Quoted:
Kurtz:
Embedded Reporter's Role In Army Unit's Actions Questioned by Military
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28385-2003Jun24.html
Dang - can't make this link work - if I make it hot, first it wqnts to take you to the "register" page that probably gets you on a zillion mailing lists.
Just paste the URL in your browser's address window.
View Quote
I can't look at it either without putting in BD, ZIP code, & country. I just put in some BS. Anyways here the story
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washingtonpost.com
Embedded Reporter's Role In Army Unit's Actions Questioned by Military
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 25, 2003; Page C01
New York Times reporter Judith Miller played a highly unusual role in an Army unit assigned to search for dangerous Iraqi weapons, according to U.S. military officials, prompting criticism that the unit was turned into what one official called a "rogue operation."
More than a half-dozen military officers said that Miller acted as a middleman between the Army unit with which she was embedded and Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi, on one occasion accompanying Army officers to Chalabi's headquarters, where they took custody of Saddam Hussein's son-in-law. She also sat in on the initial debriefing of the son-in-law, these sources say.
Since interrogating Iraqis was not the mission of the unit, these officials said, it became a "Judith Miller team," in the words of one officer close to the situation.
In April, Miller wrote a letter objecting to an Army commander's order to withdraw the unit, Mobile Exploitation Team Alpha, 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.
Times Assistant Managing Editor Andrew Rosenthal dismissed the notion that she exercised influence over the unit as "an idiotic proposition."
"She didn't bring MET Alpha anywhere. . . . It's a baseless accusation," he said. "She doesn't direct MET Alpha, she's a civilian. Judith Miller is a reporter. She's not a member of the U.S. armed forces. She was covering a unit, like hundreds of other reporters for the New York Times, Washington Post and others. She went where they went to the degree that they would allow."
Viewed from one perspective, Miller, a Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent, nationally recognized expert on weapons of mass destruction and co-author of a best-selling book on bioterrorism, was acting as an aggressive journalist. She ferreted out sources, used her long-standing relationship with Chalabi to pursue potential stories and, in the process, helped the United States take custody of two important Iraqis. Some military officers say she cared passionately about her reporting without abandoning her objectivity, and some of her critics may be overly concerned with regulations and perhaps jealous of the attention Miller's unit received..
"We think she did really good work there," Rosenthal said. "We think she broke some important stories."
Miller declined to be interviewed for this article, saying it was unfair of The Washington Post to have published an internal e-mail of hers last month. She said only that "my past and future articles speak for themselves."
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