'Flame' Plame Blame Game by Justin Raimondo

October 17, 2005
'Flame' Plame Blame Game
Judy Miller and the price of fame – her 'mea culpa' was mighty lame
by Justin Raimondo

After spending 85 days in jail, protecting a source that had given her a waiver long ago, New York Times reporter Judith Miller emerged to testify in private, to prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald's grand jury, and in public, to the readers of the New York Times. We don't know what she said to the grand jury, of course, but if her piece in the Times is any indication, it was no more illuminating – or credible – than her previous front-page pieces retailing tall tales told by Iraqi "defectors" as hard evidence of Saddam's "weapons of mass destruction." According to Miller – who suddenly recalled a previous undisclosed conversation with I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and "found" her notes – she told Fitzgerald she didn't recall the name of the person who had disclosed CIA agent Valerie Plame's name to her, even though the phrase "Valerie Flame" appears in the same notebook as her notes of her encounter with Libby. "I simply could not recall where that came from, when I wrote it, or why the name was misspelled."


Miller's credibility, having already taken a huge hit from the debunking of her reporting on Iraq's alleged WMD, hit a new low with her admission that she agreed to Libby's suggestion that she attribute statements made by him to a "former Hill staffer." Well, uh, yes, Libby was indeed a former Hill staffer, but that would be like attributing remarks made by his boss, Dick Cheney, to a "former Republican member of Congress." This goes beyond the routine dishonesty engaged in by all public officials and reveals a taste for deception that approaches the level of artistic appreciation.

The aesthetic aspect of Libby's penchant for disguises and cloak-and-daggerish secrecy also comes out in the concluding paragraphs of Miller's account, in which she discusses the letter he wrote to her releasing her from any pledge of confidentiality, with its weird allusions and implied double meanings:

"Mr. Fitzgerald also focused on the letter's closing lines. 'Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning,' Mr. Libby wrote. 'They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them.' How did I interpret that? Mr. Fitzgerald asked. In answer, I told the grand jury about my last encounter with Mr. Libby. It came in August 2003, shortly after I attended a conference on national security issues held in Aspen, Colo. After the conference, I traveled to Jackson Hole, Wyo. At a rodeo one afternoon, a man in jeans, a cowboy hat, and sunglasses approached me. He asked me how the Aspen conference had gone. I had no idea who he was.

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http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=7656

Is she Basil Fawlty?
"Oh, Valerie PLAME! I thought you said FLAME!"

haven't heard anything this pathetic since Dick Armey blamed his cleft palate for making him refer to Barney Frank as Barney "Fag".