Times Reporter Agrees to Leave the Paper - New York Times

Times Reporter Agrees to Leave the Paper - New York TimesNovember 10, 2005
Times Reporter Agrees to Leave the Paper
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

The New York Times and Judith Miller, a veteran reporter for the paper, reached an agreement yesterday that ended her 28-year career at the newspaper and capped more than two weeks of negotiations.

Ms. Miller went to jail this summer rather than reveal a confidential source in the C.I.A. leak case. But her release from jail 85 days later, after she agreed to testify before a grand jury, and persistent questions about her actions roiled long-simmering concerns about her in the newsroom and led to her departure.

Bill Keller, the executive editor, announced the move to the staff in a memorandum yesterday, saying, "In her 28 years at The Times, Judy participated in some great prize-winning journalism."

In a statement, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of The Times, said: "We are grateful to Judy for her significant personal sacrifice to defend an important journalistic principle," adding, "I respect her decision to retire from The Times and wish her well."

Ms. Miller, 57, said in an interview that she was "very satisfied" with the agreement and described herself as a "free woman," free from what she called the "convent of The New York Times, a convent with its own theology and its own catechism."

She said that in the few hours since her departure had been made public, she had received several offers "of all kinds" for future employment, which she declined to specify. But her immediate plans are to take some time off. She said that after her stint in jail, she was "hit with a 40-day tsunami" of criticism and needed a break, though she has scheduled several public appearances, including one last night.

She spoke last night in Midtown Manhattan on a panel before media lawyers and journalists sponsored by the Media Law Resource Center.

Lawyers for Ms. Miller, who is a member of the Newspaper Guild of New York, and the paper negotiated a severance package, the details of which both sides agreed not to disclose.

Under the agreement, Ms. Miller retired from the newspaper, and The Times printed a letter she wrote to the editor explaining her position. Ms. Miller originally demanded that she be able to write an essay for the paper's Op-Ed page challenging criticisms made of her by some on the staff. The Times refused that demand - Gail Collins, editor of the editorial page, said, "We don't use the Op-Ed page for back and forth between one part of the paper and another" - but agreed to publish her letter.

In that letter, published in The Times today under the headline "Judith Miller's Farewell," Ms. Miller said she was leaving partly because some of her colleagues disagreed with her decision to testify in the C.I.A. leak case. "But mainly," she wrote, "I have chosen to resign because over the last few months, I have become the news, something a New York Times reporter never wants to be."

Kenneth A. Richieri, The Times lawyer who negotiated the severance agreement for the paper, said one thing was clear to both sides from the start of those talks. "What made the deal possible was that shared understanding that she couldn't continue to report on national security matters for The New York Times," he said. "She'd become so much a part of the story."

Catherine Mathis, a spokeswoman for the paper, said it had been made clear to Ms. Miller that she would not be able to continue as a reporter of any kind, not just one covering national security.

Ms. Miller's reporting came under attack after articles suggested that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, coverage that helped the Bush administration build its case for invading Iraq but that turned out to be wrong.

In her letter to the editor, Ms. Miller noted that even before going to jail, she had "become a lightning rod for public fury over the intelligence failures that helped lead our country to war." She said she regretted "that I was not permitted to pursue answers" to questions about those intelligence failures.

As part of the settlement, Mr. Keller made public a personal letter he wrote to Ms. Miller clarifying some elements of a memorandum he sent to the staff on Oct. 21 that she considered critical of her.

In his letter, Mr. Keller said he had never intended to imply she had an improper relationship with I. Lewis Libby Jr., her source and the former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, when he described their contact as an "entanglement."

Mr. Keller also elaborated, but did not retreat from, comments suggesting that she had misled an editor, the Washington bureau chief, Philip Taubman. "I continue to be troubled by that episode," Mr. Keller wrote. "But you are right that Phil himself does not contend that you misled him; and, of course, I was not a participant in the conversation between you and Phil."

Ms. Miller wrote in her letter that she was gratified that Mr. Keller "has finally clarified remarks made by him that were unsupported by fact and personally distressing."

She added, referring to Mr. Keller: "Some of his comments suggested insubordination on my part. I have always written the articles assigned to me, adhered to the paper's sourcing and ethical guidelines and cooperated with editorial decisions, even those with which I disagreed."

Ms. Miller leaves the paper after serving for many years as an investigative and national security correspondent. She has written four books and in 2002 was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism for reporting, before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, about the growing threat of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda.