Franklin Foer: “Keller Needs To Finally Confront The Paper's WMD Coverage”…

It's a good thing that the New York Times didn't publish the details of Judy Miller's severance package. I'm sure that it was massive. (Witness the surprisingly warm, almost certainly extorted, language of Keller's fare-thee-well letter.) Despite everything she had written, and despite all the damage she had exacted on the institution, she had the Times by the nuts in these negotiations. The simple fact about Miller is that you can't stop her, you can't even hope to contain her. It's the exact reason you can't negotiate with a crazed dictator: Miller doesn't play by the same rules or operate under the same set of mores as the rest of us. She overflows with so much gumption and so much ambition that she will always claw her way back from whatever Elba-like bureaucratic beat the editors consign her to, back into the limelight. You will always live in fear of her breaking agreements and finding new, creative ways to burn you. Removing her from the building was Keller's only sane option.

Unfortunately, it took Keller an eternity to understand this. At every turn, in his quest to burnish his anti-Raines, nice-guy bona fides, he gave Miller the benefit of the doubt. He failed to adequately flay her for WMD coverage; he failed to keep her banished from the WMD beat; he failed to minimize her embarrassment to the paper in the Fitzgerald case. Instead of disciplining a rogue, untrustworthy reporter, he preceded to defend her in the press, to display his generous spirit.

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