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Judith Miller

Judith MillerBorn: 2-Jan-1948
Birthplace: New York City

Gender: Female
Religion: Jewish
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Journalist, Author

Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Credulous NY Times WMD maven

Now famous for having been duped by cohorts of Ahmed Chalabi, veteran New York Times reporter Judith Miller used to be known for a decade of expertise following biowarfare, al Qaeda, and Osama bin Laden. But that was before she started passing along false information about Saddam Hussein's WMD capability.

In October 2001, a few weeks after Tom Brokaw's assistant Erin O'Connor was exposed to anthrax over at NBC News, an envelope with a Florida postmark and no return address arrived at Miller's office at the New York Times. When she opened it an anthrax simulant spilled out on her desk. As Miller later recalled for Larry King:

"And out came this powder, a little bit on my face, on my hands, and on my clothes. And even that, Larry, did not alarm me. It is disconcerting, but it didn't alarm me until I got a call just then from someone who informed me about what had happened at NBC. And, at that point, I realized that the letter that I had gotten might actually be similar to the letter that had been sent to NBC."

Although it smelled like baby powder and initial tests indicated that it probably wasn't anthrax, Miller and 30 of her coworkers were given antibiotics, just in case.

Now jump forward 18 months, a few weeks after the Iraq invasion. In April, Miller reported from Baghdad about revelations from a former Iraqi chemical weapons scientist. Unnamed military sources told Miller that he led them to a stockpile of banned chemical precursors. Even though she was forbidden from visiting the site, meeting the scientist, or even knowing his name, Miller was sufficiently confident in her reporting to celebrate the story on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer:

"I think they found something more than a 'smoking gun.' What they've found is what is being called here by the members of MET Alpha -- that's Mobile Exploitation Team Alpha -- what they found is a silver bullet in the form of a person, an Iraqi individual -- a scientist, as we've called him -- who really worked on the programs, who knows them firsthand, and who has led MET Team Alpha people to some pretty startling conclusions[...] The scientist, who has been cooperating with MET Alpha, has actually said that he participated in -- he kind of watched, you know, a warehouse being burned that contained potentially incriminating biological equipment. So clearly what Saddam Hussein wanted to do was cover his weapons of mass destruction tracks."

Later, of course, the whole story turned out to be false. After quitting her job at the New York Times, she joined the conservative Manhattan Institute for Policy Research in 2007, and now provides punditry for Fox News and NewsMax.

Father: (Jewish)
Mother: (Irish Catholic)
Husband: Jason Epstein (book editor, m. 1993)
Boyfriend: Steven Rattner (ex)

    High School: Hollywood High School, Hollywood, CA
    University: Ohio State University
    University: BA, Barnard College, Columbia University (1969)
    University: MA, Princeton University (1972)
    University: University of Brussels

    NewsMax Media Columnist (2010-)
    The New York Times Correspondent (1977-2005)
    The Progressive Washington bureau chief
    Atlantic Council Director
    Council on Foreign Relations
    Manhattan Institute for Policy Research Adjunct Fellow (2007-)
    Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age
    Pulitzer Prize 2001
    Emmy 2002
    Contempt of Court 1-Oct-2004
    Contempt of Court 6-Jul-2005 (jailed)
    Jewish Ancestry Paternal
    Irish Ancestry Maternal
    Russian Ancestry Paternal

    TELEVISION
    Fox News Channel Analyst (2008-)

    FILMOGRAPHY AS ACTOR
    Hôtel Terminus (7-Oct-1988)

Author of books:
Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf (1990, international affairs)


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