accused

New York Times Reporter Judith Miller Accused Of "Hijacking" Military Unit In Iraq
More on the "newspaper of record" and WMD lies

Bill Vann, 27 June 2003, World Socialist Web

In a war that saw "embedded" journalists functioning as cheerleaders for the American military and the media serving as a propaganda arm of the Bush administration, the Times played an especially sordid role. Its duplicity was exemplified by one of its senior correspondents, Judith Miller, who is reputed in media circles to be an expert in weapons of mass destruction as well as on Islam, despite her lack of a science background and her inability to speak Arabic. When she initially joined the Times staff, Miller’s beat was the banking and securities industry.

In her capacity as a Middle East and WMD "expert," Miller has functioned as a conduit for stories originating in US military and intelligence agencies, particularly those elements promoting the war against Iraq. In her recent reporting from occupied Iraq, this relationship has grown even more incestuous.

Citing multiple military sources, the Post's Kurtz describes Miller's "hijacking" of a US Army unit assigned to search for weapons of mass destruction, or WMD. According to Kurtz's account, Miller played a key role in turning the unit - Mobile Exploitation Team (MET) Alpha - into what army officials characterized as a "rogue operation."

According to Kurtz: "In April, Miller wrote a letter objecting to an Army commander's order to withdraw the unit...from the field. She said this would be a 'waste' of time and suggested that she would write about it unfavorably in the Times. After Miller took up the matter with a two-star general, the pullback order was dropped."

Apparently, US military commanders had concluded that the hunt for non-existent WMD had become a "waste" of the army's time, but Miller, who was embedded with the unit, was operating on her own agenda and managed to overrule them.

In her letter, quoted in the Post column, she wrote: "I intend to write about this decision in the NY Times to send a successful team back home just as progress on WMD is being made." Military officers quoted by Kurtz reported that Miller regularly told army personnel that she would go directly to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld or Undersecretary Douglas Feith about decisions with which she disagreed. "Essentially, she threatened them," said one officer.


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