CounterPunch Diary: Judy Miller's War

Judy Miller's War
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

Lay all 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 US government officials, Iraqi exiles and defectors, an entire Noah's Ark of scam-artists.

And while Miller, either under her own single by- line or with NYT colleagues, was touting the bioterror threat, her book Germs, co-authored with Times-men Steven 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 #6 on the New York Times best seller list. The following week (October 21, 2001), it reached #2. By October 28, --at the height of her scare-mongering campaign--it was up to #1. If we were cynical...

We don't have full 20/20 hindsight yet, but we do know for certain that all the 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 towards invasion.

What does that make Miller? She was a witting cheer-leader 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 New York Times 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?

--snip--

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn08182003.html
(edit: added direct link)

It might fit better in Editorials, but has more to do with "National Security" with respect to the frauds and charlatans who make big bank out of scaring people needlessly under the veil of "national security".

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This woman is an unethical political operative. The fact that the Times allows people like her to continue on its staff proves they have no journalistic standards.

"If verified..." Since when does that qualify for publication? The Times is the perfect tool for operators with covert agendas, fascists, and propagandists. They do it so brazenly and with such elan, that they think style will disguise the scum they traffic in.

fellows for the PNAC. Miller hasn't a clue. I am not even sure she has a historic perspective on this. She just reiterates RW talk points is all with a modicum of research wherein she only reads those authors that feed the propaganda. She hasn't a clue what she is talking about and very will might be a RW political operative.

Cockburn is a Stalinist/communist that hates Paul Wellstone. Don't listen to the sicko.

unspunmedia.org is apparently a red-baiting reactionary who is content to amplify Cockburn's bland assesment of Wellstone's career (which when you look at it becomes even sadder when you realize he was the best the left had to offer) into "hatred".

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn0603.html

today's been a real banner day for me being floored.. the ol' jaw can't take much more of this.

the work (word used lightly) of Miller. I did not necessarily need cockburn to drive any new points home. In fact not much of what he said is news on Miller. She is a clueless peddler who mouths words for the RW - likud propagandists. No real craftswoman is she. Not even very crafty.