“The White House disregarded intelligence projections on post-Saddam Iraq according to a newly-declassified CIA report, Intelligence and Analysis on Iraq: Issues for the Intelligence Community, posted today on the website of the National Security Archive.”
It’s no shock to us, but worth noting that the “Kerr Report” finds that “intelligence analysts were under constant pressure to find ‘links between Saddam and [al-Qa’ida]’ causing them to take a “purposely aggressive approach” to the issue, ‘conducting exhaustive and repetitive searches for such links’.”
The press release I received from the National Security Archives notes that today’s New York Times carries a story on the Kerr report, written by Douglas Jehl. That it does: “Report Says White House Ignored C.I.A. on Iraq Chaos.”
But the NYTimes’ story today is so buried that I had to use its search engine to find Jehl’s review of the Kerry report. Not only is the story not listed on the home page, it is not even listed on the home page of the section (“International News”) in which it was dumped.
Isn’t that the darndest thing. And it’s odd that the story wouldn’t fit in the Nation or Washington sections of the ol’ gray girl. But what do I know. Could it have something to do with Judy’s WMD reporting?
I got over my admiration for the NY Times when I worked as publicist. It’s a highly biased paper. Their slogan should be “All the news that fits their world view.” They bury stories and omit contradictory data, routinely. Coincidentally, I just finished reading a great slam on their bias in the Iraq coverage and continued cover-up of the Judith Miller fiasco. It’s here
Wow. Timing … I just got a link to a New York magazine piece on Miller’s WMD reporting, and you post this!
(Wish you’d combo them and do a diary on them! it’d make great reading!)
I still subscribe but I’m finding it increasingly difficult to do so. I’m finding that the NYT has itself become part of the story a little too often.
I think it is safe to say that Bill Keller, executive editor of the Times, has put a moratorium (or at least, a downplaying) of all stories related to the run up to the war — including anything to do with Judith Miller.
Bill Keller is having his “Richard Nixon” moment — its not the crimes that will kill him, it is the cover-up.
Despite being known as a liberal when he wrote his columns, Bill Keller was a supporter of the war in Iraq. He coined the phrase “The I-Can’t-Believe-I’m-A-Hawk Club” to describe himself and the group of Washington-connected columnists who were supporting the war.
Unlike Neal Pollock who destroyed whatever credibility he had by penning a stupid book supporting the case for war, Keller has been quiet about his past support for the war — no doubt because of his elevation to the executive editor’s chair following the Jayson Blair debacle.
Keller’s bio is interesting. He does not come from a big Eastern school — he earned a B.A. from Pomona College back in ’70. He was a reporter, foreign correspondent and bureau chief — someone who “worked his way up” in the classic sense. He was named managing editor at the Times in 1997. In 2000, he completed an “Advanced Management Program” at Wharton (did Sulzberger tell him he needed a more impressive resume to get the big job?).
I sense that Keller is a good journalist, but an inexperienced editor — someone who knows news and how to write (he won a Pulitzer in 1989 for his writing from the Soviet Union), but may not know how to manage other reporters and editors. Maybe Keller has panicked and is having a difficult time managing both his staff, his boss and the expecations that go with the job. In any case, he’s blowing it big time.
What is strange is that the Times was not the cheerleader for the war in Iraq that the Washington Post was. Just as it has taken the American people two years to reverse their opinions on the war, the Post continues to struggle to come to terms with its mistakes. The Times, on the other hand, is in free fall — unable to come to terms with the work of Judith Miller, and unable to prevent itself from making the situation worse.
As I recall, Pomona College was a very good, quite small school.
a downplaying) of all stories related to the run up to the war
That’s my sense of it too. It was just so odd. I was looking all over the newspaper for the story, wondering if the NSArchives had been mistaken in reporting that the NYT had a story on the CIA report.
But the difficulty didn’t end when i used the search engine at the NYT. When I searched for “Kerr report,” I came up empty. When I searched for “CIA report,” I came up empty. Only when I just typed in Jehl did I get the story — it was one of three by him today, and was the third listed.
…..
Do you think that Judy Miller would be a very difficult person for any editor to handle? Is she still very close to Sulzberger Jr.? (I read somewhere that she and her BF used to spend every weekend with Sulzberger and his wife.) And Yahoo News has a slide show of the CIA leak photos — and there’s a photo of Judy the day she returned to the NYT, with a beaming Sulzberger standing behind her.
THE QUESTION THAT EATS AT ME: To whom does she really answer?
Reporters like Miller tend to report, indirectly anyways, to the Executive Editor — but with all that was going down during 2003/2004, Miller probably got very close with Sulzberger (who is known to be very hands-on).
Judith Miller is what used to be called a rainmaker (I always hated that term) — on the business side of the paper, it was someone who brought in the big accounts and the big bucks — on the editorial side, it was someone who brought in the big, glitzy stories. Often people manage them by giving them a long leash — but often these people need the most managing.
But there is really no excuse in journalism: the role of the editor is to, well, edit. Most of Miller’s WMD stories should never have seen the light of day — they were one source stories that relied on either administration sources or Ahmed Chalabi. The most famous story is that of the time Miller received a call from Dick Cheney who told her about the “aluminum tubes” — she wrote it — then Cheney goes on TV to say that he read about Iraq’s acquisition of aluminum tubes through the New York Times. Perfectly cyclical propaganda: Cheney gives the lie to Miller, who writes it, Cheney then repeats it on TV and attributes the news to the Times.