[Peace-discuss] FAIR Action Alert WAPO'S "A Good Leak"

[Paul Mueth]

This editorial pin my bullshit meter as well. .  no
mention, of course, of niger doc forgery

Here's a headline from today's wapo-- 
Judge in CIA Leak Case Threatens Gag Order

subtitle- Leak Case Leaks


FAIR Action Alert
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2860

Intelligence Manipulation at the Washington Post
Paper's editorial page ignores facts to back
Bushm4/13/06
	 Newspaper editorial pages are entitled to their own
opinions—but not to their own facts. The Washington
Post's editorial page, however, seems to want to have
it both ways.
	 The paper's April 9 editorial, "A Good Leak,"
<<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/08/AR2006040800895.html>>
defended the White House's actions amid new
revelations in the investigation of the leaking of an
undercover CIA employee's name to reporters. CIA
analyst Valerie Plame Wilson was outed by
administration sources in July 2003 after her husband,
former diplomat Joseph Wilson, publicly challenged a
key White House argument for war—that Iraq was
attempting to procure uranium from Africa.
	 Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald recently filed
new documents indicating that Lewis "Scooter" Libby,
the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick
Cheney, testified that he was authorized by George W.
Bush to release portions of a classified National
Intelligence Estimate (NIE) to reporters to rebut
Wilson's criticisms of the case for war.
	 The Post editorial supported Bush's action, which is
the paper's prerogative. But it backed up its
positions with an inaccurate claim:
	"The material that Mr. Bush ordered declassified
established, as have several subsequent
investigations, that Mr. Wilson was the one guilty of
twisting the truth. In fact, his report supported the
conclusion that Iraq had sought uranium."
	 But the actual National Intelligence Estimate did
not support the White House's claims about uranium,
nor did Wilson's report. That much was clear in the
news section of the same day's Washington Post. The
paper's reporting showed that Wilson's findings-that
there was "no support for charges that Iraq tried to
buy uranium" in Niger-were consistent with what many
intelligence analysts thought about the allegations.
In the body of the NIE, according to the Post, the
uranium allegations were treated skeptically:
	"Unknown to the reporters, the uranium claim lay
deeper inside the estimate, where it said a fresh
supply of uranium ore would 'shorten the time Baghdad
needs to produce nuclear weapons.' But it also said
U.S. intelligence did not know the status of Iraq's
procurement efforts, 'cannot confirm' any success and
had 'inconclusive' evidence about Iraq's domestic
uranium operations."
	 The Post added that in closed Senate testimony in
September 2002, top CIA officials expressed
reservations about the uranium claim—and they weren't
the only ones: "The State Department's Bureau of
Intelligence and Research, likewise, called the claim
'highly dubious.' For those reasons, the uranium story
was relegated to a brief inside passage in the October
estimate." The disconnect between what Libby was
alleging was in the NIE and the actual document has
been noted by other reporters (Newsweek.com,
10/19/05).
	 The Post seems to have based its argument on a
Senate Intelligence Committee report, which some
suggest debunked Wilson's claims (Washington Post,
7/10/04). That report found that some CIA analysts
believed Wilson's findings backed up their
conclusions, though skeptics (most notably at the
State Department) were unmoved. As Knight-Ridder
reported (7/10/04), the Senate report found "that
State Department analysts concluded that Wilson's
information supported their view that there wasn't
much substance to the Iraq-Niger link."
	 But to reach the conclusion that Wilson was "the one
guilty of twisting the truth" also ignores a
long-established part of the story—namely, that the
CIA was trying to remove the Niger story from Bush's
speeches long before the decision to leak parts of the
NIE to the media. And the White House itself admitted
in July 2003—shortly after Wilson went public—that the
Niger allegation should have been kept out of Bush's
January 2003 State of the Union address. The
Washington Post covered this story extensively at the
time (beginning on July 8, 2003), reporting at length
on efforts by the CIA (7/23/03) to keep the uranium
claim out of Bush's public remarks about Iraq. On July
20, the Post's Dana Priest reported that "recent
revelations by officials at the CIA, the State
Department, the United Nations, in Congress and
elsewhere make clear that the weakness of the claim in
the State of the Union speech was known and accepted
by a wide circle of intelligence and diplomatic
personnel scrutinizing information on Iraqi weapons
programs months before the speech."
	 So why is the paper's editorial page still arguing
that the White House had a strong case against
Wilson—especially on a claim that the White House has
long admitted was incorrect?
	ACTION:
 Contact the Washington Post and ask whether its
editorial page must adhere to the same rules as its
reporters-namely, that it get its facts right. 
	CONTACT: Washington Post Editorial Page Editor
 Fred Hiatt fredhiatt at washpost.com  (202) 334-6000

 Ombudsman  Deborah Howell ombudsman at washpost.com 
(202) 334-7582