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The Millerized weekend began Friday night, when Bill Keller menschily (and strategically, we suspect) sent a staff memo apologizing for his Plamegate screwups and distancing himself — and the paper — from Miller. It intensified Saturday, when Maureen Dowd pulled Judy's hair and slapped her silly, and when Miller made public her you're-full-of-shit memo in response to Keller's. When Sunday came — with all this buildup, with the biggest circ of the week, with seven days since the big post-testimony exposes — the conditions seemed right for an explosion.

There wasn't one.

Instead, public editor Barney Calame — who apparently faces deadlines sometime in the Mesozoic, commenting on his blog both of the last two weeks about things that didn't make it to him by filing time — basically recaps everything we all aready know, largely focusing on what was printed in the previous week's big reports. (Um, Barney, we're not in Pony Express time anymore. Seven days later, we're all way past those articles.) Also, he announces:

The details laid out in the commendable 6,200-word article by a special team of reporters and editors led by the paper's deputy managing editor answered most of my fundamental questions.

Which, finally, proves that at least one person found his questions answered by last weekend's coverage.

But wait! Just when Sunday was looking boring, Miller sends a fuck-you-and-the-horse-your-rode-in-on reply to Calame, which he posts to his blog late yesterday evening. The whole thing — with charges of "unsubstantied innuendo" on Calame's part, an "ugly, innaccurate memo" from Keller, and lies from Jill Abramson — awaits after the jump.

And, next: Monday!

The Miller Mess: Lingering Issues Among the Answers [NYT]
Earlier:
 Weekend at Judy's: Part Two, in Which Arthur's Girls Catfight

Judith Miller sent me the e-mail message below in response to my column in The New York Times today. In her message, Ms. Miller refers to "answers" she had sent me to questions I posed to her during an interview Thursday. My column reflected the relevant responses she gave me during our interview, and her e-mail message arrived too late for inclusion in the column.

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Barney,

I'm dismayed by your essay today. You accuse me of taking journalistic "shortcuts" without presenting evidence of what you mean and rely on unsubstantiated innuendo about my reporting.

While you posted Bill Keller's sanitized, post-lawyered version of the ugly, inaccurate memo to the staff he circulated Friday, which accused me of "misleading" an editor and being "entangled" with I. Lewis Libby, you declined to post the answers I sent you to six questions that we touched on during our interview Thursday. Had you done so, readers could have made their own assessment of my conduct in what you headlined as "the Miller mess."

You chose to believe Jill Abramson when she asserted that I had never asked her to pursue the tip I had gotten about Joe Wilson's trip to Niger and his wife's employment at the C.I.A. Now I ask you: Why would I the supposedly pushiest, most competitive reporter on the planet — not have pushed to pursue a tantalizing tip like this? Soon after my breakfast meeting with Libby in July, I did so. I remember asking the editor to let me explore whether what my source had said was true, or whether it was a potential smear of a whistleblower. I don't recall naming the source of the tip. But I specifically remember saying that because Joe Wilson's op-ed column had appeared in our paper, we had a particular obligation to pursue this. I never identified the editor to the grand jury or publicly, since it involved internal New York Times decision-making. But since you did, yes, the editor was Jill Abramson.

Obviously, Jill and I have different memories of what happened during that turbulent period at the paper. I did not take that personally, though she never chose to discuss with me our different recollections about my urging her to pursue the story. Without explanation, however, you said you believed her and raised questions about my "trust and credibility." That is your right. But I gave my recollection to the grand jury under oath.

My second journalistic sin in your eyes was agreeing to Libby's request to be considered a "former Hill staffer" in his discussion about Wilson. As you acknowledged, I agreed to that attribution only to hear the information. As I also stressed, Scooter Libby has never been identified in any of my stories as anything other than a "senior Administration official."

The third "troubling" ethical issue you raised my access to secret information during my embed in Iraq had been fully clarified by the time you published. No one doubts that I had access to very sensitive information or that I did work out informal arrangements to limit discussion of sensitive intelligence sources and methods to the most senior Times editors. Though there was occasionally enormous tension over whether and when I could publish sensitive information, the arrangement ultimately satisfied the senior officers in the brigade hunting for unconventional weapons, the Times editors at the time, and me. It also led to the publication of my exclusive story that debunked some of my own earlier exclusives on the Pentagon's claim that it had found mobile germ production units in Iraq.

I fail to see why I am responsible for my editors' alleged failure to do some "digging" into my confidential sources and the notebooks. From the start, the legal team that the Times provided me knew who my source was and had access to my notes. I never refused to answer questions or provide any information they requested. No one indicated they had doubts about the stand I took to go to jail.

Your essay clearly implies that the Times and I did something wrong in waging a battle that we did not choose. I strongly disagree. What did I do wrong? Your essay does not say. You may disapprove of my earlier reporting on Weapons of Mass Destruction. But what did the delayed publication of the editor's note on that reporting have to do with the decision I made over a year later, which the paper fully supported, to protect our confidential sources? I remain proud of my decision to go to jail rather than reveal the identity of a source to whom I had pledged confidentiality, even if he happened to work for the Bush White House.

The Times asked me to assume a low profile in this controversy. I told everyone that I had no intention of airing internal editorial policy disputes and disagreements at the paper, as a matter of principle and loyalty to those who stood by me during this ordeal. Others have chosen a different path, ironically becoming "confidential sources" themselves.

You never bothered to mention in your essay my decision to spend 85 days in jail to honor the pledge I made. I'm saddened that you, like so many others, have blurred the core issue of that stand and I am stunned that you refused to post my answers to issues we had discussed on your web site at the critical moment that Times readers were forming their opinions.

Judith Miller