THE MILLER MARTYRDOM: Antihero of American Journalism

After eighty-five days of jailed martyrdom, Judith Miller of the New York Times emerged from her confinement with a smile, a prepared statement, and the most ludicrous explanation for the chain of events that put her behind bars since Richard Nixon’s Checkers speech.

In the hour of her release, we learned that she was in possession of a waiver of confidentiality from her source (the Vice President’s Chief of Staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby) for over a year. She explained that she could not trust a written document authored by lawyers and required personal confirmation. She did not explain why she waited ten days after receiving that confirmation before agreeing to be freed.

Clearly, Judy Miller’s martyrdom was voluntary. Her explanation is worse than bad fiction. She was after all perfectly willing to trust thoroughly discredited sources on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq when tens of thousands of lives were on the line but she was unwilling to trust the attorney of the vice president’s Chief of Staff. Aside from the fact that we already knew Scooter Libby was a source in the Plamegate scandal (the outing of a CIA agent for political payback), she cannot explain why she did not telephone Scooter immediately if she had any reason to doubt the waiver’s credibility.

In her struggle to maintain heroic status, Judy pressed for a federal shield law to protect beleaguered journalists. Given her example, such a law would hold that it is not up to a judge or the source to determine when a source can be revealed but up to the reporter in her infinite wisdom. If poor Scooter Libby was under unbearable pressure in a matter directly concerning national security, he had the option to resign or simply refuse and take the consequences. In any case, by no reckoning could it fall to you.

Come on, Judy, we know that the bar of credibility at the New York Times has dropped to an astonishing low but this explanation is pure absurdity.

The mask of martyrdom has dropped. It was a tale told by an idiot, full of pompous journalistic outrage, and signifying everything. The only ass you were covering was your own.

As the story of Plamegate unfolds, we will learn the sordid truth: that a vaunted New York Times reporter and a contingent of media hacks conspired with government agents not only in a cheap campaign of political vendetta but in legitimizing and disseminating false information to justify an illegal and immoral war of aggression. It will further be revealed that it was executed with full knowledge and malicious intent.

Congratulations, Judy Miller, you have secured your place in history – not as the martyr of journalism you so desperately sought to secure but as the lowest form of journalist: a traitor to the truth, to your profession, and to the people who believed in you.

You have become the dark side of Daniel Ellsberg.

You were a propagandist for the cause of war. There is nothing inherently dishonorable about that designation. A propagandist is as virtuous as the cause he or she serves and the integrity with which the job is carried out. All writers and voices that appeal to both the heart and mind may be considered propagandists. In the purest sense, Tom Paine (author of Common Sense, The Rights of Man, the American Crisis and a founder of American democracy) was perhaps the greatest propagandist the world has yet known. His cause was noble and his loyalty to the truth was never broken. Paine never pretended to be anything that he was not.

In stark contrast, you hid behind the disguise of an objective reporter. You employed known falsehoods and outright lies in a cause that was rotten to the core. Your pen was poison. It was a dagger to the heart of the cause of journalism in a democracy. It was a vital and potent weapon in a war that has already cost nearly 2,000 American and well over 100,000 Iraqi lives.

We can have little confidence that our legal system will fully expose your duplicitous treachery. When we learn that you were given assurances of limited testimony by the prosecutor in this case, it gives us pause.

The people, however, will know the truth and history will record it faithfully. Not even your closest allies in the halls of power will fall on the sword for a dishonored journalist charading as a heroic martyr. Your best hope for professional survival is that your files contain sufficient tar and poison to threaten those who threaten you. Your best hope of salvation is to come clean with the whole and unvarnished truth.

Judy Miller, you are no hero. You are no martyr. You are only the latest entry in the staggering decline of American journalism.

Jazz.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). THE CHRONICLES HAVE BEEN POSTED ON DISSIDENT VOICE, THE ALBION MONITOR & COUNTERPUNCH.