Out of the Past: Raines Comments on Miller and WMD Coverage

By: E&P Staff Although former New York Times Executive Editor Howell Raines has declined to comment on the current uproar at the newspaper surrounding reporter Judith Miller and her role in the Plame/CIA leak case, some of Raines' views on Miller, and the Times' treatment of her, can be interpreted in a fascinating e-mail he sent to Los Angeles Times media reporter Tim Rutten on May 26, 2004.

Raines, who as editor oversaw Miller's flawed front-page reports on WMD during the run-up to the Iraq war, was forced out at the paper after the Jayson Blair scandal, shortly before Miller's first conversation with Scooter Libby about Joseph Wilson and his wife.
He was later replaced by Bill Keller.

Raines' e-mail carried his response to Rutten's request for his opinion of the Times' belated editors' note that day which had admitted that some of its pre-war stories on WMD in Iraq were seriously wrong. The editors' note singled out six stories for blame, with Miller having a hand in nearly all of them, but did not mention Miller by name.

In his response, Raines deflects criticism directed at him for allegedly rushing some of the WMD "scoops" into the paper. He mentions that Keller (as managing editor), Jill Abramson (then the Washington bureau chief) and others actually were the ones who supervised Miller and her work. He asserts that Abramson "told me that she had a good rapport with Ms. Miller, who had a conflicted relationship with some colleagues. Ms. Abramson, who is now managing editor, supervised a significant amount of Ms. Miller's reporting and personally edited the resulting stories before they went into the paper. It seems to me unfair to single out Judy Miller, even in a blind reference, or to cite individual stories by other reporters without drawing aside the veil of anonymity around un-bylined editors who worked with them."

Here is Raines' e-mail to Rutten: (Readers may also want to revisit "My Times," the 20,000-word article on the Jayson Blair scandal Raines wrote for The Atlantic Monthly in 2004.)

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Since the Editors' Note in the New York Times today cited stories published while I was executive editor, I understand your interest in my thoughts on the subject. First and foremost, I agree with the editors' statement that the stories were published in a reasonable effort to share with our readers the best knowledge that we had at the time. We relied in that period on a group of national security and intelligence reporters who worked tirelessly to keep up with developments in the search for weapons of mass destruction. I believe then as I do now that this group of reporters -- including, among others, Michael Gordon, Patrick Tyler, Judith Miller, William Broad, and the Pentagon and intelligence reporters in the Washington Bureau -- acted in good faith to present the best version of the facts they could obtain at the time. It is inevitable that newspaper stories of this kind -- usually based on information from interested parties in government and elsewhere -- are incomplete and in some cases reflect the agenda of the sources. Follow-up, as the editors' note correctly observed, is always in order.

Personally, I do not agree with the contention in the editors' note that problems in the WMD stories came about because some editors felt pressured to get scoops into the paper before the necessary checking had taken place. I cannot read the minds of others in this regard. My feeling is that no editor did this kind of reckless rushing while I was executive editor. Any of the 30 or so people who sat in our front-page meetings during the run-up to the Iraq invasion and the first phase of the war can attest to the seriousness with which everyone took this story. As for my part, I can tell you positively that in 25 years on The Times and in 21 months as executive editor, I never put anything into the paper before I thought it was ready.

Somewhat to my surprise, I was not contacted by anyone at The Times prior to today's commentary. Had I been I would have repeated my concern that editors' notes do not give readers the facts, analysis and context they need about disputed stories. I found this editors' note as vague and incomplete as some that have preceded it. As I stated in a recent article in The Atlantic Monthly, I came to regard the widely discussed editors' note published on the Wen Ho Lee episode in 2000 as inadequate. It did not level with Times readers about unresolved disagreements between Washington reporters and reporters in Science over the facts and import of that case. In the Atlantic, I also faulted as incomplete the editorial on Wen Ho Lee that I wrote at that time in my role as Editorial Page editor. That is why I chose not to use an editors' note as the main vehicle for informing our readers when we discovered the lies of Jayson Blair in May, 2003. I authorized an exhaustive front-page news story written by an independent team of reporters and editors. Even though the ensuing uproar led to my dismissal, I would do the same thing today based on my belief that newspapers must tell as much as they can about their mistakes. To achieve full disclosure of the sort I advocated as editor, detailed news stories are needed in addition to editors' notes to inform readers fully about how the paper operates.

I assume that Judith Miller is the "individual" reporter who, according to the editors' note, is being singled out by outside critics. Like other Times readers, I could not tell from today's note what the editors found out about the disputes over her stories. I do know that while Judy Miller's work has been widely discussed, her reporting on Al Qaeda was prescient, and much of her work on terrorism over the years has been highly regarded. In any event, on the general subject of Ms. Miller's journalism, there is no shortage of in-house knowledge at The Times.

In the years just prior to my editorship, it is my understanding that much of Ms. Miller's work was edited by Steve Engelberg, now of the Portland Oregonian. In his post as investigative editor, Mr. Engelberg reported directly to Bill Keller, then the managing editor of the paper and now its executive editor. When I was executive editor, her work flowed through various editors, including Mr. Engelberg and later Doug Frantz, now of the Los Angeles Times. During my editorship, Ms. Miller also worked often in the Times's Washington Bureau. The bureau chief at that time, Jill Abramson, told me that she had a good rapport with Ms. Miller, who had a conflicted relationship with some colleagues. Ms. Abramson, who is now managing editor, supervised a significant amount of Ms. Miller's reporting and personally edited the resulting stories before they went into the paper. It seems to me unfair to single out Judy Miller, even in a blind reference, or to cite individual stories by other reporters without drawing aside the veil of anonymity around un-bylined editors who worked with them.

These are some of my thoughts on today's editors' note and the format in general. Friends and former colleagues know that I have been selective in my comments about The Times since my departure. In this case, I felt it appropriate to comment since I was editor during publication of the stories that the paper is now reviewing. Some think I have been too quiet, thereby allowing former associates to make statements about my tenure that I view as inaccurate, misleading or based on personal animus or opposition to my efforts to energize the paper. When I have had anything to say about the paper and my editorship, I have sought forums that I thought were in keeping with the seriousness of The Times, such as The Atlantic and the Charlie Rose Show. In this case, I will share this letter with the Poynter Institute Website in order to see that it reaches a broad audience in the journalistic community.

I believe The Times remains an indispensable paper because of the values it stands for. I continue to believe that the paper also needs to be sharper competitively. The performance of the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times on the Iraq stories shows that this need continues, and I was heartened to see the comment in a letter to the staff from Mr. Keller and Ms. Abramson about the continuing need for hard reporting and for setting the record straight.

All best regards,
Howell Raines