Throwing Judy From The Train

Posted by: Jon Fine on October 24

The sound you are hearing is the New York Times throwing Judy Miller overboard, thanks to blunt comment from a passel of Times heavies including Executive Editor Bill Keller and star columnist Maureen Dowd (column available only through TimesSelect).

Reminds me of one of the best, and bitterest, things a Times insider told me when the vultures began circling the still-employed Howell Raines: “The volcano still wants a body.”

One key question: What, exactly, did Keller mean when he talked about Judy’s “entanglement” with Lewis “Scooter” Libby?

Did he realize that word would make people wonder if he’s obliquely referring to something New York magazine previously wrote about Miller?

Miller did. Which is why, according to the Wall Street Journal, she sent an email to the Times’ Public Editor Byron Calame saying “I had no personal, social, or other relationship with him except as a source.”

For some reason this line does not show up in either to public editor Byron Calame’s Sunday column on the matter or Miller’s own her online rebuttal. But, then, one can’t expect much to make sense about this extremely twisty tale.(I’d link to the original Times piece that ran on October 16, but they’ve TimesSelected it and it’s behind the wall.)

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