The Story (49 page)

23
. McWilliams and Wheeler,
Al-Anbar Awakening
, p. vii.

24
. Ali Khedery, “Why We Stuck with Maliki—and Lost Iraq,”
Washington Post
, July 3, 2014,
www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-we-stuck-with-maliki--and-lost-iraq/2014/07/03/0dd6a8a4-f7ec-11e3-a606-946fd632f9f1_story.html
. Khedery, an Iraqi-American who heads Dubai-based Dragoman Partners, was from 2003 to 2009 a special assistant to five U.S. ambassadors and an adviser to three heads of US Central Command. In 2011, as a private oil company adviser, he negotiated ExxonMobil's entry into Kurdistan.

1
. Franklin Foer, “The Source of the Trouble,”
New York
, June 7, 2004,
http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/media/features/9226
.

2
. The quotes from Hank Greenspun's “Where I Stand” columns are from the archives of the Atomic Testing Museum, Las Vegas, Nevada; Judith Miller, “The Melted Dog: Memories of an Atomic Childhood,”
New York Times
, March 20, 2005,
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/30/arts/artsspecial/30atom.html?_r=0&pagewanted=all&position=
.

3
. Howard Ball, “Downwind from the Bomb,”
New York Times Magazine
, February 9, 1986,
www.nytimes.com/1986/02/09/magazine/downwind-from-the-bomb.html
, adapted from
Justice Downwind: America's Atomic Testing Program in the 1950s
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).

4
. Derek S. Scammell, ed.,
Nevada Test Site Guide
(DOE/NV–715) (Las Vegas: National Nuclear Security Administration, Department of Energy, 2005, p. 45,
http://www.nv.doe.gov/library/publications/historical/DOENV_715_Rev1.pdf)
.

5
. Harvey Wasserman and Norman Solomon,
Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America's Experience with Atomic Radiation
(New York: Delta Books, 1982), p. 49.

6
. Ball, “Downwind from the Bomb.”

7
. Wasserman and Solomon,
Killing Our Own
, pp. 43–44.

8
. Howard L. Rosenberg,
Atomic Soldiers: American Victims of Nuclear Experiments
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1980), pp. 64–65.

9
. Among them was a young Corporal Max Frankel, a budding reporter then in the army. In 1955 he wrote about the classified test of a tactical nuclear weapon at the Nevada Test Site with the military's blessing to help boost the weapons' budget. The incident helped shape Frankel's attitude toward government secrecy and nuclear security. Frankel, a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter, was the
Times
's executive editor from 1986 to 1994.

10
. Wasserman and Solomon,
Killing Our Own
, p. 47.

1
. Nan Robertson,
The Girls in the Balcony: Women, Men, and The New York Times
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1992).

2
. Ibid. p. 182.

3
. “Women and the
New York Times
,”
Media Report to Women
6 (December 31, 1978): 7.

4
. Blair Jackson, “Traffic's ‘Dear Mr. Fantasy,' ” Mix Online, February 1, 2003,
http://mixonline.com/recording/interviews/audio_traffics_dear_mr/
.

5
. The project was known for the hill on which it was to be situated: Nebi Samuel. My paper on the successful campaign to reduce its scale and design—which succeeded with US government assistance—was well received by my adviser at the Woodrow Wilson School, Richard Ullman, a professor and eminent scholar who greatly influenced my early thinking about the Middle East and US foreign policy. Ullman died at age eighty in March 2014 after a long battle with Parkinson's disease.

1
. Robertson,
The
Girls in the Balcony
. Nan's book contained examples of sexism at the
Times
, of which most young women at the paper today are probably not aware. Dan Schwarz, the Sunday editor, had responded to the London bureau's recommendation that a young woman be hired by asking “What does she look like? Twiggy? Lynn Redgrave? Perhaps you ought to send over her vital statistics, or a picture in a bikini?” Another file quoted by Nan contained an assessment of a woman in the circulation department: “Good at short-hand and typing,” wrote Robert MacDougall. “Her chief ambition is probably to get married. Has a good figure and is not restrained about dressing it to advantage.”

2
. Ibid., p. 195.

3
. Edwin Diamond, “Crashing the Boys' Club at
The New York Times
,”
American Journalism Review
(April 1992). Diamond's own book about the paper,
Behind the Times
(New York: Villard Books, 1994), contains insightful accounts of discrimination toward women and minorities and other internal sources of dissension.

4
. Max Frankel,
The Times of My Life and My Life with “The Times”
(New York: Random House, 1999).

5
. Arthur Gelb,
City Room
(New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2003), p. 573.

6
. Jeff would later be criticized—unfairly, I thought—by some colleagues and liberal Democrats for having broken the story on President Clinton's Whitewater property, in which the Clintons had invested and lost money.

7
. After leaving the
Times
to make a fortune, Rattner became a major fund-raiser for the Democrats, became President Obama's “car czar,” and rescued ailing General Motors. But he was punished for his alleged role in a “pay-to-play” scandal involving his former investment banking firm, Quadrangle. Without admitting or denying SEC charges of
wrongdoing, he paid a multimillion-dollar fine. He was also banned from appearing “in any capacity before any public pension fund within the State of New York for five years,”
New York
magazine reported, and from “associating with any investment adviser or broker dealer” for two years. Despite Rattner's long association with the
Times
, the paper gave front-page coverage to the scandal. He considered the coverage pejorative, slanted against him, and unfair. But he has remained close to Arthur Sulzberger, the publisher and his long-standing friend.

8
. Susan E. Tifft and Alex S. Jones,
The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind “The New York Times”
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1999), p. 560.

1
. Les and I remained close friends until his death in 1995. When Jason Epstein and I finally decided in 1993 to marry, Les was President Bill Clinton's secretary of defense. I told Les about my decision over breakfast in his conference room at the Pentagon. Three months later, President Clinton asked for his resignation following the death of American soldiers in Somalia. Suffering from a congenital heart problem, Les never really recovered. After Les's death, Dick Holbrooke badgered the White House into hosting a memorial service for him, which it did reluctantly.

1
. Eric M. Hammel,
The Root: The Marines in Beirut, August 1982–February 1984
(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985), p. 303.

2
. Judith Miller, “Reagan Declares Marines' Role in ‘Vital' to Counter Soviet in Lebanon: Toll at 192,”
New York Times
, October 25, 1983,
www.nytimes.com/1983/10/25/world/reagan-declares-marines-role-in-vital-to-counter-soviet-in-lebanon-toll-at-192.html
.

3
. American intelligence would eventually identify the suicide bomber as Ismail Ascari, an Iranian national. But this information, along with the extent of Iranian complicity in the attack, would not be known to the public until 2003, when a victim of the attack sued the Islamic Republic of Iran in a US District Court in the District of Columbia. See
Peterson, et al. v. Islamic Republic, et al
.

4
. A more detailed account of my trip through southern Lebanon is contained in
God Has Ninety-nine Names: Reporting from a Militant Middle East
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), pp. 253–58, my book describing the growth of militant Islamic movements in ten Middle Eastern countries.

5
. 
Report of the DOD Commission on Beirut International Airport Terrorist Act, October 23, 1983
(Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1984),
http://fas.org/irp/threat/beirut-1983.pdf
.

1
. Judith Miller, “Economy Gives Saudis Growing Pains,”
New York Times
, November 2, 1983,
www.nytimes.com/1983/11/27/weekinreview/economy-gives-saudis-growing-pains.html
.

2
. Judith Miller, “A Saudi Amnesty Frees Half of Jailed Americans,”
New York Times
, August 4, 1984,
www.nytimes.com/1984/08/04/world/a-saudi-amnesty-frees-half-of-jailed-americans.html
.

3
. This description of my life in and love for Egypt can be found in
God Has Ninety-nine Names
, pp. 19–83.

4
. Judith Miller, “Refugees Are Hostages of Lebanon Talks,”
New York Times
, November 2, 1983,
www.nytimes.com/1983/11/02/world/refugees-are-hostages-of-lebanon-talks-l.html
.

5
. Judith Miller, “A Mideast Odyssey,”
New York Times Magazine
, August 13, 1984,
www.nytimes.com/1984/08/13/magazine/a-mideast-odyssey.html
.

6
. Judith Miller, “Erasing the Past: Europe's Amnesia About the Holocaust,”
New York
Times Magazine
, November 16, 1986,
www.nytimes.com/1986/11/16/magazine/erasing-the-past-europe-s-amnesia-about-the-holocaust.html
.

1
. Frankel,
The
Times of My Life
.

2
. Howell Raines,
The One That Got Away: A Memoir
(New York: Lisa Drew/Scribner, 2006), p. 33.

3
. Gerald M. Boyd,
My Times in Black and White: Race and Power at the “New York Times”
(Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2010), p. 138.

1
. Miller,
God Has Ninety-nine Names
, p. 118.

2
. More detailed descriptions of Bin Laden's conduct and state of mind in his meetings with Saudi princes would later be reported by Douglas Jehl in the
New York Times
, December 27, 2001, and by Steve Coll in his book on Bin Laden and the CIA's involvement in Afghanistan,
Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001
(New York: Penguin, 2004), pp. 222–23.

3
. Coll,
Ghost Wars
, p. 528.

4
. Judith Miller, “Israel Says That a Prisoner's Tale Links Arabs in U.S. to Terrorism,”
New York Times
, February 17, 1993,
www.nytimes.com/1993/02/17/world/israel-says-that-a-prisoner-s-tale-links-arabs-in-us-to-terrorism.html
.

1
. Ken Alibek with Stephen Handelman,
Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World—Told from Inside by the Man Who Ran It
(New York: Delta Books, 1999). This book was one of the first insider accounts of the Soviet program. Alibek said he had written it to counter what he called the “alarming level of ignorance about biological weapons” that he had encountered since his defection from Moscow.

2
. The same conclusion would be reached by Amy E. Smithson, a biological weapons expert at the Washington, DC, office of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, whom Bill and I quoted often. Her book,
Germ Gambits: The Bioweapons Dilemma, Iraq and Beyond
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), a study of UNSCOM's activities in Iraq, was published thirteen years after our article.

3
. William J. Broad and Judith Miller, “The Deal on Iraq: Secret Arsenal: The Hunt for the Germs of War—A Special Report; Iraq's Deadliest Arms: Puzzles Breed Fears,”
New York Times
, February 26, 1998,
www.nytimes.com/1998/02/26/world/deal-iraq-secret-arsenal-hunt-for-germs-war-special-report-iraq-s-deadliest-arms.html
. A similar account is contained in Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg, William Broad,
Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), p. 183.

4
. Judith Miller with William J. Broad, “The Germ Warriors: A Special Report; Iranians, Bioweapons in Mind, Lure Needy Ex-Soviet Scientists,”
New York Times
, December 8, 1998,
www.nytimes.com/1998/12/08/world/germ-warriors-special-report-iranians-bioweapons-mind-lure-needy-ex-soviet.html
.

5
. Judith Miller, “Poison Island: A Special Report; At Bleak Asian Site, Killer Germs Survive,”
New York Times
, June 2, 1999,
www.nytimes.com/1999/06/02/world/poison-island-a-special-report-at-bleak-asian-site-killer-germs-survive.html
.

1
. Judith Miller and William J. Broad, “Clinton Describes Terrorism Threat for 21st Century,”
New York Times
, January 22, 1999,
www.nytimes.com/1999/01/22/world/clinton-describes-terrorism-threat-for-21st-century.html
.

2
. Bill Clinton,
My Life
(New York: Knopf, 2004), pp. 833–34.