The New York Times is publishing a serial novel, disguised as a spate of editorials, plotted around their jailed celebrity stenographer, Judy Miller. This week’s episode features a comparison between Miller, jailed for refusing to name a source involved in the investigation of White House involvement in outing an undercover CIA agent, and Zhao Yan, an actual reporter for the Times in China who has been jailed for reasons that aren’t at all clear.
Zhao was grabbed out of a restaurant and charged with revealing state secrets. Miller was grabbed out of a courtroom where, after a lengthy and expensive court battle, she and her legal team failed to convince a three-judge panel that her strength was as ten and she would never comply with an order to reveal her source.
You can see the similarities. The Chinese government jailed a reporter on bogus charges without providing him any legal recourse. The Plame prosecutor jailed a well-represented government mouthpiece after three judges, including a notoriously liberal civil libertarian who thinks journalists and people such as Miller should have the benefit of shield laws except when concealing serious government wrongdoing, agreed with a lengthy prosecution brief arguing that Miller’s testimony was critical to resolving an investigation into government crimes against the American people.
The Times hammers home those similarities, saying “We are not suggesting that the American justice system can be compared to China’s.” China joins Burundi, Nepal and Russia as countries in which Miller is not incarcerated.
Miller’s website, which advertises her books (probably to help defray the newspaper’s legal fees), features a list of newspaper and magazine stories addressing her plight. Although the site hasn’t been updated in more than a month, concerned readers should check it regularly for updates on other systems of justice to which ours cannot be compared, and for literary gems such as Richard Cohen’s spirited defense of Miller in the Washington Post.
The law is not in our corner. Maybe Miller could be faulted for making that clear, pushing matters so that an understanding has now been revealed as little more than a wish. Maybe it will even turn out that she is somehow complicit in her own incarceration. Maybe. Maybe.
Maybe. Maybe. May be?
We don’t know. What we do know is that for more than
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75 days, Miller has been trapped in her personal hell with no one to speak for her and nothing but the prospects for a multi-million dollar book deal, skating on an indictment and the gratitude of some White House slimeball to sustain her in this, her darkest hour, in this, a country whose justice system bears no resemblance to China’s.
Oh, the humanity!
Brilliant.