Pentagon/CIA officials say they're unaware of Miller's security clearance

[highplainsdem]

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9730308/


Officials unaware of reporter's special status
NY Times' Miller wrote she had 'security clearance' for Iraq WMD reporting


By Jim Miklaszewski
Correspondent
NBC News
Updated: 4:01 p.m. ET Oct. 17, 2005


WASHINGTON — Officials from the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon say they have no idea what New York Times reporter Judith Miller was talking about when she claimed to have been given a "security clearance" while she was embedded with a U.S. Army unit in Iraq in 2003.

In a first-person account of her recent testimony before a federal grand jury, published in the newspaper on Sunday, Miller wrote the Pentagon had given her "clearance to see secret information as part of my assignment 'embedded' with a special military unit hunting for unconventional weapons."

According to the officials, they know of no instance or circumstance when a reporter has been, or would be, granted a security clearance and believed she would not have been given one when she was embedded with the unit that was tasked with finding Iraqi WMDs immediately after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Meanwhile, Pentagon officials say they are continuing to check whether Miller had been granted a security clearance of any kind.

<snip>

[Inland]

1. I hear that Gannon knew a guy who knew a guy who could get WH clearance.

Let's ask Mr. ManDate if he has any ideas.

[annabanana]

2. it was super-duper double secret deep dark background

(Rummy told me in a closet among the roots in a basement in Aspen.)

[insane_cratic_gal]

It's unconventional weapons now?

Like what Rubber chickens and thumb tacks?

[Dover]

6. They do enjoy playing with the English language, don't they? n/t

[Dover]

3. ...unaware of Abu Ghraib, unaware no WMD, unaware of Geneva Conventions

...hey they are operating in the dark here! Give 'em a break!

[Scout1071]

4. Wolf Blitzer just now said live that "he doesn't know of any reporter

every getting security clearance when they are on these kinds of stories"....ol' Wolf should know.

[dave29]

5. I wonder if she sat next to Valerie "Flame"

?

[mattclearing]

7. Operation Mockingbird, anyone? n/t

[mod mom]

8. Judy, Didn't you think to get it in writing w these guys? They used you.

You're just as dispensible as everyone else. Time to come clean on them!

[Carni]

Now just how in the hell could they not know about this?

Honest to God they must think the public is F'ing stupid...

[in_cog_ni_to]

9. Oh this is getting good. They're going to piss each other off so much

that they all confess their corruption and take down the house of bush. OR could SOMEONE, *cough*cough*, Cheney???, have given her a "secret" clearance, unofficial, off the books, out of the computer system? Is that even possible? If the VP said to do that, they could/would, right? Cheney DID visit the offices of the CIA on a regular basis.

[Pithy Cherub]

11. The believability is oh so high after DoD's faux teleconference

with the selected one. They did not rehearse that, nope, not at all. Clearances are handled at Wal*Mart....:crazy:

[notadmblnd]

12. I'm thinking that she's DOD

pentagon.

[hang a left]

18. It was Rumsfeld, "we know where they are east west north and south"

Peace Patriots theory just looks better and better all the time.

[notadmblnd]

10. It's my understanding that rumsfeld signed the papers himself

... that is the papers making her an embed. I would imagine the approval for security clearance would also be in that paper work. Time to drag Nostferumsfeld in front of the GJ perhaps?

on edit: unless she has had clearance since before bush ii (like during reagan or bush i admin?)

[Emit]

15. Yes, that's what I've read---the Pentagon and Rumsfeld

~snip~

According to Pomeroy, as well as an editor at the Times, Miller had helped negotiate her own embedding agreement with the Pentagon—an agreement so sensitive that, according to one Times editor, Rumsfeld himself signed off on it.

~snip~

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_07_10_atrios_archive.html

[highplainsdem]

19. Thanks for the link!

[gratuitous]

13. Somebody's lying

Is it Judy, puffing herself up so that she looks more important than she really is? There's a history there. I wonder what her bosses at the Times think about her using their pages to lie in print?

Or maybe it's the government. After all, when an operation this questionable goes kerflooey, you've GOT to have plausible deniability. Otherwise, you look far too much like the Keystone Kops. There's a history here, too. I wonder what Judy thinks about being hung out to dry?

I suppose Judy could spill the beans on some classified information she has. If they government doesn't prosecute her, then we could conclude that she didn't have a security clearance after all, so Judy is lying. Or, if she really did have a security clearance, the government would prosecute her for violating that clearance, but at least she wouldn't be a liar. Hmmm, maybe that's not such a good idea after all if you're Judy.

It would sure settle things for the rest of us, though. And I think we've suffered enough.

[in_cog_ni_to]

16. If they turn on her now,

she could take them down, I would think, IF she really did have security clearance. I'm sure, under these circumstances, she would be obliged to tell all to the prosecutor. Right? The DOD can't stop her from testifying now, since their angle is "she didn't have security clearance." They're BOTH in a pickle!

[H2O Man]

17. Judith may be

of very little value to them now. Very little.

[H2O Man]

14. Shocking.

Bet you are as surprised as me! Of course, they are not allowed to release that information, anyhow.