Miller was a DoD agent/plant at NYT

* a comment from Viget:

"Go see booman's thread on dKos here and let me know what you think.

Short Booman: Miller was a DoD agent/plant at NYT and had a security clearance to be given pre-war classified intel and write stories about a case for war. The preznit authorizing Scooter's leak is a smokescreen for the real truth: that the American people are a victim of a massive domestic propaganda op."

Booman's post is a repeat of sorts of his post the other day where he makes the case, convincingly, that Judy Miller saw the raw intelligence for the NIE back in Sep 02 - before the NIE was even produced. The question, then, is why did Libby leak it to her in July 03?

Booman:

"There is no reason for Libby to leak that info to her again in July 2003. He was meeting her because she was an agent of the OVP and they needed her to do damage control."

and

"They can't admit that Judy Miller was not a reporter but an agent. The press would go beserk. It would clearly violate laws against domestic propaganda. It would unleash an enormous ball of wax that they could never contain.

They will go to any length to conceal the actual relationship between the WHIG and the contract agents in the press. "

and

once you realize Judy was written into the program from the beginning, the whole cluster of aspens makes sense.

And don't forget she was also written into the Pentagon when she went to Iraq to hunt for WMD.

She was a mole in the New York Times, and when she talked to Libby she wasn't doing it as a reporter, but as an agent.

The President didn't have to give permission for Libby to leak to Miller. They concocted a cover story for Fitz to explain why she was receiving classified intelligence at the St. Regis Hotel."

Viget: "And it really makes sense when he lays it all out. It would nicely explain how Judy was getting all that info on bogus pre-war intel back in Sept and October of 2002. Though I disagree with him that Libby was the one doing the sharing. I think if she truly was an "agent" she was getting her intel straight up from the analysts over at OSP."

Interestingly, as I mentioned recently, the Niger stuff didn't come through OSP. Emptywheel over at Booman's said:

"I think that's incredibly relevant here (particularly since she didn't include the Niger claims in her article). That is, she got leaked stuff that had been stovepiped via OSP all summer. Which may either support your argument about her getting this from Libby or may suggest itcame from Feith (I think either is just as likely, and doesn't affect the underlying issue, but my point is that it's very likely it came from OSP via WHIG)."

A couple of other things of note:
1)Daniel Ellsberg suggested that Miller was an agent just recently.
2) The other thing that I'm reminded of is that little episode where Judy wanted to write that article about the upcoming terrorist attack in America back in July 01 (from memory) and her editor wouldnt let her...


update: here's emptywheel from over at her place:

"Miller was definitely on the distribution list for WHIG materials (that has been alleged, with sources, before). Though I think Booman's column (which I admitted read after no sleep and quickly at that) is a little confusing in that it suggests Libby got it as NIE type info. Remember that OSP and WHIG were getting and using info BEFORE the IC validated it in some cases.

Someone linked to a Karen Kwiatkoski story recently (I think lukery) which noted that the Niger intell WASN'T an OSP product. THough the aluminum tubes were. I'm really beginning to think about what that means--that we can compare one intell campaign against another to see how it was leaked. But in the case of the tubes, at least, OSP was driving that."

(emptywheel has more bandwidth than i thought humanly possible)