Choice Morsels and Unanswered Questions

"Although [Miller] will not criticize Sulzberger," Auletta writes, "or discuss aspects of what happened, she does say, reluctantly, 'He was there solidly -- until he wasn't.'" The unanswered question is: at what point did Sulzberger change his mind about Miller and why?
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Here are a few choice morsels from Judy Miller and by Judy Miller in Ken Auletta's New York Times story in the New Yorker:

  • Miller, Keller recalled, "was defensive, unrelentingly sure of her positions, and unwilling to be perceived as someone who wrote 'bad stories.' "

  • "I should have left the paper after the editors' note," Miller says [referring to the Times' May 2004 mea culpa, which acknowledged "instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been." Five of the six stories had run under Miller's byline].
  • "The first time I met Judy on this case, the first thing she said was 'Somebody has to fight back against Fitzgerald,' " [Floyd] Abrams said.
  • If Keller did not retract the "entanglement" claim, [Miller] threatened to sue him and the Times for defamation.
  • Miller: "'I hope I will be known as a reporter who helped get a federal shield law. I fear that the Times' betrayal of me may have weakened that."
  • And here are a few unanswered questions:

    • Miller did not know that Sulzberger, Keller, Jill Abramson, and Janet Robinson had held a series of discussions while she was in jail and, according to two of the principals, decided that her career at the Times was over. "The decision was that she was not going to work with words again," one of the participants said.

    How many of the 14 glowing editorials on Miller while she was in jail were written after the decision that "she could never again be a reporter for the Times"? And what precisely sealed that decision?

    • Although [Miller] will not criticize Sulzberger or discuss aspects of what happened, she does say, reluctantly, "He was there solidly -- until he wasn't."

    At what point did Sulzberger change his mind about Miller and why? And was it, as a Times source told me, after his father told him that Miller could not come back to the paper?

    • After studying Miller's notebook, Bennett concluded that there was only one source -- Libby.

    So did Bennett conclude that Libby was also the source that told Miller about Valerie Flame?

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