Lay all of Judith Miller's New York Times stories end to end,
from late 2001 to June 2003, and you get a desolate picture of a reporter
with an agenda, both manipulating and being manipulated by U.S. government
officials, Iraqi exiles and defectors, an entire Noah's ark of scam artists.
And while Miller, either under her own single byline or with NYT
colleagues, was touting the bioterror threat, her book "Germs," co-authored
with Times-men Stephen Engelberg and William Broad, was in the bookstores
and climbing the best seller lists. The same day that Miller opened an
envelope of white powder (which turned out to be harmless) at her desk at
The New York Times, her book was No. 6 on The New York Times best seller
list. The following week (Oct. 21, 2001), it reached No. 2. By Oct. 28 (at
the height of her scare-mongering campaign), it was up to No. 1. If we were
cynical .
We don't have full 20/20 hindsight yet, but we do know for
certain that many sensational disclosures in Miller's major stories between
late 2001 and early summer 2003, promoted disingenuous lies. There were no
secret biolabs under Saddam's palaces, no nuclear factories across Iraq
secretly working at full tilt. A huge percentage of what Miller wrote was
garbage, garbage that powered the Bush administration's propaganda drive
toward invasion.
What does that make Miller? She was a witting cheerleader for
war. She knew what she was doing.
And what does Miller's performance make The New York Times?
Didn't any senior editors at the paper or even the boss, A.O. Sulzberger,
ask themselves whether it was appropriate to have a trio of Times reporters
touting their book, "Germs," on TV and radio, while simultaneously running
stories in The New York Times headlining the risks of biowar and thus
creating just the sort of public alarm beneficial to the sales of their
book? Isn't that the sort of conflict of interest prosecutors have been
hounding Wall Street punters for?
The knives are certainly out for Miller. Leaked internal e-mail
traffic disclosed Miller's self-confessed reliance on Ahmad Chalabi, a
leading Iraqi exile with every motive to produce imaginative defectors eager
to testify about Saddam's biowar, chemical and nuclear arsenal. In late
June, Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post ran a long story about Miller's
ability in recent months to make the U.S. Army jump, merely by threatening
to go straight to Donald Rumsfeld.
It was funny, but again, the conflicts of interest put The New
York Times in a terrible light. Here was Miller, with a contract to write a
new book on the post-invasion search for "weapons of mass destruction,"
lodged in the Army unit charged with that search, fiercely insisting that
the unit prolong its futile hunt, while simultaneously working hand in glove
with Chalabi. Journalists have to do some complex dance steps to get good
stories, but a few red flags should have gone up on that one.
Dec. 20, 2001, headline: "Iraqi Tells of Renovations at Sites
for Chemical and Nuclear Arms." Miller rolls out a new Iraqi defector, in
the ripe tradition of her favorite, Khidir Hamza, the utter fraud who called
himself Saddam's Bombmaker.
Story: "An Iraqi defector who described himself as a civil
engineer said he personally worked on renovations of secret facilities for
biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in underground wells, private
villas and under the Saddam Hussein Hospital in Baghdad as recently as a
year ago.
"The defector, Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, gave details of the
projects he said he worked on for President Saddam Hussein's government in
an extensive interview last week in Bangkok. . The interview with Mr. Saeed
was arranged by the Iraqi National Congress, the main Iraqi opposition
group, which seeks the overthrow of Mr. Hussein.
"If verified, Mr. Saeed's allegations would provide ammunition
to officials within the Bush administration who have been arguing that Mr.
Hussein should be driven from power partly because of his unwillingness to
stop making weapons of mass destruction . "
Notice the sedate phrase "if verified." It never was verified.
But the story served its purpose.
Sept. 7, 2002, headline: "U.S. says Hussein intensifies quest
for A-bomb parts." Another of Miller's defectors takes a bow: "Speaking on
the condition that neither he nor the country in which he was interviewed be
identified, Ahmed al-Shemri, his pseudonym, said Iraq had continued
developing, producing and storing chemical agents at many mobile and fixed
secret sites throughout the country, many of them underground.
"All of Iraq is one large storage facility," said Mr. Shemri.
Asked about his allegations, American officials said they believed these
reports were accurate . "
Sept. 18, 2002, headline: "Verification is Difficult at Best,
Say the Experts, and Maybe Impossible." Khidhir Hamza made a cameo
appearance reporting his supposed knowledge that "Iraq was now at the 'pilot
plant' stage of nuclear production and within two to three years of mass
producing centrifuges to enrich uranium for a bomb.
Jan. 24, 2003, headline: "Defectors Bolster U.S. Case Against
Iraq, Officials Say." Al-Haideri is still in play: "Intelligence officials
said that some of the most valuable information has come from Adnan Ihsan
Saeed al-Haideri, a contractor who fled Iraq in the summer of 2001. He later
told American officials that chemical and biological weapons laboratories
were hidden beneath hospitals and inside presidential palaces. Mr. Haideri
was relocated anonymously to a small town in Virginia."
We'll leave al-Haideri in well-earned retirement and Miller
heading toward her supreme triumph of April 20, 2003, relaying the
allegations of chemical and bio-weapon dumps made by an unnamed Iraqi
scientist she'd never met.
Alexander Cockburn is coeditor with Jeffrey St. Clair of the
muckraking newsletter CounterPunch. To find out more about Alexander
Cockburn and read features by other columnists and cartoonists, visit the
Creators Syndicate Web page at
www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2003 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
