Judith Miller Did It For You, the Little People
When two world famous journalists sit down for a chat, you can expect some hard-hitting questions and take-no-prisoners grilling — and Lou Dobbs, interviewing Judith Miller last night, didn't disappoint:
DOBBS:[...]But the fact that it has taken so long, with the principals all known, with the case sitting before, this — and the cost of millions and millions of dollars, and frankly I will not forgive Fitzgerald for what he did to you.
If you could find a question in that statement, we're quite sure it would be a very hard-hitting one! But he wasn't done — Dobbs continued to go for the jugular:
DOBBS: It's — first, the idea of 85 days in jail is something that most of us cannot comprehend. It is — give us your — the sense of what you had to endure?
MILLER: Well, it was the most soulless place I've ever been. I think we don't realize how much we take things for granted like color, silence, the right to take two aspirin when you feel you have a headache. It was demeaning. It was degrading. It was very lonely.
Yes, after a career spent traipsing around post-war Iraq and witnessing public hangings in Sudan, nothing prepared Judy Miller for the hell that is a city jail in Virginia.
Why, in the end, was poor Judy trapped in this soulless, colorless, and unconscionably loud place? For you, dear reader. For you.
MILLER: The public won't know. That's why I was sitting in jail. For the public's right to know.
[...]
MILLER: Thank you very much. And I hope we have a federal shield law that would protect all of us, so that no other journalist has to make the choice that I did.
DOBBS: And again, not for the benefit of the journalists, but the benefit of the public.
MILLER: No, it's not about us, it's about the public's right to know.
Yes, the public's right to know. What the public has a right to know was never made quite clear, but after the jump, we'll try to narrow it down.
What the public does not have a right to know:
Who Judy's confidential sources are
What was said in her meetings with those confidential sources
Why she was in jail a year after getting a waiver from Scooter Libby
Whether she's going to write about her involvement in the investigation
Any details of her testimony
What the public might have a right to know:
Times Managing Editor John Geddes knows 85 good jokes.
