www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28385-2003Jun24
All RSS Feeds Embedded Reporter's Role In Army Unit's Actions Questioned by Military By Howard Kurtz Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, June 25, 2003; military officials, prompting criticism that the unit was turned int o what one official called a "rogue operation." More than a half-dozen military officers said that Miller acted as a midd leman between the Army unit with which she was embedded and Iraqi Nation al Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi, on one occasion accompanying Army offi cers to Chalabi's headquarters, where they took custody of Saddam Hussei n's son-in-law. She also sat in on the initial debriefing of the son-in- law, these sources say.
Sign Up Now Since interrogating Iraqis was not the mission of the unit, these officia ls said, it became a "Judith Miller team," in the words of one officer c lose 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 tha t she exercised influence over the unit as "an idiotic proposition." She was cove ring a unit, like hundreds of other reporters for the New York Times, Wa shington Post and others. She went where they went to the degree that th ey would allow." Viewed from one perspective, Miller, a Pulitzer Prize-winning corresponde nt, nationally recognized expert on weapons of mass destruction and co-a uthor of a best-selling book on bioterrorism, was acting as an aggressiv e journalist. She ferreted out sources, used her long-standing relations hip with Chalabi to pursue potential stories and, in the process, helped the United States take custody of two important Iraqis. Some military o fficers say she cared passionately about her reporting without abandonin g 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. 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 themse lves." In a May 1 e-mail to Times colleague John Burns, The Post reported, Mille r said: "I've been covering Chalabi for about 10 years, and have done mo st of the stories about him for our paper. He has provided most of the front page exclusives on WMD to our paper." Miller's role with MET Alpha was controversial within the Defense Departm ent and among some staff members at the Times, where one reporter was as signed to check up on whether other embedded journalists followed simila r procedures. The MET Alpha team was charged with examining potential Iraqi weapon site s in the war's aftermath. Military officers critical of the unit's condu ct say its members were not trained in the art of human intelligence -- that is, eliciting information from prisoners and potential defectors. S pecialists in such interrogations say the initial hours of questioning a re crucial, and several Army and Pentagon officials were upset that MET Alpha officers were debriefing Hussein son-in-law Jamal Sultan Tikriti. "This was totally out of their lane, getting involved with human intellig ence," said one military officer who, like several others interviewed, d eclined to be named because he is not an authorized spokesman. But, the officer said of Miller, "this woman came in with a plan. Said a senior staff officer of the 75th Exploitation Task Force, of which MET Alpha is a part: "It's impossible to exaggerate the impact she had on the mission of this unit, and not for the better." Three weapons spec ialists were reassigned as the unit changed its approach, according to o fficers with the task force. Several military officers say Miller led MET Alpha members to Chalabi's c ompound in a former sporting club, where they wound up taking custody of Sultan, who was on the Pentagon's "deck of cards" of the 55 most wanted Iraqis. The April trip to Chalabi's headquarters took place "at Judy's direction," one officer said. Chalabi said in a brief interview that he had not arranged the handoff wi th Miller in advance and that her presence that day was "a total coincid ence. A top aide to Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress, Zaab Sethna, said he didn't know whether Miller arrived that day "because she's old friend s with Dr. Chalabi or because she wanted to introduce that team she was working with to the INC." But he said the idea of transferring Sultan to the MET Alpha squad originated in a conversation with Miller. "We told Judy because we thought it was a good story," Sethna said. He said his organizatio n had no previous connection to MET Alpha: "We didn't even know of their existence until they showed up with Judy." Asked why Chalabi didn't simply call his official Pentagon liaison to tur n over an important Iraqi, Sethna said they wanted to make sure that Sul tan was transported quickly and safely and that he was "very surprised" when MET Alpha agreed to take the prisoner. In reporting the handover of Sultan and an associate, Khalid Abdullah, Mi ller wrote that the two men "were questioned by an American intelligence official and then handed over to Chief Warrant Officer Richard L Gonza les, the leader of a Pentagon Mobile Exploitation Team that has been hun ting for unconventional weapons in Iraq." She wrote that Gonzales "happe ned to be meeting tonight with Mr Chalabi to discuss nonproliferation i ssues." In another case, Miller wrote of her exclusive interview with Nassir Hind awi, a former top official in Iraq's biological warfare program. The int erview took place while Hindawi was "in the protective custody of Iraqi opposition leader Ahmad Chalabi," Miller wrote. On April 21, when the MET Alpha team was ordered to withdraw to the south ern Iraqi town of Talil, Miller objected in a handwritten note to two pu blic affairs officers. It said: "I see no reason for me to waste time (or MET Alpha, for that matter) in Talil. Request permission to stay on here with colleagues at the P alestine Hotel til MET Alpha returns or order to return is rescinded. I intend to write about this decision in the NY Times to send a successful team back home just as progress on WMD is being made." One military officer, who says that Miller sometimes "intimidated" Army s oldiers by invoking Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld or Undersecretary Douglas Feith, was sharply critical of the note. "Essentially, she threa tened them," the officer said, describing the threat as that "she would publish a negative story." An Army officer, who regarded Miller's presence as "detrimental," said: " Judith was always issuing threats of either going to the New York Times or to the secretary of defense. There was nothing veiled about that thre at," this person said, and MET Alpha "was allowed to bend the rules." Times editor Rosenthal strongly disagreed, saying Miller's note sounded r outine and that characterizing it as a threat is "a total distortion of that letter." Miller later challenged the pullback order with Maj Gen. Richard McPhee, the commander of the 75th task force, M cPhee rescinded his withdrawal order after Petraeus advised him to do so . "Our desire was to pull these guys back in," said an officer who served u nder McPhee, adding that it was "quite a surprise" that the order was re versed.
In early May, Miller reported on MET Alph a's search for an ancient Jewish text that wound up unearthing Iraqi int elligence documents and maps related to Israel. In this case, too, Sethn a said, the information was passed from Chalabi's group to Miller. "We t hought this was a great story for the New York Times," Sethna said. Joe Curtin, an Army spokesman, s aid that "commanders make decisions based on developing situations" and that the unit had the approval of its headquarters. He said that any lea...
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