Neo-con heroine
Gene Lyons

Posted on Wednesday, October 5, 2005

One of the oddest spectacles in contemporary celebrity journalism took
place when New York Times reporter Judith Miller recently showed up on
TV to celebrate her release from prison. Miller had been jailed for 84
days at the behest of Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald due to her
refusal to testify in the Valerie Plame leak investigation. Plame is
the CIA employee whose cover was blown by Bush administration apparatchiks
to discredit her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joe Wilson, and to
warn potential whistleblowers that retribution would be harsh and swift.
Wilson is a former career diplomat who bravely defied Saddam Hussein
during the Gulf War by sheltering inside the U.S. Embassy persons whom
the Iraqi dictator had threatened to hang. He earned this White House’s
enmity by publishing a New York Times column on July 6, 2003, stating
that "some of the intelligence related to Iraq’s nuclear weapons
program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

Wilson had traveled to Africa at the CIA’s behest to investigate a
report that Niger had sold uranium to Iraq. He later said that the
report had been based upon crudely forged documents. The White House
had to admit that President Bush should never have made the bogus charge.

But loyalty to the regime takes precedence over all competing values in
this White House, truth, patriotism and honor among them, so Bush
staffers mentioned Wilson’s CIA connection in conversations with a
couple of courtier journalists of the kind who gain access to the
powerful through flattery and GOP political correctness.

Columnist Robert Novak published a column insinuating that Wilson
couldn’t be a real man because his wife got him the African gig—as if
10 unpaid days in sunny Niger were a luxury junket.

The problem was that Plame was a covert operative, i. e., a spy. Her
job was keeping nuclear weapons out of terrorist hands. Under certain
circumstances, blowing a covert operative’s cover can be a federal
crime.

Professing shock, Bush vowed swift action against anybody involved in
the leaking. Firing would be the least of it. The White House issued
categorical denials on behalf of political mischief maker Karl Rove and
Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby in
particular. Fitzgerald, considered an incorruptible bulldog by Justice
Department colleagues, was appointed to investigate.

Amid histrionic protests in Washington’s journalistic establishment,
Fitzgerald persuaded several federal judges that the mystery could not
be solved without the testimony of reporters, among them non-partisan
professionals like The Washington Post’s Walter Pincus.

Meanwhile, it’s become known that White House denials of Rove and
Libby’s involvement in "outing" Plame to the press have become
inoperative and Bush’s vow to fire anyone involved in the matter
forgotten.

Then there’s Miller, the flamboyant New York Times reporter and
neo-conservative pinup girl whose discredited "exclusives" on Iraq’s
imaginary nuclear weapons helped drive the nation to war. Miller said
waivers provided by her sources—she never wrote a story about
Plame—were the result of administration pressure, hence involuntary, and should
not be taken seriously by so fierce an advocate of First Amendment press
freedom as herself.

Accompanied by a series of passionate New York Times editorials
comparing her to everybody from Martin Luther King Jr. to Gandhi,
Miller went to jail, vowing to stay as long as necessary to preserve our
freedoms. She became the neo-con Susan McDougal, the Whitewater holdout
who said Kenneth Starr wanted her to lie about the Clintons.

Until last week, that is, when Miller’s source, Scooter Libby,
supposedly persuaded her that it was OK to sing. Except that Libby’s
lawyer insists that he gave her attorneys exactly the same information
a year ago. Lawyerly scuffling broke out, but I suspect that Miller had
simply reconfigured her lofty principles, possibly to avoid criminal
contempt charges.

Then somebody leaked Scooter’s letter to the press. It said that
Miller’s truthful testimony would actually benefit him, helpfully
reminding her of the legal tightrope her source is walking: "[A] s I am
sure will not be news to you, the public report of every other
reporter’s testimony makes clear that they did not discuss Plame’s name
or identity with me, or knew about her before our call."

See, if Scooter didn’t know Plame was a secret agent, outing her might
not be a crime. It’s the incompetence defense. The letter also
implicitly promised Miller big scoops on, get this, Iran’s nuclear
weapons, and it closed with a poetic line reminding her that "[o] ut
West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn
in clusters, because their roots connect them." Ponder that metaphor
for a moment. Here’s all I know: If Hillary Clinton had written Susan
McDougal a letter like that, the Washington press would have exploded
with indignation. Or would the TV talking heads be predicting
indictments?

•–––––—Free-lance columnist Gene Lyons is a Little Rock author and
recipient of the National Magazine Award.

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