The Gray Lady Hides the Disagreement

This is kind of creepy. After learning yesterday that the Administration conned the NYT out of publishing details of the domestic wiretap program by telling the NYT that there had been no significant disagreement about the program …

The first known assertion by administration officials that there hadbeen no serious disagreement within the government about the legalityof the N.S.A. program came in talks with New York Times editors in2004. In an effort to persuade the editors not to disclose theeavesdropping program, senior officials repeatedly cited the lack ofdissent as evidence of the program’s lawfulness.

[snip]

Mr. Gonzales’s 2006 testimony went unchallenged publicly until May of this year, when James B. Comey, the former deputy attorney general, described the March 2004 confrontation to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

I thought I’d review what the NYT said about Gonzales’ public claim when they reported on his testimony in February 2006. The NYT provided extensive coverage of Gonzales’ testimony, providing:

• A Lichtblau/Risen overview of the testimony (with reporting from Scott Shane, one of the authors of yesterday’s article)
• An editorial critical of Gonzales’ appearance
• A legal review of the issues surrounding wiretapping
• An article painting the Democrats as spineless
• A short article describing the normal (legal) FISA process
• Excerpts from Gonzales’ testimony

And in spite of all that attention to the testimony, the NYT didn’t mention Gonzales’ claim that there was no disagreement about the program–not once.