posted July 05, 2005 04:37 PM            

The Financial Times topped a list of the world's best newspapers, according to a survey of executives, politicians, university lecturers, journalists and advertising professionals conducted by a Swiss-based consultant.

Among 1,000 respondents from 50 countries, 19.4 percent chose the FT as the best paper, according to the survey by Zurich-based Internationale Medienhilfe published on Tuesday.

The Wall Street Journal took second place with 17.0 percent, followed by Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in third with 16.2 percent.

The New York Times slipped from first place in the 2003 survey to sixth, its score dropping to 8.1 percent from 21.3 percent. "The results show that the New York Times is suffering because of past scandals, while German-language publications remain highly respected internationally," Internationale Medienhilfe said in a statement.

Asahi Shimbun of Japan and Italy's Corriere della Sera appeared in the top 10 for the first time, in eighth and 10th places, respectively.

Following are the results of the survey. Figures in brackets show 2003 survey results:

Position Publication, country Mentions (pct)

1 Financial Times (U.K.) 19.4 (20.7)

2 Wall Street Journal (U.S.) 17.0 (7.5)

3 Frankfurter Allgemeine (Germany) 16.2 (10.9)

4 Le Monde (France) 12.5 (2.1)

5 Neue Zuercher Zeitung (Switzerland) 12.1 (15.0)

6 New York Times (U.S.) 8.1 (21.3)

7 Intl. Herald Tribune (France) 5.2 (11.3)

8 Asahi Shimbun (Japan) 2.6 (0.4)

9 El Pais (Spain) 1.9 (4.8)

10 Corriere della Sera (Italy) 1.3 (0.7)

Other papers 3.7 (3.8)
http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/ns/news/story.jsp?id=2005070512490002736674&dt=20050705124900&w=RTR&coview=

posted July 05, 2005 10:09 PM            

Also, notice which other papers didn't even get so much as a ranking....the LA Times, The Boston Globe or any of the so called bastions of leftist thought.

Before someone points it out...neither did some of the more conservative publications.

I like my news straight. I like it without the spin. I draw my own conclusions from the facts and I don't need some brain dead moron telling me what it all means.

The greatest failing of the modern American press is that they've forgotten the Who, What, When and Where and proceeded directly to Why....the Why, which is mostly Speculation, Innuendo and Rumor..these three elements which drive modern so called journalism. The Why for every ill in the world is that America sucks. Saddam didn't suck, Kim Jong-il doesn't suck, bin Laden doesn't suck, Stalin didn't suck, Ho Chi Minh didn't suck, Mao didn't suck....it's America that sucks.

So, in the vernacular of the modern American press...it's the American press which sucks and the NY Times sucks the most.

posted July 05, 2005 11:08 PM              

it was the new york times and judith miller that was the most aggressive in reporting stories of wmd in iraq,....stories fed to them by worthless sources like bushs buddy ahmed chalabi and his inc.....

this is one of the main reasons cited as to why nyt has lost credibility.....

posted July 05, 2005 11:17 PM              

By Antony Loewenstein

March 23, 2004 "Sydney Morning Herald"

The New York Times is arguably the most respected newspaper in the world. Its articles are reprinted in publications in numerous countries, including Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

Judith Miller is one of the NYT's most senior journalists. A Pulitzer Prize winning writer and regarded expert on Middle East issues and WMD, Miller has written extensively on Osama Bin Laden and the al-Qaeda network.

In the run-up to the Iraq War, Miller became a key reporter on that country’s supposedly documented WMDs. She wrote many articles relayed around the globe on the Bush administration’s doomsday reading of Saddam’s regime. She painted a terrifying picture of his arsenal with apparently sound intelligence sources to back her claims.

However, it emerged that the vast majority of her WMD claims came through Ahmed Chalabi, an indicted fraudster and one of the leading figures in the Iraqi National Congress (INC), the group keen to militarily overthrow Saddam. Miller relied on untested defectors’ testimonies (usually provided by Chalabi) to write several front-page stories on this information. Michael Massing from Columbia Journalism Review suggests her stories were “far too reliant on sources sympathetic to the (Bush) administration".

And in an interview with London’s Telegraph in early February 2004, Chalabi claimed his pre-war intelligence’s accuracy was no longer relevant:

“We are heroes in error ... As far as we're concerned we've been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important. The Bush administration is looking for a scapegoat. We're ready to fall on our swords if he wants."

posted July 06, 2005 12:08 AM              

"QUACK....QUACK.....QUACK...."

posted July 06, 2005 12:20 AM              

it was robert novak, a "conservative" columnist who revealed that plame/wilson was a cia operative...(although for some reason he's not being threatened with jail, explain that!)...so how does that change anything about nyt reporting on iraq? which was what you were commenting on? ....not at all...

posted July 06, 2005 12:34 AM            

Why would Novak be threatened with jail when what he revealed was not secret and did not violate the law?

Don't get too far out in front of this story Peton. Whoever revealed the name of Valarie Plame to the press...some say Karl Rove..probably didn't break any law at all.

As for reporting on Saddam's WMD, everyone was reporting on Saddam's WMD. What difference does it make if a NY Times reporter bought into the same scenario as every intelligence service in the world?

posted July 06, 2005 01:10 AM              

quote:

---

Judith Miller is in trouble because she refused to disclose who her source was in revealing the name of a covert CIA agent.--jwhop

---

judith miller never even wrote a piece or "revealed" anything......she is being ordered to reveal who she spoke with while researching the issue..LOL

********

Judges Order 2 Reporters to Testify on Leak

By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 16, 2005; Page A01

Plame's name first appeared in a July 14, 2003, syndicated column by Robert D. Novak, weeks after her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, criticized the Bush administration in a newspaper opinion piece.

Novak's column said two unnamed administration officials had told him that Wilson's wife was a CIA "operative" and had helped arrange his trip to Niger.

A government official who knowingly identifies a covert operative could be in violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. After a public uproar over the leak, the Justice Department appointed Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald to investigate.

According to the appellate court's opinion, Fitzgerald knows the identity of the person with whom Miller spoke and wants to question her about her contact with that "specified government official" on or about July 6, 2003. Miller never wrote a story on the subject.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25744-2005Feb15.html

*******

and you're the one who is clinging to rumor about wmd being trucked into syria...

*****

U.S. study: Iraq likely didn't ship WMD to Syria

Tuesday, April 26, 2005 Posted: 1729 GMT (0129 HKT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- It is unlikely Iraq shipped banned weapons material into Syria before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, according to report released by the Iraq Survey Group, a CIA/Pentagon team searching for Iraqi weapons programs.

posted July 06, 2005 01:31 AM              

July 14, 2003 - Robert Novak, a Right-Wing pundit and reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times publicly "outs" Valerie Plame as a CIA operative. Saying:

"Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report." [5]

It is the first public mention of her name and that she allegedly recommended Wilson for the post.

July 15, 2003 - Gannon posts for the first time on FreeRepublic.com as "Jeff Gannon" [6]

July 22, 2003 - Newsday reports that their intelligence sources confirmed that Plame was undercover until Novak outed her. [7] quoting Novak as saying:

"I didn't dig it out. It was given to me. They thought it was significant. They gave me the name, and I used it."

July 24, 2003 - jeffgannon.com debuts online

Late July, 2003 - The CIA files a "crime report" with the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), suggesting the leak of Wilson's wife's name and covert status might entail criminal acts.

September 23, 2003 - The CIA submits a standard 11 part questionnaire used by the DOJ to determine whether an investigation is warranted. (Milbank and Schmidt, "Justice Department Launches Criminal Probe of Leak, Washington Post, Oct. 1, 2003 at A01).

September 26, 2003 - John Dion, Director of the DOJ's Counterespionage section decides to pursue a criminal investigation.

September 28, 2003 - A source in the administration confirms that two senior administration officials contacted at least 6 reporters about the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife. The source claims that, "Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge." He stated that he was sharing the information because the disclosure was "wrong and a huge miscalculation, because they were irrelevant and did nothing to diminish Wilson's credibility." (Allen and Priest, "Bush Administration is Focus of Inquiry," Washington Post, Sept. 28, 2003 at A01.)

George W. Bush's aides promise to cooperate with any DOJ inquiries, but admit that "Bush has no plans to ask his staff members whether they played a role" in the leak. (Allen, "Bush Aides Say They'll Cooperate With Probe Into Intelligence Leak," Washington Post, Sept. 29, 2003 at A01).

September 29, 2003 - On CNN's Crossfire, Novak explains, "Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this. In July I was interviewing a senior administration official on Ambassador Wilson's report when he told me the trip was inspired by his wife, a CIA employee working on weapons of mass destruction. Another senior official told me the same thing. ... They asked me not to use her name, but never indicated it would endanger her or anybody else. According to a confidential source at the CIA, Mrs. Wilson was an analyst, not a spy, not a covert operative, and not in charge of undercover operatives. So what is the fuss about, pure Bush-bashing?" ("Crossfire," CNN, Sept. 29, 2003).

Wilson responds: "Bob Novak called me before he went to print with the report. And he said, a CIA source had told him that my wife was an operative. He was trying to get a second source...After the article appeared, I called him and I said, `You told me it was a CIA source. You wrote senior administration officials. What was it, CIA or senior administration?' He said to me, `I misspoke the first time I spoke to you.' That makes it senior administration sources" ("Paula Zahn Now," CNN, Sept. 29, 2003)

About his partisanship, Wilson responds, "...Novak also said that I was a Clinton appointee. In actual fact, my first political appointment was as ambassador. And I was appointed by George H.W. Bush, the first President Bush.
http://www.dkosopedia.com/index.php/Plame_Leak_timeline

posted July 06, 2005 02:00 AM              

By Walter Pincus and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, October 4, 2003; Page A03

The leak of a CIA operative's name has also exposed the identity of a CIA front company, potentially expanding the damage caused by the original disclosure, Bush administration officials said yesterday.

The company's identity, Brewster-Jennings & Associates, became public because it appeared in Federal Election Commission records on a form filled out in 1999 by Valerie Plame, the case officer at the center of the controversy, when she contributed $1,000 to Al Gore's presidential primary campaign.

After the name of the company was broadcast yesterday, administration officials confirmed that it was a CIA front. They said the obscure and possibly defunct firm was listed as Plame's employer on her W-2 tax forms in 1999 when she was working undercover for the CIA. Plame's name was first published July 14 in a newspaper column by Robert D. Novak that quoted two senior administration officials. They were critical of her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, for his handling of a CIA mission that undercut President Bush's claim that Iraq had sought uranium from the African nation of Niger for possible use in developing nuclear weapons.

The Justice Department began a formal criminal investigation of the leak Sept. 26.

The inadvertent disclosure of the name of a business affiliated with the CIA underscores the potential damage to the agency and its operatives caused by the leak of Plame's identity. Intelligence officials have said that once Plame's job as an undercover operative was revealed, other agency secrets could be unraveled and her sources might be compromised or endangered.

A former diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity said yesterday that every foreign intelligence service would run Plame's name through its databases within hours of its publication to determine if she had visited their country and to reconstruct her activities.

"That's why the agency is so sensitive about just publishing her name," the former diplomat said.

FEC rules require donors to list their employment. Plame used her married name, Valerie E. Wilson, and listed her employment as an "analyst" with Brewster-Jennings & Associates. The document establishes that Plame has worked undercover within the past five years. The time frame is one of the standards used in making determinations about whether a disclosure is a criminal violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.

It could not be learned yesterday whether other CIA operatives were associated with Brewster-Jennings.

Also yesterday, the nearly 2,000 employees of the White House were given a Tuesday deadline to scour their files and computers for any records related to Wilson or contacts with journalists about Wilson. The broad order, in an e-mail from White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales, directed them to retain records "that relate in any way to former U.S. Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, his trip to Niger in February 2002, or his wife's purported relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency."

White House employees received the e-mailed directive at 12:45 p.m., with an all-capitalized subject line saying, "Important Follow-Up Message From Counsel's Office." By 5 p.m. on Tuesday, employees must turn over copies of relevant electronic records, telephone records, message slips, phone logs, computer records, memos, and diaries and calendar entries.

The directive notes that lawyers in the counsel's office are attorneys for the president in his official capacity and that they cannot provide personal legal advice to employees.

For some officials, the task is a massive one. Some White House officials said they had numerous conversations with Wilson that had nothing to do with his wife, so the directive is seen as a heavy burden at a time when many of the president's aides already feel beleaguered.

Officials at the Pentagon and State Department also have been asked to retain records related to the case. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said yesterday: "We are doing our searches. . . . I'm not sure what they will be looking for or what they wish to contact us about, but we are anxious to be of all assistance to the inquiry."

In another development, FBI agents yesterday began attempts to interview journalists who may have had conversations with government sources about Plame and Wilson. It was not clear how many journalists had been contacted. The FBI has interviewed Plame, ABC News reported.

Wilson and his wife have hired Washington lawyer Christopher Wolf to represent them in the matter.

The couple has directed him to take a preliminary look at claims they might be able to make against people they believe have impugned their character, a source said.

The name of the CIA front company was broadcast yesterday by Novak, the syndicated journalist who originally identified Plame. Novak, highlighting Wilson's ties to Democrats, said on CNN that Wilson's "wife, the CIA employee, gave $1,000 to Gore and she listed herself as an employee of Brewster-Jennings & Associates."

"There is no such firm, I'm convinced," he continued. "CIA people are not supposed to list themselves with fictitious firms if they're under a deep cover -- they're supposed to be real firms, or so I'm told. Sort of adds to the little mystery."

In fact, it appears the firm did exist, at least on paper. The Dun & Bradstreet database of company names lists a firm that is called both Brewster Jennings & Associates and Jennings Brewster & Associates.

The phone number in the listing is not in service, and the property manager at the address listed said there is no such company at the property, although records from 2000 were not available.

Wilson was originally listed as having given $2,000 to Gore during the primary campaign in 1999, but the donation, over the legal limit of $1,000, was "reattributed" so that Wilson and Plame each gave $1,000 to Gore. Wilson also gave $1,000 to the Bush primary campaign, but there is no donation listed from his wife.

Staff writers Dana Milbank, Susan Schmidt and Dana Priest, political researcher Brian Faler and researcher Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A40012-2003Oct3¬Found=true

posted July 06, 2005 08:01 AM            

quote:

---

Judith Miller is in trouble because she refused to disclose who her source was in revealing the name of a covert CIA agent.--jwhop

---

posted July 06, 2005 08:36 AM            

MSNBC commentator Lawrence O'Donnell, who broke the news Friday that notes taken by Time magazine's Matthew Cooper indictate that top Bush adviser Karl Rove leaked the name of CIA employee Valerie Plame to columnist Robert Novak, said Sunday it's likely that Rove broke no laws.

Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, acknowledged on Saturday that his client had indeed spoken to Cooper before the Novak column hit in July 2003. But Luskin insisted that Rove never revealed Plame's identity.

Speaking to WABC Radio host and Internet guru Matt Drudge late Sunday, O'Donnell noted: "What [Luskin] has said is very careful lawyer language. ... We live in a world where we have to discover, in the '90s, that there are people who aren't sure what the meaning of 'is' is."
The MSNBC talker posited:

"That could simply mean he did not use the words 'Valerie Plame.' He may have said '[Joseph] Wilson's wife,' for example. He may have said all sorts of things that still fit what we're talking about."

But even if Rove was behind the disclosure, it doesn't mean he broke any law, he argued.

"[Luskin] is insisting that Karl Rove did not commit a crime," O'Donnell told Drudge. "That may very well be the case."

The MSNBC talker said he had studied extensively the statute allegedly broken in the Plame case, concluding that is "a very difficult statute to violate."

For one thing, he said, "Perhaps [Plame] really wasn't a covert agent - doesn't fit the statute's definition of covert agent. I think that's possible."

Another factor that could mitigate allegations of an illegal disclosure, said O'Donnell, was that whoever revealed Plame's identity "would have had to intentionally disclose it knowing that the CIA is trying to hide it."

"Karl Rove may not have known that," he added.

posted July 06, 2005 08:44 AM            

quote:

---

Are you prepared to say Saddam's WMD wasn't transferred to Syria...or the Sudan...or Yemen, or Lebanon? Because if you are prepared to say that, I want you on the record as saying it clearly.

---

So Petron, are you prepared to go on the record and say definitively Saddam had no WMD and it's not in Iraq, it's not in Syria, it's not in Sudan, it's not in Yemen, it's not in Lebanon, it's not anyplace at all because Saddam had it destroyed after the 1991 Gulf War?

posted July 06, 2005 09:13 AM            

The First Amendment, in pertinent part, says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. . . .
"Abridging" means placing limits on. The Supreme Court ruled that these words must be interpreted from the perspective of the federal government. The Government's ability to use journalists as agents of the federal government when so desired cannot be abridged.

The American National Security State is supposed to grab all the power it can. Its mission is to project power. It is not entrusted with the mission of maintaining a healthy First Amendment Freedom of the Press. To the contrary, it is in the best interest of the National Security State to whittle, attack, whine and cry at every opportunity to turn dominant media into a tool by which federal propaganda is spewed across the nation twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

The Founding Fathers gave dominant media the mission of counterbalancing the State's natural inclination to destroy the Constitution. Dominant media, as envisioned, was to probe and question the National Security State, especially when it displeased the National Security State.

But that takes courage and a willingness to be called very bad names by National Security State propagandists. It means being leaned on by the Justice Department, snarled at by its biggest, meanest federal legal guns; careers threatened, wives intimidated. It means watching your Rolodex go up in smoke.

All those wonderful federal sources who spoon-fed you, the dominant media journalist, story after story for which you were praised and rewarded with even better stories – as long as you did not demand that officially sanctioned stories be backed up with actual documents and other provable facts.

These "sources" would never again be available to you if you ever crossed the Beast, the National Security State. You'd actually have to push away from your desk, get out of your chair, go out into the cold, cruel world, walk past your favorite pub and find sources.

Real sources, not the federal shills that made you a household name and provided a very comfortable living, feeding propaganda you knowingly and willingly placed into the collective mind of the masses. Now you would have to join those journalists you so despise and look down on – the "bottom-feeders," "conspiracy theorists," Internet journalists and other journalistic lowlifes who continually bang away at the National Security State.

So, when the tough stories appeared, stories like TWA Flight 800, you shuddered at the thought of challenging a very determined cover-up, even though you knew the federal propagandists were feeding you garbage. You shuddered and then folded, jumping into the warm, safe lap of the Beast, wagging your tail, whispering "feed me, feed me."

According to three media sources - one deep inside NBC on July 17, 1996, when missile-fire brought the giant 747 down - in the hours after TWA Flight 800 was shot down a bidding war ensued for a video showing missile-fire bringing down TWA Flight 800. The bidding went above $50,000, at which time, the Fox News team, New York, was blocked from further bidding. The video ended up in the hands of NBC, where it was confiscated by the FBI.

The head of the Fox News team in the field on Long Island was then approached by an American military officer who said there was a major screw-up, the White House had ordered a 48 hour "stand-down" while it decided how to handle this crisis. Dominant media had a decision to make. Significant evidence of missile-fire was already in hand. Much more was easily available. There were witnesses who watching TWA Flight 800 as it headed east toward Paris. They then watched as a missile approached and brought the plane down. They didn't see some mysterious light way off in the distance. They were not confused. They knew what they had seen.

We now know the FBI and CIA knew they witnessed missile-fire, according to documents recently unearthed through the Freedom of Information Act.

The New York Times would have had this vital information if it merely conducted an honest investigation. It did not. Instead, it allowed the FBI to feed it an approved storyline, complete with selected facts – a bomb brought the 747 down. A political decision was then made at the top of the Clinton administration. It was an election year. A criminal act might provoke the sleeping masses.

The lapdog New York Times might lose its role as the dominant media "investigative" team. The Beast could lose control of the crisis. Truth could conceivably prevail if the shills at the New York Times ceased running interference for the National Security State.

But it was not to be. Federal propagandists told the New York Times a criminal act did not bring down TWA Flight 800. All that explosive residue was from a dog training exercise. The New York Times did not interview the St. Louis Airport Police Officer who conducted the training a month before TWA Flight 800 crashed. He would have given the New York Times information proving beyond any doubt that the dog training exercise did not take place on the 747 that would later become TWA Flight 800.

If the New York Times had interviewed the pilots who were onboard the 747 at St. Louis during the entire time the dog training exercise took place, it would have quickly become apparent that the dog training took place on a 747 parked at the adjacent St. Louis Airport gate. Mere competence would have exposed the cover-up.

At that point courage would have been required. The New York Times had neither. It was the Beast's official lapdog.

In all probability, 9-11 would never have happened if the New York Times had merely done the job the Founding Fathers assigned. In the aftermath of TWA 800, with a fully informed citizenry, America's masses would have demanded real protection based on real facts, not federal propaganda.

We can reasonably infer that today's constitutional crisis, the Supreme Court's removal of the First Amendment's Freedom of the Press would not have occurred. The Supreme's are political creatures; dare we suggest political ****** ? Would they dare destroy this most vital portion of the First Amendment if they knew they were attacking journalism's junkyard dog?

The Supreme's knew they were destroying a National Security State lapdog that did not need or deserve special protection under the First Amendment.

Unfortunately, non dominant media journalists who do sally forth to battle the dreaded Beast now do so without any pretense of a constitutional amendment protecting them. And now the ultimate irony – New York Times reporter Judith Miller now gets to go to prison because of the failure of the New York Times to protect and defend the First Amendment's Freedom of the Press.

posted July 06, 2005 05:14 PM              

quote:

---

judith miller never even wrote a piece or "revealed" anything.--Petron

---

well jwhop, when did i say judith miller was in trouble for writing about iraq wmd...? i didnt ....you were just trying to change the subject....

in your attempt to change the subject you implied judith miller revealed the identity of plame/wilson, she didnt.....it was novak

posted July 06, 2005 05:32 PM              

quote:

---

So Petron, are you prepared to go on the record and say definitively Saddam had no WMD and it's not in Iraq, it's not in Syria, it's not in Sudan, it's not in Yemen, it's not in Lebanon, it's not anyplace at all because Saddam had it destroyed after the 1991 Gulf War?--jwhop

---

again jwhop, i dont make statements of fact without any evidence ...thats your forte....

i believe that saddam produced no substantial wmd in iraq ever since support from bush sr ended.....

there is only 1 valid argument that can be made about saddam and wmd but i have yet to hear you make it.....ever...

i could make your argument better than you can...but why should i? it still doesnt rise to the level of supporting an invasion and occupation of iraq when other terrorist supporting nations were more of a threat[wmd & terrorism] than iraq.....

posted July 06, 2005 05:40 PM            

Well, I don't recall saying you said Judith Miller is in trouble for writing about Saddam's WMD. I do remember saying this...after you posted an article which questioned her source for some of the WMD information.

quote:

---

As for reporting on Saddam's WMD, everyone was reporting on Saddam's WMD. What difference does it make if a NY Times reporter bought into the same scenario as every intelligence service in the world?

---

posted July 06, 2005 05:53 PM              

quote:

---

I notice you're pretending you didn't see my question Petron.--jwhop

---

hellooooo jwhop i quoted your question about wmd and answered it.....

are you saying you have the definitive proof that saddam moved wmd out of iraq? LOL

*******

here is were you tried to change the subject....
i never said she was "in the dock" for wmd reporting

quote:

---

I'm sorry Petron, Judith Miller is not in the dock because of her reporting on WMD in Iraq. Judith Miller is in trouble because she refused to disclose who her source was in revealing the name of a covert CIA agent.An agent, who it turns out was not at the time a covert agent at all. An agent who every day drove her car through the main gate of the CIA at Langley....Nice try! Nice spin, but no cookie.--jwhop

---

no cookie for what then?

********

quote:

---

As for reporting on Saddam's WMD, everyone was reporting on Saddam's WMD. What difference does it make if a NY Times reporter bought into the same scenario as every intelligence service in the world?

---

do a search ... judith miller wmd
or...judith miller chalabi

youll see that it was her reporting in nyt that led the pack of false, front page claims about iraq wmd....in contradiction to your assertion that nyt reports "saddam didnt suck"

posted July 06, 2005 07:53 PM              

**********

Reassessing Miller
U.S. intelligence on Iraq's WMD deserves a second look. So does the reporting of the New York Times' Judith Miller.
By Jack Shafer
Posted Thursday, May 29, 2003, at 4:11 PM PT

Miller redux

Miller redux
The lead editorial in Monday's New York Times applauds the news reported in the Times' own pages that the CIA is reassessing the prewar intelligence about Iraqi's unconventional weapons programs collected by the CIA, the National Intelligence Council, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and other agencies. The editorial reads:

The failure so far to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the prime justification for an immediate invasion, or definitive links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda has raised serious questions about the quality of American intelligence and even dark [sic] hints that the data may have been manipulated to support a pre-emptive war. [Emphasis added.]

If the government must re-examine whether data may have been "manipulated" to support the war, surely the New York Times should conduct a similar postwar inventory of its primary WMD reporter, Judith Miller. In the months running up to the war, Miller painted as grave a picture of Iraq's WMD potential as any U.S. intelligence agency, a take that often directly mirrored the Bush administration's view.

Now, thanks to the reporting of the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz, we understand why Miller and the administration might have seen eye-to-eye on Iraq's WMD. On the same day as the Times editorial appeared, Kurtz reproduced an internal Times e-mail in which Miller described Ahmad Chalabi, the controversial Iraq leader, former exile, and Bush administration fave, as one of her main sources on WMD.

"[Chalabi] has provided most of the front page exclusives on WMD to our paper," Miller e-mailed Times Baghdad bureau chief John Burns. Miller added that the MET Alpha—a military outfit searching for WMD after the invasion—"is using Chalabi's intell and document network for its own WMD work."

The failure of "Chalabi's intell" to uncover any WMD has embarrassed both the United States and Miller. As noted previously in this column, she oversold the successes of the post-invasion WMD search. On April 21, she reported in the Times that an Iraqi scientist had led MET Alpha to a site where Iraqis had buried chemical precursors for chemical and biological weapons. "Officials" told Miller this was "the most important discovery to date in the hunt for illegal weapons."

On April 22, Miller told The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer the military regarded the scientist as much more than "a smoking gun" in the WMD investigation—he was "a silver bullet." For all of Miller's fist-pumping on behalf of MET Alpha, none of her spectacular findings have been confirmed by other newspapers. (The Washington Post's Barton Gellman did an especially good job of poking holes in Miller's scoop.) The Times has never returned to the MET Alpha "burial grounds" to defend her heavily hyped "silver bullet" account. (See this "Press Box" for a chronology of Miller's reporting from Iraq.)

Did Miller get taken by sources with an agenda, or did she promote their suspect data for her own ideological reasons? Her Iraq coverage has always relied heavily on Iraqi defectors.

To Miller's credit, she often qualifies her defector stories by noting that the CIA doesn't buy what they're selling. In piece after piece, she notes that the agency suspects they invent or embellish their tales to increase chances of winning asylum. But her caveats are usually followed by a passage about how the Pentagon embraces the very defectors the CIA spurns. In Miller's Jan. 24, 2003, story, "Defectors Bolster U.S. Case Against Iraq, Officials Say," neocon hawk and Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle attacks the CIA for its hostility to defectors smuggled out of Iraq by Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress. The CIA, Perle said, had refused to interview the defectors and had undermined their testimony. "But ultimately, the flow of information was so vital and so overwhelming that they could no longer ignore it," Perle says in the piece.

One of the named defectors in Miller's Jan. 24 story, Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, a civil engineer, told officials that chem/bio weapons labs could be found beneath hospitals and inside presidential palaces. Haideri first aired his allegations to Miller for a Dec. 20, 2001, story. (According to Miller's story, Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress arranged the interview.) No such laboratories have been found, and Miller's original report looks wrong.

Miller also authored a provocative Dec. 3, 2002, story about the late Nelja N. Maltseva, aka "Madame Smallpox." Extensively sourced to "senior American officials," "foreign scientists," "American officials," "an administration official," "administration officials," and "an informant whose identity has not been disclosed," the story reviewed the theory that Maltseva may have given "a particularly virulent strain of smallpox" to the Iraqis. No such smallpox program has been found in Iraq, and Miller's original report looks wrong.

On Sept. 8, 2002, Michael R. Gordon and Miller wrote in the Times, "Iraqi defectors who once worked for the nuclear weapons establishment have told American officials that acquiring nuclear arms is again a top Iraqi priority." The story catalogs various other threats: An unnamed Iraqi defector claims Saddam Hussein is trying to create new chemical weapons. Iraq will quell another Shiite uprising with chemical and biological weapons, according to Iraqi dissident Abdalaziz al-Hakim of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Hakim reportedly gave U.S. officials a "paper" from Iranian intelligence that authorized such an attack. These reports have yet to be confirmed, and Miller's original report now looks very wrong.

Ahmed al-Shemri, who claims to have worked at Iraq's Muthanna chemical weapons plant, tells Gordon and Miller that "[a]ll of Iraq is one large storage facility" for WMD chemical agents. The Times allowed "al-Shemri" to use a pseudonym and agreed not to name the country in which he was interviewed. The remarkably detailed story continues:

Mr. Shemri said Iraq had produced 5 tons of stable VX in liquid form between 1994 and 1998, before inspectors were forced to leave Iraq. Some of this agent, he said, was made in secret labs in the northern city of Mosul and in the southern city of Basra, which Unscom inspectors confirmed they had rarely visited because of their long distance from Baghdad.

He said Iraq had the ability to make at least 50 tons of liquid nerve agent, which he said was to be loaded into two kinds of bombs and dropped from planes.

Of even greater concern is Mr. Shemri's allegation that Iraq had invented, as early as 1994, and is now producing a new, solid VX agent that clings to a soldier's protective clothing and makes decontamination difficult. …

Mr. Shemri said Iraq had received assistance in its chemical, germ and nuclear programs from Russian scientists who are still working in Iraq. At least two Iraqi scientists traveled to North Korea in early 2002 to study missile technology, he said. …

An [sic] former Unscom inspector called at least some of Mr. Shemri's information "plausible." While he said it was impossible to determine the accuracy of all his claims, he believed that Mr. Shemri "is who he claims to be, and worked where he claimed to work."

"Shemri's" allegations to date are unsupported by occupation forces, and now Miller's original report looks very, very wrong.

As far back as 1998, Miller advanced the case of Khidhir Abdul Abas Hamza, an Iraqi nuclear scientist who defected in 1994. Hamza immediately went to Chalabi for help. Miller and James Risen gave credence to Hamza's claim that the Iraqi nuclear weapons program could quickly be restarted in the salaciously titled, "Tracking Baghdad's Arsenal: Inside the Arsenal: A special report, Defector Describes Iraq's Atom Bomb Push" (Aug. 15, 1998). No evidence of such a "quick-start" nuclear weapons program has been found.

Miller isn't a patsy for any stray Iraqi defector who might swim ashore. On Jan. 24, 2003, she reports that both the Defense Intelligence Agency and other Iraqi dissidents rejected defector Abdel Jabal Karim Ashur al-Bedani's testimony about chemical weapons.

But none of Miller's wild WMD stories has panned out. From these embarrassing results, we can deduce that either 1) Miller's sources were right about WMD, and it's just a matter of time before the United States finds evidence to back them up; 2) Miller's sources were wrong about WMD, and the United States will never find the evidence; 3) Miller's sources played her to help stoke a bogus war; or 4) Miller deliberately weighted the evidence she collected to benefit the hawks. It could be that the United States inadvertently overestimated Iraq's WMD program. For example, the United States might have intercepted communications to Saddam in which his henchmen exaggerated the scale of Iraq's WMD progress to make him happy.

"The country needs to know if the spy organizations were right or wrong," concludes the Times editorial, a fair and equitable stand. But by the same logic, the country needs to know if Miller and the Times too gullibly advanced the WMD findings of their sources—and if so, why.
http://slate.msn.com/id/2083736/

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