Punch and Judy

The clock is winding down on the empanelment of the grand jury that has been hearing testimony in the matter of the alleged "outing" of covert CIA operative, Valerie Plame. And that means that the anxiety level has been spiraling up in more than one office in the White House and the Republican National Committee (which has had more than enough to deal with these past few weeks,) in the waning days of October.

Will there be indictments? Who is in the crosshairs? What did the Vice President know and when did he know it? Did Libby tell Rove? Or did Rove learn about Ms. Plame from another source? And was that source a reporter? And if so, which one?

Just when you thought you'd thought about it all, along comes a Punch and Judy show that adds a touch of mystery to this constantly unfolding political saga.

October 21, 2005

Dear Friends,

You remember Punch and Judy, those commedia dell’arte finger puppets that first appeared on the streets of Naples and London in the 17th century. Well, they’re back and prominently on the streets of New York and Washington, DC.

Our Punch is Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., the New York Times publisher whose father, Arthur, is called Punch, making Arthur Jr. the son of Punch. Hence, Punch.

And Judy is Judith Miller, the New York Times Pulitzer prize-winning reporter whose fabled career has hit some bad patches in the last few years. First, for having unintentionally misreported on WMD’s in Iraq, thanks to fabricated information from a badly soiled confidential source; and most recently for having spent 85 days in jail, allegedly for the protection of another confidential source – I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, chief of staff to the Vice President.

Punch and Judy are also a “play within a play,” a Shakespearean device that is enjoying a revival in American political life. As the New York Times’ Frank Rich observed in his Sunday column – It’s Bush-Cheney, Not Rove-Libby” – the real story isn’t about the underlings, it’s about the overlords. And, in truth, it’s all about the war in Iraq -- how it was rationalized and sold to the American public.

So what has this to do with Punch and Judy and the New York Times?

On one level, it’s a story about a gutsy, brassy reporter who was willing to “do time” on behalf of an important principle, and an adventuresome, resolute publisher who backed her to the hilt.

On another level, it’s a story about stories that didn’t run when they should have and that didn’t reach the newspaper’s standards of excellence when they did.

And make no mistake; it’s also a story about the high cost of access to power in a journalist’s career in the nation’s capital. Remember that this “protected source” wasn’t a lowly and lonely whistleblower, but one of the princes of power and top spin control artists at the White House.

Nevertheless, in its Sunday, October 16th edition, The Times ran a lengthy page one story – “The Miller Case: A Notebook, A Cause, a Jail Cell and a Deal” – and inside, “A Personal Account: My Fours Hours Testifying in the Federal Grand Jury Room,” by Judith Miller. More prosaic headlines and porous stories we’ve rarely seen from this newspaper, and even fewer so marginally “fit to print.” I’ve read and re-read them, have listened carefully to the statements of Miller and Libby’s attorneys, discussed it with a handful of experts, and as they say about poetry, it doesn’t scan.

What’s most disturbing about this is the collateral damage done to The New York Times, one of the great institutions of American journalism. The lament is both personal -- that of an admiring reader – and civic – a concern that at a time when the news business is both under attack and imploding, the Times has made hash of “coming clean” with its readers – a transgression that will not yield full absolution.

Given its earlier difficulties with one clever, young, sociopathic reporter who managed to hoodwink too many superiors while writing too many bogus stories; a great reporter who made an unfortunate mistake; and the toppling of a tyrant editor-in-chief and his chief lieutenant, the Times needs the Punch and Judy incident like Louisiana and Mississippi need another Katrina.

To fully understand this matter, you would need to have followed the constantly unfolding, often confusing, and occasionally farcical constellation of events that began with President Bush’s January 2003 State of the Union Message, which included this assertion:

“The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

That triggered a July 2003 New York Times’ Op-Ed piece by former Ambassador Joseph Wilson that disputed the President’s “yellowcake claim:”

“Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.”

And that provoked nationally syndicated columnist Robert Novak to write the following:

“Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report.”

Thanks to Novak’s “yellow streak journalism,” the stakes had moved from political to criminal: the purposeful outing of an undercover agent is a punishable offense, a fact surely known to this veteran reporter.

Thus, the stage was set for a surfeit of scenes that followed: beginning with firm White House denials; the reluctant recusal of Attorney General John Ashcroft from overseeing an independent investigation of Administration involvement; the appointment of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald; continued White House denials; subpoenas issued to reporters Matt Cooper of Time and Judith Miller of the New York Times to reveal their Administration sources; lower court findings that held that “shield law” protection was not available to these two reporters; the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the Cooper-Miller cases from the lower courts; the decision by Time’s Editor-in-Chief Norman Pearlstine to comply with the courts’ orders; the New York Times’ decision by Punch and Judy not to; Judy goes to jail; Judy gets out of jail; the New York Times balks when it should have published; White House refusal to discuss the Karl Rove and Scooter Libby situation, and lots more in between and yet to come.

Many of the best minds in the country have wrestled with Judy Miller’s inexplicable logic in determining whether and when she had or had not been “released” by Libby to reveal him as her source. Compounding this is the revelation that she was prepared to identify him, not as a “senior White House official,” but as a “former Hill staffer,” which would be the rough equivalent of identifying George W. Bush as a “former National Guard pilot.”

I haven’t the slightest idea what special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s nearly two-year long investigation will reveal, although a recent Washington Post story by two of its very best reporters -- Walter Pincus and Jim Vander Hei – suggests that the Vice President may be headed back to the bunker, that “undisclosed location” he frequented in the months following the 9-11 attacks.

And, of course, all eyes are on Rove and Libby, or as Don Imus has taken to calling them, Hunt and Liddy.

But, I certainly don’t know.

What I do know is that at one of the most critical moments in its 109 years of ownership by the Ochs and Sulzberger families, the New York Times has failed its readers as well as its employees.

So unless a deus ex machina descends within the next few days or weeks, Punch and Judy, the New York Times, and journalism will have suffered considerable damage. And while what happens to a specific reporter or publisher is of little consequence to the country, the failure of a great paper, and the fate of the fourth estate are not.

This is democracy’s loss, and it all began with an Administration that decided to mushroom cloud a profoundly important national security issue with a citizenry it apparently couldn’t trust with the truth. And, sadly, there’s something about the Punch and Judy imbroglio that has the very same odor to it.

Comments

[Rans Fasoldt]

Despite the heavy breathing to the contrary, no law seems to have been broken by Novak or anyone else. This can be seen by even a quick reading of the law in question, although its chief architect, Victoria Toensing, supplies entertaining and convincing details to that effect. No worries about the NYT: it's been some time since it could be credited with the reputation it once deserved, vice the one it has earned of late, and richly deserves now.