The New York Times editorializes today on the imprisonment of Judith Miller. For those who may have forgotten, Miller is a Times reporter who refused to name her sources to a Grand Jury investigating the naming of Valarie Plame as a CIA operative. She has been in jail for 41 days so far, and The Times thinks it’s time to give up and let her go.
For what it’s worth, they’re right. Yes, the editorial has a bit of a hysterical tone, but the basic point is a sound one.
The whole “affair” (as it is being called, almost invariably, in major media sources) has taken on the air of the ridiculous. Judith Miller has been jailed; Robert Novak has stormed off the set of a CNN show; Matthew Cooper’s bosses have handed over his notes; everyone has speculated on the identity of Miller’s/Cooper’s/Novak’s source(s); no progress has been made, as far as I can tell, in actually figuring out whether someone broke the law or not and if so, who that someone might be.
Speaking for myself, I think that it would be a Good Thing to figure out whether someone did break the law. I think it would be an especially Good Thing (or at least it would make me happy) if that someone turned out to be Karl Rove, resulting in his summary dismissal (or, possibly, his being made to stand in a stockade for many hours until he begs forgiveness).
But I’ve got to agree with The Times that holding Judith Miller is unlikely to get anywhere. It hasn’t worked, it’s not likely to work, and even if she does become sick of the Big House and decide to give up a name that’ll just be proof that you can convince people to violate their principles by making them really uncomfortable for a long, long time. (Unless, of course, that person happens to be a primary character in The Book of Job. In that case, good luck, sucker.)
It is worth mentioning, I think, that despite my thinking that she should be released, I am not a particular fan of Judy Miller’s. She did a wonderful job of getting absolutely everything wrong in the months before we invaded Iraq. Perhaps more actively than any other reporter in the country, she sold the idea that we had proof of the existence of Weapons of Mass Destruction (I can’t believe I just capitalized that) in Iraq, and in retrospect all of the evidence that she cited was fabricated, just wrong, or carefully fed to her by inside players with a vested interest in the invasion taking place. Maybe her time in jail has convinced her to do a little bit more digging in hopes that she might actually get her stories right. That seems to me as the best that’s going to come of her little vacation, for anyone.