When I was a cub investigative reporter chasing the anthrax investigation story several years ago, I remember being confused about one aspect of the coverage of that still unsolved case. At one point in the winter/spring of 2002, it was becoming evident that the FBI was shifting its focus of investigation from foreign sources as the likely perpetrators of the anthrax attacks that killed five people in the fall of 2001, to US domestic sources, in particular those with a connection to the US government biodefense program (for a variety of reasons I won't go into here). But the NYT's Judith Miller, who was perhaps the country's leading journalistic authority on bioweapons, and who had recently won a Pulitzer prize for her book Germs, and who had established close ties with several members of the US government bioweapons and biodefense community for research for her book, simply wouldn't report out what was really happening with the investigation, e.g. that players in the highly secretive and compartmentalized US government biodefense program were becoming a main focus of the investigation. It was hard at the time to not wonder if her close relationship to her sources in the US government program hadn't steered her away from what the rest of us were finding and reporting.

As it happens, the story isn't as neat as that, because now the FBI is reportedly being interviewed by lawyers for a person who accuses former Attorney General John Ashcroft and the FBI of outing him as a "person of interest" in the anthrax investigation to the media. And strangely enough, who is one journalist who the FBI agents are reportedly being interviewed about whether they leaked to? That would be Nicholas Kristof, the New York Times columnist, who had written a column about the "person of interest" (using a pseudonym for the person, Z).

Fast forward a year. Kristof writes a column in May 2003 sourced anonymously by Joe Wilson that alleges Wilson checked out the Iraq-Niger yellowcake allegations and found them to be likely false. And Cheney's office orchestrates its retaliation. Miller is appealed to when she appears for an interview on the missing WMD with Libby.

There's a history here... It's kind of interesting. I think it's simply very hard for institutions to investigate themselves, given the hundreds of small personal histories such as this one that form any work place. Think about it. Do any of us think George Bush can launch an honest investigation of his administration's Katrina response failures? Of course not. No preaching here, just pointing out the human relationships that make up an institution as complex as the Times are not likely much different than those at any other institution that we wouldn't expect to tear itself apart investigating itself. Heck, the Republican-led Congress can't even seem to bring itself to investigate the GOP-led executive branch on matters of life and death, war and peace, its party loyalties being stronger than its Constitutional mandate to serve as a check and balance on executive authority.

But there's another element worth exploring here. And it is that it was genuinely disturbing to even someone like myself pretty early along in their career back then that Miller's relationship with her US government sources was a big determining issue in what she chose to share with Times' readers. I mean, whether or not she agreed with the focus of the investigation, the fact of what was being investigated by the US government in terms of a WMD attack that killed Americans for the first time in history was a story. And there was just very little from someone who had extraordinary access.

But the relationship was not all one way. Judy Miller did favors for her US government sources. But she expected something in return. A status different from the rest of her colleagues. Access far beyond anything afforded her colleagues. Whether or not a top Pentagon official actually granted her a "Secret" security clearance, and I am persuaded to believe that someone high up did, Miller was trying to forge just that kind of situation, which of course, was an impossible one.

Posted by Laura at October 17, 2005 09:39 PM