The Kremlinology of Iraq and The Times
: The New York Times appears to fall on its sword today over some of its reporting on the lead-up to war in Iraq. But it's not necessary what it seems.
In one view, this is The Times going after Bush: By admitting they were stupid to rely on Ahmad Chalabi and his henchmen for stories, they can put themselves up on a pedestal of late-blooming virtue and say that Bush was even stupider to rely on Chalabi and his henchmen for intelligence that led to war. The problem I have with that is that The Times is being quite selective in its sword falling. Every day, the paper -- any paper -- is filled with anonymous sources and mistakes and stories that don't turn out as reported and predicted. Why is the paper taking the extraordinary move of public confession with this story? Because there's an agenda.
In another view, this is The Times getting ready for various attacks on reporter Judith Miller that are coming (at the Personal Democracy Forum, Eric Alterman said it was shameful that The Times had not fessed up on Miller's mistakes and the crowd, lefty like Eric, applauded; there's a bill coming due).
In yet another view, this could be The Times getting ready for more to come out about Chalabi and even various reporters' dependence on and relationship with him. Lots more is going to come out about Chalabi from every side of the fight. Yesterday, the NY Sun (no link available) said that the raid on his office and home "cam as the Iraqi National Congress leader was preparing a potentially devastating audit of how Iraq's oil resources and seized assets were being disbursed by the chief of the Coalition Provisional Authority, L. Paul Bremer."
You can't read this story without a Kremlinologist. And I'm sure that today, many webloggers will do a fair bit of Kremlinology behind what The Times says:
But we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge.
The problematic articles varied in authorship and subject matter, but many shared a common feature. They depended at least in part on information from a circle of Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles bent on "regime change" in Iraq, people whose credibility has come under increasing public debate in recent weeks. (The most prominent of the anti-Saddam campaigners, Ahmad Chalabi, has been named as an occasional source in Times articles since at least 1991, and has introduced reporters to other exiles. He became a favorite of hard-liners within the Bush administration and a paid broker of information from Iraqi exiles, until his payments were cut off last week.) Complicating matters for journalists, the accounts of these exiles were often eagerly confirmed by United States officials convinced of the need to intervene in Iraq. Administration officials now acknowledge that they sometimes fell for misinformation from these exile sources. So did many news organizations — in particular, this one.
: UPDATE: Here's the
Guardian story on the NY Times "mea culpa." Unlike The Times, it actually mentions Judith Miller.
One of the New York Times' star reporters, Judith Miller, is known to have relied heavily on Mr Chalabi for stories about Iraq's purported weapons of mass destruction, although she was not named in today's piece.
There are rumors of at least two big stories about Miller about to come out. This is the sound of the first shoe dropping. Plunk.
: The AP's spin makes it about regime change at The Times, too:
Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis told The Associated Press she could not comment on whether disciplinary action would result from the newspaper's investigation.
Nearly all the stories were published during the tenure of former Times executive editor Howell Raines, who resigned in June in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal. Raines and former managing editor Gerald Boyd left after a Times investigation found fabrications or plagiarism in dozens of Blair's stories.
: I wonder what involvement, if any, Public Editor Dan Okrent has in this. His column was absent Sunday.
: Now here's a fun combination: The Agence France Presse story on this in Al-Jazeera. And here's Reuters' version. Mind you, they're all just reading the exact same thing we're reading and have nothing new to add.
: Here's Jack Shafer's lead-up to this in Slate yesterday: He predicted today's editor's note and also said Okrent has been calling reporters with WMD questions. Many other good links there.
