Alex Constantine - October 20, 2008
WASHINGTON (AFP) — Judith Miller, whose pre-Iraq war reporting was faulted in a 2004 apology to its readers by editors of The New York Times, has joined the Fox News television channel as a contributor.
Miller, 60, "will provide commentary and analysis on national security issues, counterterrorism, and international affairs, including the Middle East on Fox," the cable news channel announced in a statement on Monday.
Fox News, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., said Miller will also write for FOXNews.com.
Miller, the author of several books, spent 28 years with the New York Times and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for reporting on global terrorism.
But she is perhaps better known for her reporting prior to the March 2003 US invasion of Iraq of claims by Iraqi exiles that Saddam Hussein had a weapons of mass destruction program, claims which subsequently turned out not to be true.
The Times apologized in 2004 for its pre-Iraq war coverage. Five of the six dubious articles cited by the newspaper were written or co-written by Miller.
Miller was also in the headlines in 2005 when she was imprisoned for 85 days for refusing to testify before a grand jury over the outing of an undercover CIA agent.
Miller was jailed by a federal judge for contempt for refusing to divulge the name of her confidential source who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. Her source turned out to be Lewis "Scooter" Libby, an aide to Vice President Dick Cheney.
Miller retired from the Times in November 2005.
Discussing Miller's hiring with The Washington Post, Fox executive vice president John Moody told the newspaper "she has a very impressive resume."
"We've all had stories that didn't come out exactly as we had hoped," Moody said. "She has explained herself and she has nothing to apologize for."
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