As Aspens Turn: Deriding that 'Scooter'

By: Greg Mitchell After its starring role Wednesday night on "The Daily Show," the Sept. 15 "aspens are already turning" letter from "Scooter" Libby to "Judy" Miller has now reached a new level of infamy. Next stop: "SNL," a book of Libby poems, then the movie, starring Harrison Ford and Annette Bening.

On his Oct. 5 show, Jon Stewart graded Libby's prose a "D" on merit, and suggested that he might flunk Miller, on general principles. David Ignatius of The Washington Post probed the letter's journalistic meaning, a New York Observer headline referred to it as a "love letter," while others suggested Libby could be indicted for coaching the witness, even if he didn't out Valerie Plame.

I'm proud to say that I was the first to print the full text of the letter, at E&P Online, early last Saturday. It had appeared until then only in PDF form on The New York Times site. Within hours, the blogs were linking, and posters were finding codes and conspiracies in Scooter's suggestion that the aspens that Judy supposedly knows and loves out West would be "turning" together this fall because they are, after all, "connected at the roots."

Some bloggers recalled a significant meeting of neo-cons and/or Iraqi exiles in Aspen, Colo., that Miller might have attended. And so on.

I scoffed at first, but today I read a confidential letter from a top Washington editor who seemed to think there was something to this code business. So, silly me for thinking otherwise about Libby's closing passage: "Your reporting, and you, are missed. Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them. Come back to work -- and life."

One blogger declared that Libby and Miller had obviously conspired to nail Karl Rove: "Since all neo-cons are connected by their roots and grow in clusters, why pull the roots out of two neo-cons, when you can pull the roots out of only one (Karl Rove) and overall still have a healthier forest of (neo-cons) aspens."

Above ground, columnist Gene Lyons pondered "that metaphor for a moment" and then decided: "Here's all I know: If Hillary Clinton had written Susan McDougal a letter like that, the Washington press would have exploded with indignation. Or would the TV talking heads be predicting indictments?"

Ignatius, on the other hand, treated the note like no big deal, writing in the Post: "The warm tone of the letter from White House insider Lewis 'Scooter' Libby to Judith Miller of the New York Times conveyed an essential reality of reporter-source relationships, which we in the media sometimes tend to play down: These are often relationships between like-minded people who care about the same issues and who become -- dare I say it? -- friendly ... .

"It's obvious that Libby cares about Miller and wants her to return to reporting on issues they both see as important. That sort of personal connection between reporter and source may strike some people as sinister, but it's the mother's milk of journalism. That's why people tell us things: Because we listen, and often sound sympathetic."

Well, I'll give him that: Miller was certainly sympathetic to Libby, his delusions of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and his drive for an invasion that may be this country's greatest blunder in decades and already caused the deaths of tens of thousands. In fact, she helped him sell it. No code needed to figure that out.

Last night, Jon Stewart gave Scooter an award for Man With Silliest Name Who Generated Mass Killing, or something like that. Funny. Not so much.