Letter to Maureen Dowd
October 23, 2005
Dear Maureen,
I’m glad you always liked me. But in the interests of journalistic accuracy at a very sensitive time for The Times and for me, I wish you had checked some of these damaging assertions about me before you printed them. If you had, there are seven specific mistakes you could have avoided. As important, you could have avoided creating a false and damaging impression that I had tried to cover up for a crime, or that I had convenient memory lapses at the behest of the administration. Just to remind you, I never went to see Scooter Libby to hear character assassination against Joe Wilson. I was trying to get to the bottom of the intelligence failures that were very important to me because they had led to my publishing several incorrect stories based on that intelligence. As my Sunday story stated, the question I put to Libby was this: “was the intell slanted?” The Joe Wilson discussion that day, and in subsequent interviews, was a small part of a much larger story I was trying to understand and tell so that I could offer readers who had trusted my earlier reporting, and whom I wanted to trust my future reporting, a more complete account of what had gone wrong in U.S. policy and intelligence.
As for the specific errors in your story, they include the following: First, I never intended to, nor did I mislead Phil Taubman, as I told both Barney Calame, the public editor, whom I asked to post my responses on his website, and Bill Keller, as Kit Seelye reported in her story today. To recap our Sunday story, Phil asked a group of reporters in the fall of 2003 whether we thought any of us had been targeted by the Administration as part of a deliberate campaign to put out information about Wilson’s wife. I was unaware that any such campaign existed, and if it did, that I did not think that I had been a target of it. That is one of the key issues that the special prosecutor has been trying to resolve for the past two years.
Two, it is completely untrue, as you say in your reference to me as badly needing a “leash,” that I was an insubordinate, self-assigning reporter who kept “drifting back” into areas from which I was barred. I kept writing about Iraq and weapons because I was assigned to cover the Oil for Food scandal, which involved both Iraq and unconventional weapons, and to cover counter-terrorism efforts in New York, which also involved both topics. Bill Keller and your close friend, Jill Abramson, approved both of those multi-story assignments.
Three, as I also told Calame, Scooter Libby has never been identified in any of my stories as anything other than a “senior Administration official,” and never would have been identified in print in one of my stories in any other way. I accepted the attribution for the sole purposes of listening to the information, not publishing it. While I was prepared to listen to what he had to say based on that attribution, I would have attempted to confirm the information he was providing through other sources, preferably on the record, or gone back to him to renegotiate a more appropriate attribution had I decided to write a story.
Four, I did urge a senior editor to let me pursue a story on Wilson/Plame. As I told the grand jury under oath, I had proposed soon after my breakfast meeting with Libby on July 8th that the paper try to find out whether what Libby was saying was true or whether it was a potential smear of a whistleblower. I said I had felt strongly that because Joe Wilson’s op-ed column had appeared in our paper, we had a particular obligation to do so. I never identified the editor to the grand jury or publicly, since it involved internal NYTimes decisions. But since you did, yes, the editor was Jill Abramson. Obviously, Jill and I have different memories of what happened during that turbulent period at the paper. I gave my recollection under oath.
Five, I have already addressed the “Valerie Flame” issue publicly in my answers to reporters at the Senate hearing on the shield law. And again, as I told Calame, “more than two years later, I cannot remember when or why I wrote that misspelled name in my notes. The name is free-floating, separated by two pages from the end of an interview with Mr. Libby and written in a different color ink from my Libby interviews. It is not embedded in any other interview. I spoke to dozens of people when I returned from Iraq about a wide variety of WMD topics that I did write about. I don’t know why you and Tina doubt my word, but you should know that I gave this account under oath as well.
Six, the Associated Press story which you cited is untrue. While A.P. did not call to check, you might have. It is true that the special prosecutor asked about whether I had had an earlier meeting with Mr. Libby in June. But as I testified, the discovery of the notebook was prompted by an entirely different matter the special prosecutor had raised. Once again, I found the notebook, which was not covered by the subpoena, as I was searching for additional notes on where I was when I conducted my July 12th interview with Libby. As I told Calame, “Under oath, I had promised the special counsel I would search for any additional notes I might have relevant to Mr. Libby and Plame/Wilson that would clarify whether the notes had been taken in a taxi in D.C. or at my home in Sag Harbor. On my first evening back at the Times while I was on the phone with my lawyer, Bob Bennett, I came upon the notebook as I was looking through a shopping bag filled with notebooks kept under my computer beneath my desk. I discovered that it contained an interview in June with Mr. Libby…I told Bob Bennett what I had found, and he immediately informed the special prosecutor.”
Seven, as far as “nailing me to a chair to extract the entire story of my escapade,” my lawyers tell me that senior management of the Times, including Bill Keller, were briefed on all important aspects of this case where I was concerned. I held nothing back at such meetings and answered all questions they put to me. I remember that Bill attended several of these sessions.
I agree with you that reporters must be more than stenographers. The same is true of columnists. I hope you will correct the record soon.
Judy
Posted by Judith Miller | November 09, 2005
