Judith Miller (journalist)

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Judith "Judy" Miller (born January 2, 1948 in New York City ) is a former journalist for the New York Times who specializes in security issues. She received the prestigious Pulitzer Prize . Her critics accuse her of using too many supporters of the Iraq war as sources without careful scrutiny, such as Ahmad Chalabi .

She is currently a member of the Council on Foreign Relations .

Life

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Miller was born in New York and grew up in Miami and Los Angeles. Her half-brother was the music producer Jimmy Miller (1942-1994), who produced well-known bands such as the Rolling Stones or Motörhead from the 1960s to the 1990s . She graduated from Ohio State University and graduated from Barnard College in New York City in 1969 . She then completed the Masters program at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in Princeton . She has been working as a journalist in the Middle East since the early 1970s.

Since 1977 she has worked as a reporter for the New York Times , first in Washington, DC , from 1983 due to her Middle East experience in Cairo . She was the first woman there to become office manager.

In 1993 she married the publicist and publisher Jason Epstein (* 1930; Random House , Anchor Books from Bertelsmann ).

Even before the terrorist attacks of 2001, she was specializing in the biological weapons threat seen in leading circles in the United States . In early 2002, Miller and others received the Pulitzer Prize for reporting on Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden . She published several books.

In a 1996 review, the American orientalist Edward Said Millers criticized her inadequate knowledge of the Arabic and Persian languages ​​and accused her of demonizing Islam.

Coverage of the Middle East and the run-up to the Iraq War

She came under severe criticism for her reports on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction . Miller and her colleague Michael R. Gordon had reported from US government circles that tubes made of aluminum had been intercepted for the construction of gas centrifuges for uranium enrichment . With such centrifuges, Iraq was able to produce nuclear weapons-grade material.

Years later, physicist Houston G. Wood III , founder and former head of centrifuge development at Oak Ridge National Laboratory , expressed skepticism to the Washington Post that the tubes could ever have been used to manufacture centrifuges. In spite of everything, this became an essential US rationale for the war against Iraq. It is now considered certain that the Italian-made tubes in question are by no means suitable for the construction of gas centrifuges for uranium enrichment . Regardless of this, high-strength steel has not been used for this purpose since the 1950s.

After the occupation of Iraq by troops from the USA and the "Coalition of the Willing" Miller was assigned to the unit that searched for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. She reported on successful searches such as , however, these reports later turned out to be false.

On November 11, 2004, the Times published a long obituary for Yasser Arafat , written by Miller. Again, you throw critics such as major errors in the facts.

Criminal detention in the Plame affair

On October 1, 2004, she was sentenced to 18 months in custody because she had refused to name the informant who had revealed Valerie Plame as a secret agent of the CIA in the Plame affair , citing journalistic source protection . The exposure of secret agents of the CIA is a criminal offense in the USA. The law was passed during the tenure of former CIA director George HW Bush .

The exposure of Valerie Plame

From the perspective of the US government, an attack on Iraq was permitted under international law if Iraq tried to obtain nuclear weapons. For the enrichment of uranium, uranium is required in addition to the tubes mentioned above (later revealed as unmasked as unmasked). When contract documents emerged in Italy in 2002 that appeared to show that Saddam Hussein had tried to get Yellowcake in Niger , professional diplomat Joseph C. Wilson was sent to Niger to investigate the threat situation. He came to the conclusion that the documents were crude forgeries. When the US government did not follow his assessment, but continued to give Saddam Hussein's quest for nuclear weapons as a legal justification for the war against Iraq, Wilson published an article in the New York Times in March 2003 (after the occupation of Iraq) “What I didn't find in Africa ”(on the criticism of Wilson ). His wife, Valerie Plame, worked in the CIA's secret weapons division of mass destruction. When columnist Robert Novak claimed that Wilson had been commissioned to travel to Niger because of his wife's nepotist connections, Valerie Plame was exposed as a secret agent and made a criminal offense . Public Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald received the investigation.

Refusal to testify and custody

Miller himself was not suspected of being exposed, but because of her work, she was in close contact with the main suspects in the prosecution, in particular with Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff - Lewis Libby . In the course of these proceedings, she was summoned as a witness. She refused to testify, citing the journalistic privilege of protecting informants. The public prosecutor then applied for joint detention.

The start of detention was initially suspended due to an objection. On June 27, 2005, the US Supreme Court denied this objection. On 6 July 2005 Miller became final to coercive detention condemned what they in Alexandria (Virginia) had to play. The condemnation lasted 85 days before her informant released her from her vow of silence and revealed her source. Another journalist, Matt Cooper of Time magazine , escaped jail for bowing at the last minute to the President Bush appointed special investigator's request to testify.

Evaluation of the convulsive detention

Journalists initially saw the arrest as a dangerous precedent. Prosecutors could now put pressure on journalists to reveal their informers. Many US journalists saw freedom of the press at stake. Fewer and fewer government employees could risk leaking explosive but public information. More and more journalists could forego confidential information given the prospect of prison.

Miller himself said in court that if journalists could no longer be trusted that they would keep their informers secret, then they would not be able to practice their profession. Libby's attorney Robert S. Bennett said that he had released Miller from confidentiality on behalf of his client more than a year ago.

Since October 2005, there have been increasing voices, such as that of Miller's colleague Maureen Dowd , who saw the arrest order as an individual problem and not a general threat to freedom of the press.

Release, testimony and reactions

On September 29, 2005, Miller agreed to testify in court because her informant Lewis Libby had given her authority to break her silence. She was then released from custody.

On October 16, the New York Times published an article examining Miller's way of working and the contradictions between her statement on confidentiality and that of Libby's attorney. Also on October 16, Miller wrote in a Times article about her testimony before the investigative tribunal that most of her reports on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction came from Libby and that she had deliberately concealed him as the source. She did not give the source "government circles", but referred to Libby as an "ex-Congress employee".

On October 22nd, The Times published an article by columnist Maureen Dowd in which she suspected that the condemnation was an attempt to save Miller's career. Too many of the errors in Miller's reporting are due to gross violations of craft rules and editorial guidelines.

On November 10th, Judith Miller terminated her employment with the New York Times.

Works

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  1. ↑ Membership roster . Council on Foreign Relations. Retrieved May 2, 2015.
  2. ^ Edward Said : "A Devil Theory of Islam" in: The Nation 1996
  3. ↑ Among other things, the criticism by Jarett Kobek: “I hate this internet.” S. Fischer Verlag GmbH, Frankfurt am Main 2016, pp. 159–161
  4. ↑ http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/08/international/middleeast/08IRAQ.html
  5. ↑ Speaking publicly for the first time, Wood said in an interview that "it would have been extremely difficult to make these tubes into centrifuges. It stretches the imagination to come up with a way. I do not know any real centrifuge experts that feel differently . " - Depiction of Threat Outgrew Supporting Evidence
  6. ↑ cf. Iraqi Nuclear Program , Iraq's Biological Weapons Program, and Iraq 's Chemical Weapons Program
  7. ↑ http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/11/international/middleeast/arafatobit.html?pagewanted=8
  8. ↑ Daniel Scheschkewitz (DW): " In 49 of 50 US states there is a right to refuse to testify for journalists. Only at the federal level is such a law missing. " 2005
  9. ↑ Dieter Dettke (FES): Emails ... which the TIME Magazine - unlike the New York Times - made available to the special prosecutor Fitzgerald. TIME argued that as a magazine it was not above the law and had to obey the request of the special investigating judge ( memento of February 10, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on May 27, 2019
  10. ↑ Maureen Dowd: Woman of Mass Destruction (via Judith Miller)

Web links

To the Plame affair

Article in the New York Times

Film adaptations

On the war against Iraq and its justification

personal data
SURNAME Miller, Judith
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Miller, Judy (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American journalist for the New York Times
DATE OF BIRTH January 2, 1948
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City