The Story (48 page)

Roger Ailes offered me a job as a commentator at Fox News in 2008, opening a new world of broadcast journalism. I cannot thank him enough—along with Bill Shine and John Moody—for taking a chance on a print journalist, a brunette with little prior TV experience, and allowing me to learn from Fox's talented news professionals. When Jason and many of my liberal friends who consider the network the Antichrist wonder why I joined Fox, I tell them that I enjoy the challenge of a contrary point of view and that there is a greater diversity of opinion at Fox than there was at the
Times.
I'm a reporter and therefore allergic to ideology. Before and after joining Fox, I've steadfastly been inspired by curiosity about the world in all its manifestations. There are too many colleagues to thank at Fox. But Lynne Jordal Martin, the editor of Fox's opinion pages, published some of my first columns for the network's website and became an early friend. Her husband, Terry Martin, coached me on the strange new medium of TV, where less is often more. Gwen Marder encouraged me to wear colors. Jim Pinkerton challenged many of my views and helped me master articulating them in sound bites. Through Fox, I have benefited from great medical assistance. Dr. Mark Siegel, a fellow commentator, became my doctor after the incomparable Stanley Mirsky died. I have marveled at Dianne Brandi's wise counsel not only on legal matters but also on ethical issues in journalism. I'm proud to be associated with a network that has so staunchly defended its journalists in clashes with the government on First Amendment and other transparency challenges.

I am indebted to several former colleagues at the
Times
—Jeff Gerth, Geri Fabrikant, Claudia Payne, Richard Bernstein, Steve Engelberg, Dave
Jones, Bill Broad, Craig Whitney, Marty Arnold, and David Barstow. Only Broad and Barstow remain at the paper. Others took buyouts or pursued other options. Thanks, too, to those who asked not to be named for keeping me abreast of developments at the paper.

For research on WMD and other topics at the heart of this book and for so much more, I am grateful to Pratik Chougule, a former speechwriter at the State Department in the Office of the Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security, who has helped several former officials write memoirs. Once day he will write his own superb book.

Amanda “Binky” Urban, at ICM, has been my book agent and early reader for many years. Her calm, firm, candid advice has been indispensable. Thanks, too, to Gary Press, my accountant, friend, and fellow Florida fan.

Simon & Schuster has published all my books except my instant paperback on the Gulf war. The hardworking editorial team—Stuart Roberts; Martha Schwartz, a superb production editor; Cary Goldstein, executive director of publicity; Leah Johanson, publicist for the adult publishing group; and Stephen Bedford, a marketing specialist—have worked very hard on this book. Thank you so much. But above all, I thank Alice Mayhew, my friend, chief editor, and the publisher of all my hardback books. Alice is a legend in her profession. Deservedly. This book would not exist without her advice, patience, faith in me, and fearsome red pencil.

Ditto my other informal editor, the wisest man I know, my best friend and partner, Jason Epstein, who made me realize, finally, that there is far more to life than the story.

© FOX NEWS

JUDITH MILLER
is an investigative reporter formerly with the
New York Times
. She was part of a team that won a Pulitzer for articles before 9/11 on Osama bin Laden. Miller is coauthor of the #1
New York Times
bestsellers
Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War
and
Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf
and author of
God Has Ninety-nine Names: Reporting from a Militant Middle East
and
One, by One, by One: Facing the Holocaust
. Miller is an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, contributing editor of
City Journal,
and a theater critic for
Tablet
magazine. Since 2008, she has been a commentator for Fox News. She lives in New York City and Sag Harbor with her husband, Jason Epstein.

MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT

SimonandSchuster.com

authors.simonandschuster.com/Judith-Miller

ALSO BY JUDITH MILLER

Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War
(with Stephen Engelberg and William Broad)

God Has Ninety-nine Names: Reporting from a Militant Middle East

One, by One, by One: Facing the Holocaust

Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf
(with Laurie Mylroie)

1
. Howard Gardner, ed.,
Responsibility at Work: How Leading Professionals Act (or Don't Act) Responsibly
(San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2007). Gardner, the editor of that volume, wrote the chapter about me entitled “Irresponsible Work.” While he quotes from my website and thanks eleven people for having provided “useful feedback on earlier drafts of this chapter,” five of whom worked at one time for the
Times
, there is no indication that he ever tried to contact me for comment, a basic pillar of the craft. Quoting “many observers,” all of them anonymous, he describes me as a “ ‘piece of work,' ” a “middle-aged” reporter who “consistently behaved in a high-handed manner,” pursued stories “at all costs,” and ignored the “directives of her immediate supervisors.” He echoes anonymous claims that I was “too close to her sources” who helped me “spread a narrative for which there was little, if any, solid evidence.” He offers no examples of my supposedly egregious reporting and makes no mention of my Pulitzer. At the time of publication, he had still not responded to my request for a retraction and an apology.

1
. “Statement of Hon. Richard L. Armitage, Deputy Secretary of State, Department of State, Washington, DC,”
T
he January 27 UNMOVIC and IAEA Reports to the U.N. Security Council on Inspections in Iraq: Hearing Before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, One Hundred Eighth Congress, First Session, January 30, 2003
(Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 2003), pp. 12–16,
www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-108shrg85796/pdf/CHRG-108shrg85796.pdf
.

2
. Judith Miller, “After the War: Unconventional Arms; A Chronicle of Confusion in the U.S. Hunt for Hussein's Chemical and Germ Weapons,”
New York Times
, July 20, 2003,
www.nytimes.com/2003/07/20/world/after-war-unconventional-arms-chronicle-confusion-us-hunt-for-hussein-s-chemical.html
.

3
. Charles Duelfer, “No Books Were Cooked,”
Foreign Policy
, March 18, 2013,
www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/03/18/no_books_were_cooked_bush_iraq_wmd_intelligence
.

4
. Michael Rubin,
Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes
(New York: Encounter, 2014), p. 203.

5
. Judith Miller and Laurie Mylroie,
Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf
(New York: Times Books, 1990).

6
. Rubin,
Dancing with the Devil
, p. 207; Bruce W. Jentleson,
With Friends Like These: Reagan, Bush, and Saddam, 1982–1990
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1994), pp. 33, 42.

7
. Con Coughlin,
Saddam, King of Terror
(New York: Ecco Press, 2002), p. 174.

8
. Samir al-Khalil (Kanan Makiya),
Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq
(Oakland: University of California Press, 1989), p. 110.

9
. Ibid.

10
. Ibid., p. 120.

11
. Dick Cheney with Liz Cheney,
In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir
(New York: Threshold Editions, 2011), p. 191.

12
. Judith Miller, “Saudi King Says He Expects Iraq to Yield,”
New York Times
, January 7, 1991,
www.nytimes.com/1991/01/07/world/confrontation-in-the-gulf-saudi-king-says-he-expects-iraq-to-yield.html
.

13
. Judith Miller, “Egypt's President Calls for a Delay in Attacking Iraq,”
New York Times
, November 8, 1990,
www.nytimes.com/1990/11/08/world/mideast-tensions-egypt-s-president-calls-for-a-delay-in-attacking-iraq.html
.

14
. Dick Cheney, interview, January 2014.

15
. Another prime mover of the effort to expose Saddam's brutality and war crimes against the Kurds was Peter Galbraith, who, first as a staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and later as an adviser to the Kurdish government, worked tirelessly toward this end.

16
. Judith Miller, “Iraq Accused: A Case of Genocide,”
New York Times Magazine
, January 3, 1993,
www.nytimes.com/1993/01/03/magazine/iraq-accused-a-case-of-genocide.html
.

17
. That year, the Abu Mahal tribe in Al Qaim had rallied briefly to America's side. But undermanned, hamstrung by tribal vendettas, and supported by too few American forces, this first, mini–Anbar Awakening was quickly overwhelmed by Al Qaeda. The next year, when Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, a dynamic younger sheikh with excellent
smuggling and insurgent credentials from Anbar's largest tribe, the Dulaimi, sided with the Americans, Al Qaeda began losing ground.

18
. A debate has long raged in academic and policy circles over whether it was the increase in US troops in Iraq or the Awakening that enabled the new counterinsurgency doctrine to succeed in Iraq. My own view is that they reinforced each other. The strategy shift and the surge, which the military called COIN, would never have worked without the Awakening, and vice versa. But it was the indigenous political shift among Iraqis a full year before the thirty thousand extra American forces started flowing into Iraq in February and March 2007 that initially prevented an American rout.

19
. Chief Warrant Officer-4 Timothy S. McWilliams and Lieutenant Colonel Kurtis P. Wheeler, eds.,
Al-Anbar Awakening
, vol. 1,
American Perspectives
(Quantico, VA: Marine Corps University Press, 2009), p. 33.

20
. In its final report to Congress in 2010, the independent Commission on Wartime Contracting concluded that nearly $60 billion had been lost over the decade to waste and financial fraud, mostly in Iraq but also in Afghanistan, due to poor government oversight of contractors, even poorer planning, and gargantuan payoffs to warlords or insurgents.

21
. Charles Duelfer,
Hide and Seek: The Search for Truth in Iraq
(New York: Public Affairs, 2008), p. 408.

22
. In 2004 Galbraith was instrumental in arranging for DNO, a Norwegian oil company, to become the first foreign oil company to operate in Kurdistan. This became controversial in October 2009, when
Dargens Nœringsliv
, a Norwegian tabloid, published documents linking Galbraith financially to DNO. In November 2009 the
New York Times
wrote that Galbraith's role as adviser to the Kurds on the constitutional negotiations with Baghdad and his undisclosed financial ties to DNO could raise “serious questions about the integrity of the constitutional negotiations themselves” and fuel suspicions that the “true reason for the American invasion of their country was to take its oil.” Galbraith denied any conflict of interest, since the Kurds knew of his role with DNO when they asked for advice on the constitution, and there was a congruence of interest between the Kurds' desire to control their own oil and encourage foreign investment in the oil sector. He noted that he had also disclosed his compensation in a book about Iraq's future,
The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End
(New York: Simon & Schuster, New York, 2006). In 2010 the
Times
reported that a British court had ordered DNO to pay Galbraith and a Yemeni investor between $55 million and $75 million for their stake in the oil deal.

In an interview in July 2014, Galbraith said that although he continues to advise the Kurds informally, he has no ongoing financial stake in Kurdistan or any company doing business there, and remains “proud” of his role in helping create “the financial basis for independence” for the Kurds, whose suffering under Saddam he did much to
document. The website for the Kurdistan Regional Government says that Galbraith's work on Iraq's murderous campaign against the Kurds “led the US Senate to pass comprehensive sanctions on Iraq in 1988.”