TUESDAY'S LETTERS: Plamegate Humor, Fact Checking 'Wingnut' Mapes-Haters and More

By: E&P Staff Today's letters offer a touch of humor (letter No. 1) and a bit of fact checking (letter No. 2) from our esteemed readers. We welcome both, after all, for this is meant to be a forum for E&P readers of all stripes. If you want to weigh in on a particular issue, e-mail us at letters@editorandpublisher.com.

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Blogger Dan Tynan writes:

Perhaps the oddest thing about the whole Valerie Plame affair occurred a month ago, when top Cheney aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby sent a personal note to his prison pen pal, Judith "Judy" Miller. In the note Libby gave Miller explicit permission to testify about their conversations in July 2003, but ended it with this exceedingly strange and now semi-famous paragraph:

"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. Until then, you will remain in my thoughts and prayers."

There are two prevailing theories about this graph: a) Scooter was warming up for entry into the Bulwer-Lytton contest for wretched writing, or b) it was a coded message instructing Judy what she should and shouldn't tell the grand jury. In any case, it reveals a relationship far more intimate than anyone previously guessed.

I can now confidently state #2 is the correct theory, and that I've cracked the code. The answer? Much of it is an anagram.

It's not commonly known, but Miller is crazy for anagrams--in fact, her pet name for Lewis Libby is "Wily Bibles." So it's only natural that he'd choose this form to communicate in secret.

Take the best-known phrase that appears here: "The aspens will already be turning." This anagrams into "repugnantly brainiest swellhead" -- a clear reference to Karl Rove.

"They turn in clusters" anagrams into "truth incenses truly" or "truth n' rusty silence" -- each referring to Miller's refusal to testify before the grand jury without Scooter's approval. An alternate anagram is "nuts! the surly cretin," which may be a veiled reference to President Bush.

Finally, "because their roots connect them" translates into "the erotic obscurement aches not" as well as "bitch the concrete, treasonous me." These of course, may be Libby's way of saying "our love will survive as long as you keep my role obscure," or possibly "drop a dime on me and I'll punk yo' ass, bitch."

The bottom line: Libby was telling Miller to offer them anything, but give them Karl Rove.

Dan Tynan
witlist.blogspot.com

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Re: The Monday, Oct. 10 Letters Column:

I'm surprised you would run these rabid and mean anti-Mapes letters without correcting misstatements of facts or giving equal time to opposing views.

The fact is that despite a bipartisan investigation, this now infamous document was not proved to be a fake. It is factually incorrect for E&P to publish partisan letters that say the letter was fake without an editor's note stating the truth, or at least state the letter writers' partisan affiliations.

I, myself, typed on typewriters in the '70s that did proportional spacing and superscript. I verified that with a real national expert on office machines, not the paid GOP shill that "verified" it for the GOP lawyer blogging clandestinely as Buckhead (?), who somehow got her to analyze it for him from across the country in the middle of the night.

I don't know the authenticity of the document in question, but I know the criticism of the type is a pile of garbage.

The whole scandal stinks and leaves lots of questions, of course, but using your prestigious professional magazine like Winston Smith ("1984") to create Big Brother's false reality is just wrong.

Publishing Mike Perry's laughable links to wingnut Web sites as "proofs" was beyond the pale. A 30-second fact check would have revealed the blog at Perry's Inklingbooks.com gives such impartial (cough cough) journalistic gems as, "SwiftVets, Yah Gotta Love Them Guys!" and "Reuters, Every Terrorist's Favorite News Service."

A check of Bob Hora reveals a history of hateful, partisan disinformation campaigning including this letter, copied below, published in the Contra Costa (Calif.) Times and a rebuttal to one of his published in the Danville, Ill., newspaper.

Please, please don't let partisan hacks take over my beloved E&P.

You seem to be the last fortress for those of us real, impartial journalists still standing in today's corporate-media world that accepts "new journalists," like the gay whore operating after-hours in the White House under cover as Jeff Gannon, with a straight face (no pun intended, really).

Kate Hall
Philadelphia, Pa.

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Greg Mitchell's Oct. 9 column, The Case of the Missing Notebook, ends by asking the following: "And while we're at it: Why have the Times' seven hard-hitting weekday opinion columnists remained virtually silent, pro or con, on their colleague Judith Miller throughout this ordeal? Conflicted? Afraid to appear disloyal? Or discouraged from commenting? And where's Public Editor Byron Calame?"

I've read, or so my memory tells me, that criticizing or debating directly with other Times columnists, or the paper itself, is officially considered out-of-bounds (ever wonder why there isn't any?). That wouldn't apply to the Public Editor, of course, but this is the sort of subject where, given the Publisher's role in the Miller matter, the PE's job would be on the line. If I were in the PE's position, prudence and the expectation that I would get only one shot at the subject might lead me to wait and see what the Special Prosecutor does, to see if he provides some coattails to ride.

Gene Goldenfeld

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Re: Shield Law Protection for Journalists

The concept of shield laws essentially put journalist above the law is wrong. We are all equal before the law or we are not.

Arthur G. Shadforth