Times Editor's Memo to Staff on Judith Miller

Following is a memorandum from Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times, sent to his staff today at 3:30 p.m. Eastern time.

To the Staff:

Judy Miller has retired from The New York Times effective today.

In her 28 years at The Times, Judy participated in some great, prize-winning journalism. She displayed fierce determination and personal courage both in pursuit of the news and in resisting assaults on the freedom of news organizations to report. We wish her well in the next phase of her career.

Bill

P.S. Judy asked that I share with you a letter I sent regarding my recent memo to the staff. It is attached, and speaks for itself.

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Dear Judy,

I know you’ve been distressed by the memo I sent to the staff about things I wish I’d done differently in the course of this ordeal. Let me be clear on two points you’ve raised.

First, you are upset with me that I used the words “entanglement” and “engagement” in reference to your relationship with Scooter Libby. Those words were not intended to suggest an improper relationship. I was referring only to the series of interviews through which you ­ and the paper ­ became caught up in an epic legal controversy.

Second, you dispute my assertion that “Judy seems to have misled” Phil Taubman when he asked whether you were one of the reporters to whom the White House reached out with the Wilson story. I continue to be troubled by that episode. 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.

I wish you all the best for the future.

Regards, Bill

Times Reporter Agrees to Leave the Paper

KATHARINE Q. SEELYE The New York Times

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.

Judith Miller's Farewell

To the Editor: [at The New York Times]

On July 6 I chose to go to jail to defend my right as a journalist to protect a confidential source, the same right that enables lawyers to grant confidentiality to their clients, clergy to their parishioners, and physicians and psychotherapists to their patients. Though 49 states have extended this privilege to journalists as well, for without such protection a free press cannot exist, there is no comparable federal law. I chose to go to jail not only to honor my pledge of confidentiality, but also to dramatize the need for such a federal law.

After 85 days, more than twice as long as any other American journalist has ever spent in jail for this cause, I agreed to testify before the special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald's grand jury about my conversations with my source, I. Lewis Libby Jr. I did so only after my two conditions were met: first, that Mr. Libby voluntarily relieve me in writing and by phone of my promise to protect our conversations; and second, that the special prosecutor limit his questions only to those germane to the Valerie Plame Wilson case. Contrary to inaccurate reports, these two agreements could not have been reached before I went to jail. Without them, I would still be in jail, perhaps, my lawyers warned, charged with obstruction of justice, a felony. Though some colleagues disagreed with my decision to testify, for me to have stayed in jail after achieving my conditions would have seemed self-aggrandizing martyrdom or worse, a deliberate effort to obstruct the prosecutor's inquiry into serious crimes.

Partly because of such objections from some colleagues, I have decided, after 28 years and with mixed feelings, to leave The Times. I am honored to have been part of this extraordinary newspaper and proud of my accomplishments here - a Pulitzer, a DuPont, an Emmy and other awards - but sad to leave my professional home.

But mainly 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.

Even before I went to jail, I had become a lightning rod for public fury over the intelligence failures that helped lead our country to war. Several articles I wrote or co-wrote were based on this faulty intelligence, and in May 2004, The Times concluded in an editors' note that its coverage should have reflected greater editorial and reportorial skepticism.

In a commencement speech I delivered at Barnard College in 2003, a year before that note was published, I asked whether the administration's prewar W.M.D. intelligence was merely wrong, or was it exaggerated or even falsified. I believed then, and still do, that the answer to bad information is more reporting. I regret that I was not permitted to pursue answers to the questions I raised at Barnard. Their lack of answers continues to erode confidence in both the press and the government.

The right of reply and the obligation to correct inaccuracies are also the mark of a free and responsible press. I am gratified that Bill Keller, The Times's executive editor, has finally clarified remarks made by him that were unsupported by fact and personally distressing. 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.

I salute The Times's editorial page for advocating a federal shield law before, during and after my jailing and for supporting as recently as two weeks ago my willingness to go to jail to uphold a vital principle. Most of all, I want to thank those colleagues who stood by me after I was criticized on these pages.

My response to such criticism will be posted in full on my Web site: JudithMiller.org.

I will continue speaking in support of a federal shield law. In my future writing, I intend to call attention to the internal and external threats to our country's freedoms - Al Qaeda and other forms of religious extremism, conventional and W.M.D. terrorism, and growing government secrecy in the name of national security - subjects that have long defined my work. I also leave knowing that The Times will continue the tradition of excellence that has made it indispensable to its readers, a standard for journalists, and a bulwark of democracy.

JUDITH MILLER
New York, Nov. 9, 2005

His Night in the Sun

After 25 Years, Ted Koppel Is Leaving the Show That Did It His Way

Howard Kurtz The Washington Post

Given all the heat Ted Koppel took last year for reading the names of the hundreds of Americans killed in Iraq, he could be forgiven for claiming vindication over the huge coverage when the death toll hit 2,000 late last month.

The "Nightline" anchor believes a meaningless milestone was overplayed by the media -- and is happy to tell you why.

"If the administration was really doing what it ought to be doing, they -- everyone from the president on down -- would have explained we have to remain in Iraq with such clarity that everyone would understand the sacrifice of 2,000, or even 20,000, lives is essential," he says. "My complaint is that the administration has done a poor job of explaining why we're in Iraq. You don't fight a war and allow just a tiny fraction of the population to carry the burden. It's hard to make the case that the rest of us are sharing in the burden of being at war when our taxes have been cut, not increased. There are no victory gardens. No one is being asked to do anything, really. That's why I thought it was important to show all those photographs and read all those names, not as a way of saying the war is wrong."

It is classic Koppel: tough-minded, eloquent, focused on world affairs and sometimes, it seems, conducting his own foreign policy. As he prepares to relinquish the helm of the ABC program he launched 26 years ago, when his focus was entirely on Iran and the Americans held hostage there, it is hard to avoid the end-of-an-era language that followed the departures of Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather and the death of Peter Jennings.

"This is easily perceived as the fourth 20-year-plus anchor stepping aside, and that's not the case," says Executive Producer Tom Bettag, who plans to launch a reporting venture with Koppel after they leave ABC. Perhaps their greatest accomplishment, Bettag says, is that the program will continue after Koppel's last night, Nov. 22, with an anchor triumvirate of Cynthia McFadden, Terry Moran and Martin Bashir. "A number of people said once Ted goes, there goes 'Nightline.' "

One thing that will be lost with the new incarnation's wide-ranging format is what Koppel, 65, always has boasted about: an in-depth look at one subject each night. Does that bother him? "I don't want to begin by prejudging what's going to be done, because it may be terrific," he says. "I don't want this to be interpreted as Ted saying the new approach ain't going to work."

Koppel announced his resignation in March after ABC News President David Westin decided he wanted "Nightline" -- the ratings of which have been slipping in recent years -- to be live at 11:35 p.m. Koppel had no desire to work such a schedule, and always has argued that the program is live when it needs to be live and otherwise there is no point in having guests wait around all evening.

"At some point, it would probably be time to pull out anyway," says Koppel, who served notice five years ago that he and Bettag wanted to phase themselves out gradually. Koppel had hoped that Chris Bury would succeed him as anchor -- Bury and John Donvan will remain as correspondents, most likely joined by Vicki Mabrey from CBS -- and that former producer Leroy Sievers would replace Bettag. But management, which hired British journalist James Goldston to run the program, had other ideas.

"It's their broadcast in the final analysis," Koppel says. "I've always taken the position it's our job to make the program as attractive to the audience as we could possibly make it, but there are limits. You don't bring on dancing girls."

That's not an entirely frivolous comment, given that Koppel's competition includes Jay Leno and David Letterman. In fact, ABC tried to junk the show three years ago by luring Letterman from CBS. Koppel fought back, criticizing ABC and parent company Disney in a New York Times op-ed.

"I never questioned the corporation's right to do that," he says. "This is an industry, it's a business. We exist to make money. We exist to put commercials on the air. The programming that is put on between those commercials is simply the bait we put in the mousetrap.

"If it is true that David Letterman can draw a lot more viewers than 'Nightline' and Ted Koppel, if you can make an extra $30 million or $50 million a year, I absolutely understand they not only have the right but the fiduciary obligation to do that. I just don't think they did it the best way in terms of the handling of it. We were among the last to learn about it. You just don't do that to people who have worked hard for you for a long time."

In his 42 years at ABC, and especially in his quarter-century at "Nightline," Koppel seemingly has conducted every kind of interview. He's talked to Nelson Mandela and Muhammad Ali, Larry Flynt and Ginger Rogers, Chuck D and Buzz Aldrin. He famously quizzed Gary Hart about adultery, told Michael Dukakis he just didn't get it and swatted down the racial views of baseball executive Al Campanis, who lost his job over the interview.

He also has reported from around the world -- a foray to South Africa in the 1980s made news worldwide -- and, more recently, covered the 2003 Iraq war amid the tanks in the desert. Just last week, "Nightline" did a show on Zimbabwe ruler Robert Mugabe's devastating impact on his country -- not the sort of thing other programs are clamoring to cover.

Television executives, Koppel says, "live under the misapprehension that Americans don't care about foreign news. They don't care about boring news. If you present it in a boring fashion, then they don't care about foreign news. What really dictates here is the cost of foreign news. At a time that we really have to worry about what's going on in the rest of the world, what people in other countries think of us, we are less well informed by television news than we have been in many years.

"If the only time you cover foreign news is when you send someone, every foreign story is going to cost you a lot of money when you do it and likely to be less well informed than in the days when you had people who lived in the country for two, three, five, 10 years and understand the culture."

In a been-there-done-that media culture, Koppel relished the idea of returning to his signature issues again and again: the Middle East, South Africa, AIDS, racism, crime and punishment. Asked whether evening newscasts do the same thing, he says: "There's a huge difference between coming back to a story and devoting 2 1/2 minutes to it, and the next time 1:45, and what we have done when we focused on an issue for two, three or four programs." Taking the show to such places as Congo -- which Koppel says has "an invisible war which barely exists even in newspapers" -- boosted the ratings and burnished the program's reputation. "But it's a very expensive thing to do and it's also thoroughly exhausting."

Koppel relishes the contrarian role. In 1996 he created a major stir by packing up and leaving the Republican National Convention in San Diego, saying no news was being committed there. "In the intervening years," he says, "guess what? Everyone's come to the conclusion that conventions really aren't worth covering, except on cable."

Last week Koppel committed news himself when he appeared to endorse Charlie Gibson, the "Good Morning America" co-host who has been doing part-time duty on the evening news, as ABC's next anchor. Koppel says he was just responding to a specific question about Gibson from a TV Guide reporter.

"I do think Charlie Gibson would make an absolutely splendid anchor," he says. But noting the rise of "GMA" under Gibson and Diane Sawyer, he says, "Those morning shows are moneymaking machines. Changing such a successful equation could cost you tens of millions of dollars."

Koppel and Bettag say they will not make a deal with another media outlet until their departure -- although they have had talks with HBO -- but say there is a vacuum in long-form reporting that they intend to fill. Still, they are leaving a very big stage.

"You can't help but have mixed feelings," Bettag says. "Trying to wean yourself away from the daily news adrenaline is no small thing. But this is something we've planned for a very long time. Ted is very much at peace with this."

Koppel plans to take a few months off, but "I'm not going to slide into semi-retirement," he says. "Nothing lights my fire more than a big story out there and going out to cover it."

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

Miller At Gates, Negotiating Exit With Sulzberger

Gabriel Sherman The New York Observer

The end of The New York Times’ five-week standoff with reporter Judith Miller appears to be near. As of Nov. 8, the two sides were closing in on a severance agreement, according to sources familiar with the negotiation.

Last week, with Ms. Miller and The Times stalemated over the terms of her separation from the paper, publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. floated a suggestion: What if Ms. Miller cut short her leave of absence and just came back to West 43rd Street sometime after the weekend?

It was as if the wistful child of a collapsing marriage were suggesting a family picnic—a chance for Dad and Mom to remember how their differences weren’t always so irreconcilable. Maybe she could be some kind of editor?

But Ms. Miller would not be peaceably absorbed into the byline-less grayness of an editing post. Her side countered with a threat that she’d show up at her old reporter’s desk, a source familiar with the negotiations said. The publisher’s trial balloon was swiftly shredded.

It was doubtful that Ms. Miller would accept any position other than a reporting post. And having been serially rebuked in the pages of The Times, Ms. Miller didn’t budge from her demand that she be given space to rebut her critics—whether she returned or she left. Meanwhile, executive editor Bill Keller told Mr. Sulzberger that he was not prepared to accept Ms. Miller’s return to the newsroom in any form, according to a source with knowledge of the negotiations.

The rank and file shared the executive editor’s stance. “There is a quiet rebellion in the newsroom,” a longtime staffer said. “They don’t want her back.”

So the proposal put Mr. Sulzberger at odds with reporters and editorial management—while doing nothing to close the gap between management and Ms. Miller.

And after 85 days in jail for defying special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald, Ms. Miller was piling up more than 40 days in exile, as The Times discovered that while it couldn’t bring her back, it wasn’t so easy to make her go away.

The unfinished business has bred an unsettled newsroom, one still mindful of the breakdown of leadership at the end of the Howell Raines era. Only this time, the disappointment was reaching all the way to the 14th floor.

“The new Howell is Arthur, not Bill,” another staffer said.

The first hint at attempted détente came on Oct. 29, with an editorial that seemed to acknowledge a split within the paper while reaffirming support for Ms. Miller.

“Recently, Times executives have expressed regrets about some of the ways her case was handled,” the editorial said. “Reflecting on these events, we have no reservations about the obligation of this paper to stand behind our reporter while she was in jail. We also think Ms. Miller was right on the central point, that the original blanket White House waiver was coerced.”

Ms. Miller said that she liked the editorial.

It was the rest of the coverage she had a problem with—such as the part about her being a rogue reporter.

“Every story I did was approved by an editor,” Ms. Miller said, over coffee on the terrace outside of Black Cat Books in Sag Harbor on Nov. 5. Her black cockapoo, Hamlet, scampered under the table, sunshine glinting on his rhinestone collar. An orange sweater was draped over her shoulders, and she wore her preferred oversize tortoiseshell sunglasses. She had a Treo holstered at her right hip, and a dime-sized compass clipped to her watchband.

Ms. Miller wasn’t ready for peace just yet. Any mollifying effects of the editorial were nothing next to the pain of the three-stage denunciation she had received from The Times before it: Mr. Keller’s Oct. 21 staff memo, Maureen Dowd’s Oct. 22 Op-Ed column and public editor Byron Calame’s Oct. 23 column.

According to someone involved in the negotiations, Ms. Miller has written a lengthy counterargument that she wants to publish in the paper. The Times has been refusing to give her the space. Without it, Ms. Miller’s stance has been that she would neither part from nor rejoin the paper.

Ms. Miller and her lawyers signaled that they were specifically displeased with—and might consider legal action about—Mr. Keller’s use of the word “entanglement” in his memo to describe Ms. Miller’s connections with now-indicted Vice Presidential aide I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby. In the light of long-circulating gossip about Ms. Miller’s romantic life, that word choice led to widespread speculation and mockery. In a follow-up phone conversation, Ms. Miller described the insinuation as “completely untrue.”

“Many people—many other journalists—assumed that there was an improper relationship,” Ms. Miller said in Sag Harbor. “Many people assumed there was a sexual relationship, which is one reason I’m so insistent on that, on his clarifying [the word choice]. I’ll be diplomatic, O.K.? I call it a correction. And at The New York Times, we call it a correction …. But I’ll settle for a, quote, ‘clarification.’”

With Ms. Miller so insistent on getting a chance to publish her argument, some at the paper are wondering what the Times brass stood to gain by not going along. “It’s hard for me to argue against letting her have her say, to rebut the charges against her,” one Times staffer said. “Aren’t we in the business of letting it all hang out?”

And Ms. Miller’s endurance suggested that the paper may have underestimated how much leverage she would have in negotiations. The most firing-worthy allegations against Ms. Miller—such as insubordination and misleading editors—could all be disputed, depending on how one interprets the evidence.

So Ms. Miller was disputing them.

Take Mr. Keller’s assertion that she had “drifted” back into off-limits reporting territory after her removal from the weapons-of-mass-destruction beat. Ms. Miller pointed out that her reassignment was to cover the United Nations oil-for-food program.

“And the themes, the oil-for-food theme, which was Iraq and weapons and counterterrorism,” Ms. Miller said. “How do you do counterterrorism in New York without talking about unconventional weapons or Iraq? [Every story was] approved at the highest levels of the paper—Mr. Keller and [managing editor Jill] Abramson.”

Ms. Abramson declined to comment. Mr. Keller didn’t return multiple calls seeking comment.

The Times’ executive editor—who had seemingly dropped the Miller problem into Mr. Sulzberger’s lap before going off on a previously scheduled two-week tour of the Asian bureaus—was closely involved in trying to solve it. On Nov. 4, Mr. Keller cancelled a planned visit and lunch discussion with the Washington bureau’s staff to stay in New York and deal with the negotiations over Ms. Miller.

“I was not surprised,” a Washington staffer said. “[Ms. Miller] would be topic A. Everyone knew there were delicate discussions going on. It would be difficult for Bill to talk about it.”

Through the discussions, Mr. Sulzberger has sought to somehow knit together the badly unraveled coalition that originally backed Ms. Miller in her showdown with Mr. Fitzgerald. Besides the estrangement between Ms. Miller and the team of Mr. Keller and Ms. Abramson, there is Mr. Sulzberger’s own awkward relationship with the masthead—as his second-choice editors try to clean up a mess left behind by his first choice, Mr. Raines.

And Mr. Sulzberger has had the larger legal position of The Times to consider. On Nov. 4, an appellate court upheld a ruling that Times reporter James Risen—along with three reporters from other papers—must testify about his confidential sources in Wen Ho Lee’s civil suit against government officials who leaked accusations of espionage. Under that ruling, Mr. Risen faces daily fines for contempt.

The Times is also confronting a defamation lawsuit by Steven J. Hatfill against the paper and columnist Nicholas D. Kristof. Mr. Hatfill is suing over columns that accused him of being behind the anthrax mailings of 2001. In that case, The Times is planning an appeal to the Supreme Court to try to stop the suit from going to trial.

Mr. Hatfill’s suit specifically cites the controversies surrounding Ms. Miller’s reporting, though it doesn’t name her. At one point, it quotes from The Times’ 2003 editors’ note on the paper’s W.M.D. coverage, and from former public editor Daniel Okrent’s column on the topic—arguing that the same sort of institutional and reportorial failures could be found in Mr. Kristof’s anthrax columns.

The infighting over Ms. Miller’s alleged misdeeds has done nothing to shore up the paper’s overall legal defenses. And after The Times chose to mount an aggressive First Amendment defense against Mr. Fitzgerald, Ms. Miller’s move to testify and get out of the Alexandria Detention Center helped split her from Mr. Sulzberger and the paper.

Despite the publisher’s much-publicized massage-martini-and-meat celebration of Ms. Miller’s release, he did not agree with Ms. Miller’s choice, according to a person familiar with the case.

After the 15 editorials the paper had run—at Mr. Sulzberger’s urging—supporting Ms. Miller’s refusal to give up her source, the eventual revelations about her conversations with Mr. Libby rankled the newsroom. So did Mr. Sulzberger’s quote to the Times reporters covering the Miller case that Ms. Miller had “had her hand on the wheel” during the legal process—and his attempt to take it back a week later by telling Mr. Calame that his quotes had been taken out of context in his own newspaper.

And notably, it was Ms. Miller’s willingness to go to jail, not her willingness to get out, that the most recent supportive editorial endorsed.

Still, Ms. Miller remained secure in her decision to testify. “I would have stayed in jail as long as necessary if my conditions weren’t met,” Ms. Miller said by phone.

“With all due respect to my other critics, who won’t give me the benefit of that doubt, who don’t want to have that kind of a discussion—I was the one sitting in jail. I was the one singing ‘Happy 77th Birthday’ to my husband in jail. I was the one—in fact, my friends after a while said they would come on their birthdays, but only if I promise not to sing. I was the one living with the consequences of that decision.”

Ms. Miller continued: “I welcome a debate on the subjects that we should debate …. But to then let all this other stuff blur the core issue—W.M.D., alleged sleeping with sources, taking seats away from colleagues 15 years ago—to let all of that cloud the issue does our profession and those issues no good.”

Judy, Come Home!

Miller’s Return On Times’ Table

Gabriel Sherman, Anna Schneider-Mayerson New York Observer

Reporter Judith Miller may be returning to the New York Times newsroom this month. According to sources familiar with Ms. Miller’s negotiations, she has signaled that her potential homecoming could happen as early as next week.

“I am not commenting on my discussions with the paper,” Ms. Miller said by phone on Nov. 1. “No decisions have been made. I can’t comment any further.”

Ms. Miller is still involved in talks with the paper—whose executive editor, Bill Keller, publicly lamented her “entanglement” with now-indicted Vice Presidential aide I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby in the Valerie Plame Wilson leak case.

But even as The Times has sought to isolate Ms. Miller, she has gathered powerful friends to her side. And those talks appear to be turning from severance toward reconciliation, according to Times sources.

With her long-term Times future unsettled, she would be returning under her current contract, reversing her earlier announced plans to stay away from The Times through the end of the year.

“Her return would disappoint most of my colleagues at The Times,” a staffer said. “What I find remarkable is that this is a situation where our editors have described a reporter having openly misled them, and there’s no disciplinary consequences to that.”

Hints of a potential change of heart were on display on Oct. 29, as Ms. Miller and her husband, book editor Jason Epstein, dined at the Southampton estate of Felix Rohatyn, just a few gilded doors down Gin Lane from the manse of retired Times publisher Arthur (Punch) Sulzberger.

“She seemed very upbeat and cheerful,” said a fellow dinner guest. “She certainly conveyed the impression that she’s assuming that she was going to go back. I think it was something like ‘When I go back’ or ‘Assuming I go back’—that kind of a word. It certainly wasn’t ‘I’m not going back.’”

For Mr. Sulzberger’s son, Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Ms. Miller is a relentless source of tsuris—the most visible example of his inability as an executive to make a problem go away. On Friday, Mr. Keller is due to visit the paper’s Washington bureau, where hostility to Ms. Miller runs deepest, for a brown-bag lunch with the staff. Reporters plan to bring up the subject of Ms. Miller, according to one bureau source.

But while the younger Mr. Sulz-berger and company suffer, on West 43rd Street and in Washington, Ms. Miller has found solace in the Hamptons, in the forgiving arms of a high-powered social set.

Mr. Rohatyn, the Austrian-born financier and former ambassador to France, is a close personal friend of Ms. Miller. In attendance at the dinner were Mr. Rohatyn’s wife, Elizabeth Rohatyn; Peter Peterson, founder of the Blackstone Group and current chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations; and Mr. Peterson’s wife, Joan Ganz Cooney, the Sesame Street creator.

The Times has tried to distance itself from Ms. Miller. But in the standoff with its reporter, the newspaper of the liberal establishment finds itself at odds with a considerable chunk of that same establishment—specifically, the high-powered chunk that shuttles between Manhattan and posh enclaves in the East End.

It is at dinners with the Rohatyns in Southampton, or over coffee with her book editor, Alice Mayhew, at the American Hotel in Sag Harbor, that Ms. Miller has regrouped and strategized.

Landing a seat in Ms. Miller’s war room has taken on a certain social cachet, akin to dropping a sly mention of an invitation to Davos at a cocktail party. At a recent high-octane Manhattan social event, Mr. Peterson—whose Water Mill home isn’t far from Ms. Miller’s retreat in Sag Harbor—was overhead telling friends that he had become involved in negotiations between the embattled journalist and The Times. Mr. Peterson has somewhat famously bargained for media types before, negotiating contracts for Diane Sawyer and Roone Arledge, and handling the personal finances of Liz Smith.

“I’m a personal friend, not an advisor,” Mr. Peterson clarified later by phone. “She has her own advisors.”

And plenty of them. “I’m very grateful for their support,” Ms. Miller said by phone from Sag Harbor on the evening of Oct. 30. “It’s difficult for people, because The Times is a powerful institution, and a lot of people are frightened to go up against The Times. One thing is, you find out who your friends are. And I’m gratified to see that I have a lot of them.”

A key figure among Ms. Miller’s friends at the moment is Matthew Mallow, who has known her for 15 years. Mr. Mallow, 62, is the head of the corporate-finance department at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom. At Ms. Miller’s request, he joined the legal team handling her contempt case this past winter, along with his Washington, D.C., partner, Robert Bennett. When she was jailed, Mr. Mallow visited her every Thursday.

Now Mr. Mallow and his partner, Skadden labor lawyer John Furfaro, are representing her in her negotiations with The Times over possible severance.

Mr. Mallow declined to comment, other than to say: “I’m a friend, and I believe friendship counts.”

Both Mr. Mallow and his wife, reproductive-rights activist and writer Ellen Chesler, are prominent Democratic donors and fund-raisers. During the Clinton administration, they were among some of the First Couple’s overnight guests. Their Bridgehampton and Dakota homes have been the sites of fund-raisers for Senator Hillary Clinton, Mayoral hopeful Mark Green and Presidential candidate Howard Dean.

But at the moment, across the Manhhamptons, the political affiliation that matters is friendship with Judy.

Ms. Miller’s social network includes the novelist E.L. Doctorow and the real-estate baron turned media mogul Mort Zuckerman, who several years ago hosted Ms. Miller and Mr. Epstein on his yacht. In July, on Ms. Miller’s last night in New York before reporting to the Alexandria Detention Center in Virginia, she dined at an Italian restaurant on East 85th Street, hosted by a group of women that included novelist Shirley Lord, Vanity Fair scribe Marie Brenner, Ms. Rohatyn, Peggy Noonan, Ms. Chesler and New York magazine writer Meryl Gordon.

“I don’t believe I have to agree with my friends on all issues,” said Ms. Chesler, who first became friends with Ms. Miller while working at the Century Foundation in the early 1990’s. “I don’t agree with Judy on some issues. The whole point of a liberal temperament is to accept differences of opinion …. I don’t always agree with her, but she knows things I don’t know. And it’s wise of me to listen to her. I learn a lot from people I disagree with.”

“All of our friends have different complicated times in their lives. And you stay their friend—you don’t just turn away,” Ms. Rohatyn said.

“Their support has been offered in a lot of ways,” Ms. Miller said. “It’s been everything from an e-mail to a phone call saying, ‘What the hell is going on at your company?’ A lot times people are saying, ‘Just hang in there.’”

The place where Ms. Miller has been doing her hanging-in is the bayside hamlet of Sag Harbor, where she and Mr. Epstein live in a modest 19th-century house on Union Street with an herb garden and a lap pool. Though the couple has an apartment at One Police Plaza on Centre Street, Sag Harbor is the place to which Ms. Miller retreated after her 85 days in jail, for a walk on the Bridgehampton beach with Ms. Chesler and dinner at the American Hotel—which, on a busy day, could pass for the front room at Michael’s.

During Ms. Miller’s confinement, American Hotel owner Ted Conklin and writer Harry Hurt III posted an open letter in support of her in the lobby. Each week, a new copy went up, to be mailed to Ms. Miller in jail after it had collected signatures.

“We want you to know that we here in Sag Harbor, along with your many admirers and kindred spirits around the globe, love you and miss you. Together, we are working and praying for the day when you will once again come home to us, free, free, at last,” the letter read, anticipating the tone of Mr. Libby’s now-famous letter urging Ms. Miller to testify.

Now that Ms. Miller is free, she can be spotted around 8 a.m. on her regular morning exercise walks, accompanied by the new black cockapoo—named Hamlet—that she got for Mr. Epstein before she went to jail.

Mr. Hurt recalled seeing her at the Sag Harbor pharmacy two weekends ago, the day Op-Ed columnist Maureen Dowd published her famously scathing column suggesting that Ms. Miller shouldn’t return to The Times. “She just said, ‘Maureen wrote this piece, and it’s titled “Woman of Mass Destruction,” and it’s an attack,’” Mr. Hurt said. “She almost giggled about it. Obviously, she knew some of the import of it. She didn’t seem angry; she didn’t seem depressed by it. It seemed to me she took it with the appropriate amount of chagrin.”

Between Ms. Dowd, Mr. Keller and public editor Byron Calame, The Times seemed to be sending a clear message that it wanted Ms. Miller to stay away.

“She can’t seem to please anybody. She’s moved from being the darling of the newspaper to being so ostracized,” said Ms. Chesler.

But according to sources familiar with Ms. Miller’s severance discussions, negotiations about her departure were at a standstill as of the end of October.

One of the main obstacles was Ms. Miller’s demand to write an opinion piece responding to her critics. Neither side seems willing to compromise on this point. “From the Times’ perspective the notion of giving her a last shot is offensive,” said one source familiar with the discussions. “From her point of view the idea of letting it stand with so many denunciations of her in the paper is unacceptable.”

Ms. Miller’s lawyer has also floated the idea of a non-disparagement agreement—a concept that seems hard to enforce, given the quasi-independent status of Ms. Dowd and Mr. Calame. And according to one source, Ms. Miller herself has indicated that she would never agree to a gag order.

After all, the people she talks to are the people who are on her side.

“My friends really understand why I did what I did, both in going to jail, and in the decision to leave,” Ms. Miller said. “The decision to leave, while the decision to go to jail has been well covered, and very well articulated, the decision by which I left jail has been blurred and hasn’t been well articulated. What’s surprised me is that my friends have got it.”