Newspapers

Miller Lite

By Patrick on October 20, 2005 1:50 PM

Come on in and have a sip. It’s where everybody knows your name…and then leaks your name to the press.

Get your daily dose after the jump…(Sorry for being a bit late on this: It’s hard to keep my eyes off Clarence Presley).


  • The Post goes high with reports that Scooter Libby may have told Karl Rove that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA and Libby may have heard it from a reporter. Confused yet? We understand. This new revelation may just be an attempt by Rove’s lawyer to save his Turd Blossom.
  • Scooter Libby and Karl Rove chatted about their various conversations with journalists about Valerie Plame. Conspiracy?
  • Tim Russert may be on the hot seat CNN points out some inconsistencies in Russert’s testimony:

      “Libby’s testimony stated that Rove had told him about his contact with Novak and that Libby had told Rove about information he had gotten about Wilson’s wife from NBC’s Tim Russert, according to a person familiar with the information shown to Rove.

      “Prosecutors, however, have a different account from Russert. The network has said Russert told authorities he did not know about Wilson’s wife’s identity until it was published and therefore could not have told Libby about it.”


  • Chris Matthews asks the right questions:

      “Did the fierce battle of leaks between elements of the Central Intelligence Agency who opposed going to war in Iraq and the hawks in the vice president’s office escalate to actual law breaking? Did the vice president in an effort to defend himself from an onslaught of charges by Joseph Wilson urge his staff to silence the former ambassador? Did Cheney, through anger or loss of temper, create a climate for political hardball and worse? Did he stoke his staff in the late spring and early summer of 2003 to such a level of ferocity that some of its members crossed the line into illegality? And will Patrick Fitzgerald determine that in doing so, he crossed that dire line himself?”

  • Howard Kurtz raises a good point:

      The debate about the New York Times seems to have moved a bit from Judy Miller to the roles played by Arthur Sulzberger and Bill Keller. Why didn’t they rein her in earlier, how could Keller have taken her off the WMD beat only to watch her drift back to national security, and so on. Fair enough. And many Times staffers believe they erred by curtailing the coverage as Miller became a central player in the investigation (how do you get beat on your own reporter getting sprung from jail?). And maybe they should have insisted that Miller make a reasonable deal with Fitzgerald, as Russert, Cooper, Kessler and Pincus did. But as she went off to jail, sacrificing for what she believed to be an important principle, did they have any choice but to back her strongly? Isn’t that what any journalist would expect the bosses to do? Maybe, in retrospect, Jon Landman or some other top Times editor who wasn’t involved in the Judy legal strategy should have been put in charge of the coverage.

  • Howard Fineman says the streamlined White House format may have helped spawn this investigation:

      “. . .the very discipline of the machine itself — its short internal supply lines, the consistently-followed talking points, the focus on feeding friends and obliterating enemies — could be helping Fitzgerald. Tightly-knit groups rise together, but they fall together. If the inner circle is small, it takes only one insider “flip” to endanger the rest.”


  • Jim Hoagland asks, “What did the New York Times not know, and when did it now know it?”
  • They’re already preparing for Rove’s potential departure
  • Arianna Huffington’s memo to Bill Keller.
  • “The Most Important Criminal Case in American History.”
  • President Bush says it’s all “background noise.”
  • Tension between Cheney and the CIA explains a lot of this.
  • Questions for the Times and Miller.
  • “Top Ten Next Career Moves for Judith Miller.”
  • Miller: What a kidder. “I never misled anybody.”

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