notice that the nation's premier newspaper is no longer available to those men and women who would seek it out - or who would respond to it - to talk freely and without fear."

While The Times has gone to great lengths lately to make sure that the use of anonymous sources is limited, there is no way to eliminate them. The most important articles tend to be the ones that upset people in high places, and many could not be reported if those who risked their jobs or even their liberty to talk to reporters knew that they might be identified the next day. In the larger sense, revealing government wrongdoing advances the rule of law, especially at a time of increased government secrecy.

(snip)

To be frank, this is far from an ideal case. We would not have wanted our reporter to give up her liberty over a situation whose details are so complicated and muddy. But history is very seldom kind enough to provide the ideal venue for a principled stand. Ms. Miller is going to jail over an article that she never wrote, yet she has been unwavering in her determination to protect the people with whom she had spoken on the promise of confidentiality.

(snip)

Ms. Miller did not write an article about Ms. Plame, but the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, wants to know whether anyone in government told her about Mr. Wilson's wife and her secret job. The inquiry has been conducted with such secrecy that it is hard to know exactly what Mr. Fitzgerald thinks Ms. Miller can tell him, or what argument he offered to convince the court that his need to hear her testimony outweighs the First Amendment.

What we do know is that if Ms. Miller testifies, it may be immeasurably harder in the future to persuade a frightened government employee to talk about malfeasance in high places, or a worried worker to reveal corporate crimes. The shroud of secrecy thrown over this case by the prosecutor and the judge, an egregious denial of due process, only makes it more urgent to take a stand.

Mr. Fitzgerald drove that point home chillingly when he said the authorities "can't have 50,000 journalists" making decisions about whether to reveal sources' names and that the government had a right to impose its judgment. But that's not what the founders had in mind in writing the First Amendment. In 1971, our colleague James Reston cited James Madison's admonition about a free press in explaining why The Times had first defied the Nixon administration's demand to stop publishing the Pentagon Papers and then fought a court's order to cease publication. "Among those principles deemed sacred in America," Madison wrote, "among those sacred rights considered as forming the bulwark of their liberty, which the government contemplates with awful reverence and would approach only with the most cautious circumspection, there is no one of which the importance is more deeply impressed on the public mind than the liberty of the press."

(snip)

Journalists talk about these issues a great deal, and they can seem abstract. The test comes when a colleague is being marched off to jail for doing nothing more than the job our readers expected of her, and of the rest of us. The Times has been in these fights before, beginning in 1857, when a journalist named J. W. Simonton wrote an editorial about bribery in Congress and was held in contempt by the House of Representatives for 19 days when he refused to reveal his sources. In the end, Mr. Simonton kept faith, and the corrupt congressmen resigned. All of our battles have not had equally happy endings. But each time, whether we win or we lose, we remain convinced that the public wins in the long run and that what is at stake is nothing less than our society's perpetual bottom line: the citizens control the government in a democracy.

We stand with Ms. Miller and thank her for taking on that fight for the rest of us.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/07/opinion/07thu1.html?pagewanted=1&hp

[justinsb]

1. They're right, it's a very brave and necessary stand

The confidentiality of sources is one of the things that protects a free press. If every source was outed, there would be very few sources for sensitive issues.

[Jacobin]

4. There is no 'privilege' when it is in furtherance of a crime

Attorney-client privilege does not extend to protection of an attorney and client both involved in the commission of a crime.

Doctor-patient privilege does not extend to protection of a doctor and a patient involved in the commission of a crime.

NO privilege extends to protect testimony from someone who is INVOLVED in the crime of outing a CIA operative.

Sorry, Cry some tears somewhere else.

NYT, gag me with a fucking spoon.

[kentuck]

5. But you cannot protect a source from a criminal act...

If there was a criminal act? But Ms. Miller is not charged with a crime - just contempt of court. If her information is not protecting the criminal act of exposing an intelligence agent, then she should not be in jail - at least not for that.

[plcdude]

9. How many times

do we have to go over this? She is not protecting a source. She is protecting and is a witness to criminals who broke the law in revealing the identity of a covert CIA agent. As such she is obligated to testify before a grand jury about the individual(s) who did this. You can bet your paycheck that the others have and will testify. This is not a complex, difficult, or ambiguous legal issue.

[SaveElmer]

21. Exactly...here's an extreme example

Suppose there was an unsolved murder...and the murderer called a journalist and offered to reveal the name of the murderer if the journalist guaranteed their anonymity. Suppose she agreed, and then the source revealed themselves as the murderer. Would that journalist be obligated to protect that source. I don't think anyone would say that. It is the same thing here. It is illegal to reveal the name of an undercover CIA operative. Her source apparently did just that. She is protecting the criminal, not the whistle blower.

Now if her source revealed to her the name of the person who blew the agents cover, she would be justified in protecting that person.

[grumpy old fart]

17. I suppose Armstrong Williams should have protected his "sources"

also? When are being spoon fed propaganda to feed to your readers, it's not such a noble thing to "protect" your sources.

[justinsb]

19. Armstrong Williams was being paid

Protecting your sources is one of the first rules of good journalism, and I honestly believe if the parties were swiched that the dems would be defending her and the republicans would be out for her head.

[kentuck]

25. Do we know that Judith Miller was not being paid by this WH ?

We really don't know how many journalists they had paid off...

[justinsb]

27. No, do you have any evidence that she was?

Or should we just assume that everyone who doesn't do what we want is being paid by the white house?

[kentuck]

39. No we shouldn't assume my way or your way....

We don't know?

[grumpy old fart]

32. Miller wasn't being paid, but she was being used. What gets lost here....

is that Wilson was the whistle blower. Miller was just a tool used by the WH to get back at the whistle blower. What's going to chill whistle blowers is that a compliant media is apparently willing to be used as a tool for retribution against said whistle blowers, and then go to the mat to protect the hit men.

[Richardo]

2. 'frightened government employee' and 'worried worker'. Puh-leeze

What we do know is that if Ms. Miller testifies, it may be immeasurably harder in the future to persuade a frightened government employee to talk about malfeasance in high places, or a worried worker to reveal corporate crimes.

What about assisting a cynical political machine to destroy its enemies? I said it before: Rejecting source confidentiality in this case PROTECTS free journalism. Government operatives seeking to destroy others will know that their identity will NOT be protected if they are committing a crime and the reporter is a witness.

[Bunny]

8. Thank you Richardo. I can't for the life of me understand why

people can't distinguish between the two. It's quite maddening, really. Miller is not protecting a source, she is abetting a criminal. She is not heroic, she is an accessory to the crime. Some even call the crime treason. It's not that hard to grasp, is it? How anyone can claim that this is a dark day for journalism is beyond me.

[theboss]

3. I hate that this case is the example

Because frankly the source deserves to be outed.

But, a reporter has to protect his/her sources.

[Jacobin]

6. This case is NOT the example

Miller and Rove were both involved in the commission of a crime, which is outing a CIA operative.

NO privilege of ANY type does or should extend to this kind of conduct. It has NOTHING to do with keeping a source secret and the judge properly ruled on it

[im10ashus]

7. I am in total agreement.

Sent the NY Times a LTTE last night. Why are they calling her a hero? She is a shill for the right and is now a patsy.

[ChiciB1]

11. And That's The TRUTH!!!

[thebigidea]

10. about as proud a moment as their sterling WMD reporting

"While The Times has gone to great lengths lately to make sure that the use of anonymous sources is limited, "

uh huh. the key word is "lately."

[katinmn]

14. They think this will help repair their damaged reputation

Nah!

You can support the First Amendment without supporting notetakers for the White House.

[Coventina]

12. Did she assist in outing Plame by publishing her name?

If so, she aided and abetted treason.

No sympathy from me.

[theboss]

28. She published nothing

No one reads anymore.

[Pithy Cherub]

43. Miller is a witness to a crime.

No one should abdicate their responsibilites when the LAW is clear on such matters. Miller tried to do an end around and the weak kneed NYT editorial staff is trying to block and tackle for their tarnished reporter. That pathetic NYT editorial staff has no moral authority when reporter/witnesses can site these idiots as when it should be OK/and not OK to be above the law.

Miller is a witness to a crime and is compelled to speak, not shroud herself in the fishwap of the NYT editorial pages to claim some sort of martyr status on behalf of half-witted journalists everywhere.


on edit: very angry, spelling:scared:left the house....

[in_cog_ni_to]

13. Oh BOO HOO for Ms. Miller.

:nopity: She deserves to be exactly where she is. The people she's protecting BROKE THE LAW, COMMITTED TREASON. I hope she rots there.

[yodermon]

15. Utter, Utter drivel.

:mad:

I'm curious: if Cooper's source called him to release him from confidentiality requirements, and Judy's did NOT do the same, does this not imply that Judy's & Miller's sources are different entities?

So if Judy is not protecting Rove, who is she protecting?

Or does it imply that Judy is really pleading the 5th, not the 1st?

[im10ashus]

16. She is citing the 1st.

It means there are 2 sources, IMHO. Cheney?

[doubleplusgood]

18. dammit, she's NOT protecting a whistleblower

she's helping the Whitehouse try to SILENCE whistleblowers now and in the future. If she spilled the beans on her source in this type of case, it would actually prevent future abuse of GENUINE whistleblowers at the hands of people like Bush.

[grumpy old fart]

23. Exactly. The NYT is forgetting Wilson was the whistleblower, Miller was..

the tool used by the WH to get back at the whistleblower. She has always been a tool. Tools are not journalists. They are propagandists.

[cestpaspossible]

51. They aren't forgetting anything, they are consciously evil.

[EnfantTerrible]

20. She should've been doing her job...

By accepting her sentence, Ms. Miller bowed to the authority of the court. But she acted in the great tradition of civil disobedience that began with this nation's founding, which holds that the common good is best served in some instances by private citizens who are willing to defy a legal, but unjust or unwise, order.

The common good would've been best served by writing a story about our WH commiting a treasonous act to punish a man who dared to speak the truth to power.

[Lexingtonian]

22. pathetic legalistics

The real issue is not what Judith Miller did, and could or couldn't, promise her source(s).

The public issue is not Judith Miller's rights but her moral conscience (or, lack thereof). If she were protecting a notorious serial pedophile by the rationale she maintains, all these high falutin' pretended-to principles would seem an utter joke.

I think Fitzgerald should classify her as a coconspirator, charge her with aiding and abetting the crime outright. He shouldn't bother with this nontestifying witness mamby-pamby, he might as well get all her phone and computer records and financial records into the legal record and see what she does when all her political prostitution to that particular Lost Cause is about to become public record.

[CWebster]

24. such trash

as if to gloss over tha case she made for war, Chalabi, more than willing to provide the service and now the old grey whore tries to paint her as some respectible role model of journalistic integrity?

There is no revising that history with new paint.

[im10ashus]

29. She's trying to be the martyr here.

I LOVE what the Rude Pundit said today:

http://www.rudepundit.blogspot.com

[Luminous Animal]

26. I am confused as to why journalists

would want to protect other journalists who seem to be implicated in a crime.

Please read Lawrence O'Donnells latest on The Huffington Post

In February, Circuit Judge David Tatel joined his colleagues’ order to Cooper and Miller despite his own, very lonely finding that indeed there is a federal privilege for reporters that can shield them from being compelled to testify to grand juries and give up sources. He based his finding on Rule 501 of the Federal Rules of Evidence, which authorizes federal courts to develop new privileges “in the light of reason and experience.” Tatel actually found that reason and experience “support recognition of a privilege for reporters’ confidential sources.” But Tatel still ordered Cooper and Miller to testify because he found that the privilege had to give way to “the gravity of the suspected crime.”

Judge Tatel’s opinion has eight blank pages in the middle of it where he discusses the secret information the prosecutor has supplied only to the judges to convince them that the testimony he is demanding is worth sending reporters to jail to get. The gravity of the suspected crime is presumably very well developed in those redacted pages. Later, Tatel refers to “aving carefully scrutinized voluminous classified filings.”

Some of us have theorized that the prosecutor may have given up the leak case in favor of a perjury case, but Tatel still refers to it simply as a case “which involves the alleged exposure of a covert agent.” Tatel wrote a 41-page opinion in which he seemed eager to make new law -- a federal reporters’ shield law -- but in the end, he couldn’t bring himself to do it in this particular case. In his final paragraph, he says he “might have” let Cooper and Miller off the hook “ere the leak at issue in this case less harmful to national security.”

[Jacobin]

30. In fairness, here is what Fitzgerald had to say about this:

In court documents filed Tuesday, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald wrote that even though Time magazine surrendered Cooper's notes in the case, the journalist's testimony is still needed in the investigation.

"First, Cooper's own article noted that the conduct of the officials involved an attack on an administration critic, not whistle-blowing," Fitzgerald wrote.

"Second, at a time when journalists seek a reporter's privilege akin to the attorney-client privilege, they ought to recognize that an attorney can be compelled to testify if his client communicates to the attorney for the purpose of committing a crime or fraud. ... Third, journalists are not entitled to promise complete confidentiality -- no one in America is."

Fitzgerald also opposed Cooper's and Miller's request for home detention -- rather than a jail sentence -- for refusing to reveal their sources.

"Special treatment for journalistic contemnors may negate the coercive effect contemplated ... and enable, rather than deter, defiance of the court's authority," Fitzgerald wrote.

(quotes were about Cooper, but the same thing applies to Miller)

[spindoctor]

31. She's taking a bullet for the guy, not for the cause.

Novak and Rove are the only ones laughing. Miller gets some paid time off to finish her book.

Who wins? The people? The press? Nope, just the players.

[im10ashus]

35. Exactly!

She is going to make more money than I will ever see from her little "memoir" on her fight for the First Amendment.

[spindoctor]

36. What's more, let's compare this to Woodward and Bernstein...

...DT's anonymity was protected as a source, but also as a whistle-blower. He did not COMMIT a crime by leaking his information, he EXPOSED a crime.

In the case of Rove (guilty until proved innocent), the leak itself is an act of crime and should not be protected by ethics.

There IS a difference.

(edited for excessive typos)

[im10ashus]

38. Exactly!

AND, he didn't spell it out for them. He LED them to the sources. Small bits of information. Nothing classified.

[The_Casual_Observer]

33. miller ought to be in jail for war crimes too.

miller is a dangerous shit, a conduit for the most vile of the rove propaganda. The longer she is put away, and not allowed to "report" anything the better for everybody.

[underpants]

34. May 26,2004 "The Times and Iraq" another NYT editorial

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/international/middleeast/26FTE_NOTE.html?ei=5070&en=1bd452bb4c3112ea&ex=1120881600&pagewanted=print&position=

[Jacobin]

37. Pretty funny article in a sick sort of way

Long explanation of how they used ink to justify the slaughter of a country's citizens, with little 'oopsey-daisy' statements about how they might have done a better job from time to time, but gee whiz, everyone, just everyone, wanted to invade Iraq, so you know how it is, right?

Disgusting stuff.

[underpants]

45. List of NY Times articles

http://www.nytimes.com/ref/international/middleeast/20040526CRITIQUE.html

I notice that in the original article "...and the administration was as well" is mentioned several times.

[katinmn]

40. Thanks for the reminder. Bookmarked it this time.

[spindoctor]

42. The NYT has some credibility issues lately and they know it

I must admit, no other paper would "apologize" for misreporting in this way, but if even yours truly knew Chalabi cannot be trusted, then it seems to me that the Times has a serious staffing issue.

[underpants]

47. The Washington Post sort of apologized

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58127-2004Aug11.html

I can't find their actual "apology" this is Howard Kurtz's article on it.

[Zorra]

41. It is her DUTY to our nation, to the American people, to come forward with

this information.

A high level public official knowingly and deliberately committed a very serious crime for the purposes of petty political retribution by divulging information which breached national security and could have resulted in a person being killed.

The fact that this corrupt anonymous public official remains at large and in power within our government represents a very real imminent threat and clear and present danger to our national security.

An extreme analogy: Ms. Miller knew where Osama bin Laden was, had spoken to him, and he had told her that he was going to bomb San Francisco, and then he went on to bomb San Francisco. But she continually refused to reveal his plans and whereabouts because she wanted to protect her source(s).

It would be her duty as a citizen to report this information, because lives and national security are at stake.

While I fully agree that she is within her "rights" as a journalist to not reveal her sources, the extreme seriousness of the crime that was committed, and the fact that American lives, and our national security, will be endangered by the continuing presence of her source in a high level government position, preclude her not divulging her source(s).

She is protecting someone that is tantamount to a traitor, and is plainly consenting not only to the commission of his crime but also to his continual treasonous, possibly deadly threat to our nation by his ongoing presence in our government.

How can we possibly put trust in a public official that deliberately reveals the identity of a CIA agent solely for the purpose of petty political revenge?

Miller should be shouting this traitor's name from the rooftops.

[Walt Starr]

44. Hopefully, she'll be charged with criminal contempt and obstruction

She deserves a few years behind bars, IMO.

[H2O Man]

54. There is a growing chance

of this happening. I believe it is justified.

[sendero]

46. I'll just add..

.... the Times to the long list of media outlets that are not worthy of making decent asswipe.

They destroy their own case by pointing out the Ms. Miller did not publish any info. That being the case, the talker was not a "source", by definition.

The information was merely requested by a grand jury during a criminal investigation and since it pertains to a Federal crime it is the height of hubris to think it is "protected".

I suspect Ms. Miller might have a hard time making a lot of hay out of this. The left is well aware that she's merely an accomplished media whore, and the right doesn't trust any media. Oh well.

[jmatthan]

48. "Great Editorial today"

Here is the email I sent to the Editors of New York Times regarding the Editorial on Judith Miller:


Subject: Great editorial today

Dear Editors,

I must complement the New York Times on its absolutely great Editorial

"Judith Miller Goes to Jail"

which appeared online today.

I really laughed myself into the ground.

I have never seen such brilliant comedy writing as when I used to read the MAD magazine in the mid sixties.

Keep up the good work and you will have us all buying your newspaper to have a jolly good laugh.

As they say in the Reader's Digest

"Laughter is the Best Medicine".

Judith Miller a Reporter?

I was under the impression that she was the New York Times "woman who engaged in intercourse for money" who kept Ahmed Chalabhi happy so that she could get a good story for your comedy paper!!

Is she now doing time in jail for her similar activities with someone other than Chalabhi?

--
Jacob Matthan
http://jmpolitics.blogspot.com
http://MoveTheUN.blogspot.com
Oulu, Finland

[im10ashus]

49. You rock!

Keep those letters going, DU!

[cestpaspossible]

50. If I had a parrot, I'd have a use for the NY Times nt

[stickdog]

52. "To be frank, this is far from an ideal case."

The understatement of the new century.

A whore is protecting a felon who tried to abuse the power of the press to SQUASH free speech.

Pardon me if I have little sympathy.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

53. The Times is right. A free press is more important than politics.

[grumpy old fart]

55. And simply being a propaganda organ for the WH is worthless.

And that's all Miller is. She's protecting those who attacked a whistleblower. She's not protecting anyone but her own sorry ass.