No surprises
Gene Lyons
Posted on Wednesday, October 19, 2005

With everybody in Washington anticipating dramatic, possibly melodramatic, developments in the Valerie Plame CIA leaks investigation, it’s worth thinking about what it reveals about the appalling state of American political journalism. As one with firsthand experience of the odd blend of arrogance, high-handedness and sheer professional incompetence in high places at The New York Times, very little in that newspaper’s coverage of self-dramatizing reporter Judith Miller surprises me. Shocks me, yes. Surprises me, no. In a very limited sense, the Times ’ eight-year infatuation with Whitewater was worse than its boosterism regarding Iraq’s mythical weapons of mass destruction. No state secrets were involved. Any reasonably skeptical reporter with a working brain could deconstruct the coverage. Correct the errors and fill in the blanks, and the Whitewater “scandal,” as even Kenneth Starr eventually had to conclude, basically vanished. Having written two books on the subject (one with Joe Conason ), I’ll spare you a rehash.

What surprised me then was how reporters and editors acted as if they had a property right in an accusatory version of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s ill-fated real estate investment. Careers were at stake. Critics weren’t treated as rivals, but vandals. Once they’d apprenticed themselves to Starr’s leak-omatic prosecutors, the scandal acquired a life of its own. Even dispositive facts could be pitched into the memory hole to keep it going.

Editors appeared to protect themselves by failing to learn basic facts about the controversy; also by acting as if the newspaper was, by definition, beyond criticism and above reproach. The essence of it was “We’re The New York Times and you’re not.”

Hopefully, Miller’s public pratfall has taught them something. A True Believer, Miller apparently became an amanuensis to neo-conservative dogmatists in the Bush administration intoxicated by their own propaganda and determined to invade Iraq. Five of the six stories touting Saddam Hussein’s imaginary arsenal of WMD for which the Times has apologized carried her byline.

Then after the WMD fantasy began to come apart during the spring of 2003, her White House pals appeared to believe that they could count on Miller to help trash their enemies, specifically former Ambassador Joe Wilson and his wife, covert CIA operative Valerie Plame.

In the Times ’ front-page account of Miller’s off-again, on-again refusal to testify before Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s grand jury, editor Bill Keller admits some embarrassment.

“I wish it had been a clear-cut whistleblower case,” he said.

I wonder what they’re putting in the water coolers up on West 43rd Street. It wasn’t a whistleblower case at all. It was the exact opposite: the most powerful people in the United States using the press to damage a whistleblower by endangering his wife, something even the Mob won’t do. Indeed, it’s intriguing to speculate that Wilson, outspoken critic of pre-war propaganda about Iraq’s nuclear weapons programs, wasn’t the leak’s main target. White House apparatchiks may have been more leery of Plame, a specialist in nuclear proliferation, and her CIA colleagues. Here’s why: In a Times interview, “Little Miss Run Amok,” as Miller dubbed herself due to her ability to avoid editorial supervision on her way to fame and glory, admitted what the Times called “serious flaws in her articles on Iraqi weapons.” “ WMD—I got it totally wrong, ” she said. “The analysts, the experts and the journalists who covered them—we were all wrong. If your sources are wrong, you are wrong. I did the best job that I could.”

But that’s simply not so.

“Infighting among U. S. intelligence agencies fuels dispute over Iraq” was the headline of an October 2002 article by Knight Ridder’s Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay. The article detailed a “bitter feud over secret intelligence” between the CIA and Bush administration appointees at the Pentagon. “The dispute,” they wrote, “pits hardliners long distrustful of the U. S. intelligence community against professional military and intelligence officers who fear the hawks are shaping intelligence analyses to support their case for invading Iraq.” In an earlier article co-written with John Walcott, the authors quoted an unidentified official who said that “analysts at the working level in the intelligence community are feeling very strong pressure from the Pentagon to cook the intelligence books.” Nobody else they interviewed disagreed. Maybe that’s the story Scooter Lewis and the country-club toughs in the White House really feared. What’s more, it was always there to be written, but not by Washington courtier-journalists who pride themselves more on the quality of their dinner party invitations and TV appearances than their professional integrity and skepticism. Do I believe that Miller can’t remember who told her “Valerie Flame’s” name? A child wouldn’t believe it. The more clever of my two basset hounds would be suspicious. The real shame is that, absent an aggressive prosecutor, none of this would have become known.

•–––––—Free-lance columnist Gene Lyons is a Little Rock author and recipient of the National Magazine Award. Lily Tomlin said it best. "No matter how cynical I get, I just can't keep up."

**Your free view of Gene Lyons' column is supported by today's sponsor: Oprah vs Dr. Phil- who is your favorite? Vote now. Your opinion**