Embattled New York Times reporter Judith Miller acted as a "middleman"
between an American military unit and the Iraqi National Congress while she
was embedded with the U.S. armed forces searching for weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq in April 2003, and "took custody" of Saddam Hussein's
son-in-law, one of 55 most wanted Iraqis, RAW STORY has found.
Moreover, in one of the most highly unusual arrangements between a news
organization and the Department of Defense, Miller sat in on the initial
debriefing of Jamal Sultan Tikriti, according to a June 25, 2003 article
(
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28385-2003Jun24?language=prin…)
published in the Washington Post.
The Post article sheds some light on her unusual arrangement in obtaining a
special security clearance from the Department of Defense which is now the
subject of a Democratic congressional inquiry. On Monday, Reps. John Conyers
and Ira Skelton, the ranking Democrats on the House Judiciary and Armed
Services committees sent Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld a letter
demanding an explanation to Miller's top secret security clearance, which
Rumsfeld reportedly personally authorized.
What's interesting about the 2003 Post article is that two days before it
was published and two weeks after she was contacted by a Post reporter who
said he was going to call into question her reporting tactics, Miller met
with I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff,
to discuss allegations that President Bush twisted intelligence information
in his State of the Union address to win public support for the war in Iraq.
In Miller's "tell-all"
(
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/16/national/16miller.html?pagewanted=pri…) published in the Times Sunday, she said she met with Libby "on the
afternoon of June 23, 2003.at the Old Executive Office Building to interview
Mr. Libby, who was known to be an avid consumer of prewar intelligence
assessments, which were already coming under fierce criticism."
While it's true that the Bush administration was criticized for relying on
questionable intelligence reports prior to launching the Iraq war, it was in
fact Miller and The New York Times who were coming under fire for a series
of explosive articles she wrote leading up to the war claiming that Saddam
Hussein had WMD's, which many critics believe laid the groundwork for an
attack, and have since turned out to be wrong.
The Post article raises an important question about her role in the outing
of a covert CIA agent: was Miller, whose flawed reporting on the existence
of WMD's was scrutinized in mainstream newspapers, truly meeting with Libby
in the hopes of pursuing a hot story or was she trying to get information
out of him that would help restore her credibility and cover up her errors?
Consider the evidence.
"More than a half-dozen military officers said that Miller acted as a
middleman between the Army unit with which she was embedded and Iraqi
National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi, on one occasion accompanying Army
officers to Chalabi's headquarters, where they took custody of Saddam
Hussein's son-in-law," the Post reported. "She also sat in on the initial
debriefing of the son-in-law, these sources say."
Miller's intimate role with the MET Alpha nearly endangered the mission,
according to several soldiers.
"This was totally out of their lane, getting involved with human
intelligence," according to one military interviewed by the Post. "This
woman came in with a plan. She was leading them. . . . She ended up almost
hijacking the mission."
On April 21, 2003 Miller, in a handwritten note, objected to an order handed
down to the MET Alpha team that said it had to withdraw to the southern
Iraqi town of Talil. Miller objected in a handwritten note to two public
affairs officers.
"I see no reason for me to waste time (or MET Alpha, for that matter) in
Talil. . . . Request permission to stay on here with colleagues at the
Palestine Hotel til MET Alpha returns or order to return is rescinded. I
intend to write about this decision in the NY Times to send a successful
team back home just as progress on WMD is being made."
One military officer, who says that Miller sometimes "intimidated" Army
soldiers by invoking Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld or Undersecretary
Douglas Feith, was sharply critical of the note. "Essentially, she
threatened them," the officer said, describing the threat as that "she would
publish a negative story."
