The WaPo Did Not Scoop This Story in 2005

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I’m still waiting for the media to start covering the news that a head of state–the head of our state–just admitted to approving torture. As of 9:30, only UPI has joined ABC and the WaPo in noting this story–which is about all they do, note it (though the foreign press is beginning to take note). For its part, ABC seems to have gotten bored with breaking the news that the President authorized his top aides to set up a torture regime–by 5PM yesterday they had removed the story from their Top Headlines (but worry not, you can still find the story of Sam, the dog that invited himself to his owner’s funeral, among the Top Headlines).

While we’re waiting for what I’m certain will be a barrage of stories covering the fact that the President thinks it’s okay to torture so long as John Yoo says so, I thought I’d look at the WaPo’s claim that they had already covered this story. I mean, I’m glad that the WaPo saw fit to cover the story–it even made it onto page A3; I should be glad it was not relegated to Lifestyles. But it’s clear the WaPo is missing what’s new with this story.

In its story, the WaPo claims it covered this in January 2005.

The Washington Post first reported in January 2005 that proposed CIA interrogation techniques were discussed at several White House meetings. A principal briefer at the meetings was John Yoo, who was then a senior Justice Department attorney and the author of a draft memo explaining the legal justification for the classified techniques the CIA sought to employ.

The Post reported that the attendees at one or more of these sessions included then-presidential counsel Alberto R. Gonzales, then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, then-Defense Department general counsel William J. Haynes II, then-National Security Council legal adviser John B. Bellinger III, CIA counsel John A. Rizzo, and David S. Addington, then-counsel to Cheney.

The Post reported that the methods discussed included open-handed slapping, the threat of live burial and waterboarding. The threat of live burial was rejected, according to an official familiar with the meetings.

State Department officials and military lawyers were intentionally excluded from these deliberations, officials said.

Gonzales and his staff had no reservations about the proposed interrogation methods and did not suggest major changes, two officials involved in the deliberations said.

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Bush OKs Torture. Media Yawns.

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So ABC News had an exclusive interview and got a pretty important scoop last night. You may have heard about it: George Bush, a man who took an oath to support and defend the Constitution, admitted (with zero shame) that he approved of the meetings at which his top advisors discussed and approved the excruciating details of torture.

And, yes, I’m aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved.

The President just admitted that he approved torture.

And thus far at least, no one seems to give a damn. As of 9AM, the NYT published no news of Bush’s admission. The WaPo placed a story on A3 (stating that they had already reported this, even though they hadn’t reported this). ABC, the outlet that got the damn scoop, places the story fourth on its list of stories, behind Obama and Indiana and Hillary telling Bill to "butt out," with the main picture on the front page cycling through such critical stories as a dog who invited himself to his owner’s funeral. Oh–and do you think maybe there’s a connection between the stories of teens beating each other and the President, approving of torture?

This is an exclusive with the President who, after lying about torture for four years, just admitted that he knew and approved of the torture! And yet you place it there among the cute puppy stories?

As for the rest of the news media, thus far, crickets. Though kudos to Randy Scholfield of the Wichita Eagle who–without yet having the news that the Principals did not really insulate Bush from these discussions–states, "Nor will history judge the American people kindly if we look the other way."

I understand Bush’s approval of torture is not news, as in, something the beltway insiders didn’t already know. I agree with Bush, sort of, that this is not startling. At the same time, it appalls me that the President of the United States can admit to approving torture and yet no one finds that unusual, that no one is interrupting existing programming to announce this, that even ABC treats this as one story among the cute puppy and Hill and Bill stories. At the very least, try to muster some outrage that the President has been lying about torture for four years, could ya?

Remember Watergate? Remember "what did the President know, and when did he know it?" Read more →

AP Calls BushCo on Its Spin

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Tell me. When you saw this headline in the WaPo today, who did you think wrote the story?

Bush Aides Put Upbeat Spin on Summit

Dan Froomkin, perhaps?

Nope. It was an AP story, tracing, in detail, the Administration’s efforts to get the press to back off its conclusion that Bush’s summit with Vladimir Putin was a disaster.

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE — White House officials waged an extraordinary campaign during an 11-hour Air Force One flight to put a positive spin on the outcome of Sunday’s summit talks between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Four times on the long flight back to Washington from Sochi, Russia, Bush aides trooped back to the press cabin to make the case that the summit had turned out well, particularly on missile defenses.

It was the heaviest lobbying campaign veteran reporters could recall ever occurring on the president’s plane. Press accounts of the summit had been sent to Bush’s plane and administration officials thought they were too negative. Clearly, Bush’s aides were disappointed.

Some of the officials’ statements were on the record. Some of them were off-the-record _ not to be used _ or on "deep background" _ not to be attributed to anyone in the administration. Some were on "background" _ to be attributed to a senior administration official. It was hard keeping track of the conditions.

[snip]

There had been an anticipation in the White House press corps that Bush would invite reporters up to his conference room on the plane to reflect on the trip, as he has done on occasion. Four additional reporters were allowed to fly back with Bush, heightening those expectations. But it did not happen and White House officials did not dispute that Bush was steamed with the coverage.

AP reporter Terence Hunt goes on to explain the Administration’s desperate efforts to get Putin to agree to say Bush Administration efforts at assuaging his concerns about the missile defense plans for Europe have, indeed, assuaged his concerns. He describes Stephen Hadley going to absurd lengths to redefine the definition of what success looks like.

Wow. Imagine such reporting on the machinations aboard Air Force One if it had come from the week of July 7, 2003 (though, to be fair, Matt Cooper tried to write just such an article, though without the necessary cooperation of John Dickerson).

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Networks or Newspapers; Dewey or Lippmann?

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I’m grateful for Eric Alterman’s long meditation on the future of newspapers, if only because he correctly balances a discussion of Walter Lippmann–who has rather bizarrely been adopted as the patron saint of American journalism–with John Dewey–who would in that formulation be the patron saint of blogging.

Lippmann likened the average American—or “outsider,” as he tellingly named him—to a “deaf spectator in the back row” at a sporting event: “He does not know what is happening, why it is happening, what ought to happen,” and “he lives in a world which he cannot see, does not understand and is unable to direct.” In a description that may strike a familiar chord with anyone who watches cable news or listens to talk radio today, Lippmann assumed a public that “is slow to be aroused and quickly diverted . . . and is interested only when events have been melodramatized as a conflict.” A committed élitist, Lippmann did not see why anyone should find these conclusions shocking. Average citizens are hardly expected to master particle physics or post-structuralism. Why should we expect them to understand the politics of Congress, much less that of the Middle East?

Lippmann’s preferred solution was, in essence, to junk democracy entirely. He justified this by arguing that the results were what mattered. Even “if there were a prospect” that people could become sufficiently well-informed to govern themselves wisely, he wrote, “it is extremely doubtful whether many of us would wish to be bothered.” In his first attempt to consider the issue, in “Liberty and the News” (1920), Lippmann suggested addressing the problem by raising the status of journalism to that of more respected professions. Two years later, in “Public Opinion,” he concluded that journalism could never solve the problem merely by “acting upon everybody for thirty minutes in twenty-four hours.” Instead, in one of the oddest formulations of his long career, Lippmann proposed the creation of “intelligence bureaus,” which would be given access to all the information they needed to judge the government’s actions without concerning themselves much with democratic preferences or public debate. Just what, if any, role the public would play in this process Lippmann never explained.

John Dewey termed “Public Opinion” “perhaps the most effective indictment of democracy as currently conceived ever penned,” and he spent much of the next five years countering it. Read more →

Steven Hatfill’s Lawyer Asks Some Questions

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I have very mixed feelings about Steven Hatfill’s suit against those who leaked that he was a person of interest in the anthrax investigation. Unlike his lawyer, I’m not sure the federal officials who spoke to reporters broke the law (indeed, you could argue that some of them were trying to tamp down suspicion about Hatfill). Further, I disagree with Judge Walton that there’s not a scintilla of evidence against Hatfill. Nevertheless, I think Hatfill’s lawyer, Mark Grannis, asks some worthwhile questions.

First, should people like Steven Hatfill — that is, people injured by government leaks — have a remedy at law, and if so, what? It is not clear how victims like Dr. Hatfill can ever be made whole, if leakers and reporters join in a conspiracy of silence. Senators should expect a better explanation on this point before they make it impossible for courts to enforce the federal Privacy Act.

Second, how can the arguments and behavior of journalists in a case such as this be reconciled with the profession’s self-image as the public watchdog, bringing accountability to government? The public officials who leaked investigative information to Ms. Locy broke the law, ruined an innocent man, and violated the public trust. Shouldn’t our watchdog bark or something?

The leakers should be fired, prosecuted, or both — and reporters who care about government accountability should be racingeach other to tell us who these miscreants are. The fact that they shut their mouths tight and run the other way suggests that the image of reporter-as-watchdog does not reflect the current place of journalism in society, whatever may have been true in the past.

Third, if the law prevents courts from ordering reporters to identify anonymous sources, what will prevent government officials from using the private information they keep on us for personal or political score-settling? What will prevent them from simply lying? What will prevent reporters from inventing anonymous sources who don’t actually exist?

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Ana Marie Cox: I Let McCain’s Crankiness Go Because I Think His Ribs Are Delicious

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John Amato links to this fascinating exchange on Howie Kurtz’s show (you have to click through the link for Kurtz–the YouTube is McCain’s daughter talking about how KEWL it is to hang out with the–apparently drunk and–famous journalists). In it, Ana Marie Cox explains how she ignores McCain’s crankiness.

KURTZ: But that suggests that the people who have been traveling with him regularly…

COX: Yes.

KURTZ: … become part of the bubble, part of the team?

COX: Become part of the bubble, and also, I mean, I think what happens is that you — if you’ve been covering him for a long time, there’s a sense that, well, he does that all the time, it’s not worth reporting, because he does — he’s a cranky old man. I mean, to be quite frank. You know, like, and also, I’ve gotten much tougher terseness than Bumiller got just there. And…

COX: But the cameras weren’t rolling. And also, we wrote it off to, like, you know, he hadn’t had his fifth cup of Starbucks today. [emphasis Amato’s]

But Amato doesn’t include the most important context to Ana Marie’s comment. Howie notes that some people have been receiving better treatment from McCain than others of late.

KURTZ: And McCain did hold a barbecue for the press at his ranch in Sedona where some people were in attendance.

COX: Yes, uh, delicious dry rubbed barbecue ribs, actually, baby back ribs.

KURTZ: First hand report!

Goodness! Did Howie catch Ana Marie going easy on McCain because she loves slurping on his his ribs?

A press "critic" worth his salt, of course, might point out that journalists who haven’t been wined and dined by McCain might find the fact that he’s a cranky old man newsworthy–particularly for a guy auditioning to put his hands on the nuclear football. A "critic" might point out that that’s precisely the problem with the press’ little rib-sucking fun with McCain, it makes them less likely to actually report the things we might like to know about these guys.

Not surprisingly, the "critic" in question did none of those things. I suspect Howie’s just hoping to be invited next time around.

Bush Administration Tries to Reverse A1 Cut-Out Declassification

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Remember back in the halcyon days when people still believed Judy Miller was a journalist? The Bush Administration repeatedly used her as a cut-out, leaking highly classified information to her (like intelligence about aluminum tubes, mobile bioweapons labs, and even covert agents’ identities). She would then publish a story on the first page of the NYT. And Administration officials would quote her story, now treating the highly classified information as if it had been declassified. It worked like a charm until Judy’s credibility got so damaged with her Iraq reporting that she couldn’t oblige Cheney by writing an article leaking Valerie Wilson’s identity.

In 1992, the opposite occurred. Someone leaked a draft of Defense Secretary Dick Cheney’s Defense Policy Guidance to the NYT.

The document was provided to The New York Times by an official who believes this post-cold-war strategy debate should be carried out in the public domain.

[snip]

In contrast, the new draft sketches a world in which there is one dominant military power whose leaders "must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role."

The NYT published chunks of the draft, which shocked voters and allies. So poor little Scooter Libby, always the faithful acolyte, had to rewrite the draft to hide Cheney’s aggressive nature, perhaps believing they could persuade presidential year voters that Bush’s aides weren’t a bunch of nut-cases before the election that November.

Now the National Security Archive has published a series of those drafts, including a few memos from Libby, now a felon, to the guy he’d later commit a felony to protect (unfortunately, there’s none of Libby’s chicken scratch notes, so all the skills we’ve developed reading trial exhibits will be wasted).

Pathetically, the Bush Administration has refused to declassify some of the same passages that appeared in the NYT almost sixteen years ago.

Remarkably, these new releases censor a half dozen large sections of text that The New York Times printed on March 8, 1992, as well as a number of phrases that were officially published by the Pentagon in January 1993. "On close inspection none of those deleted passages actually meet the standards for classification because embarrassment is not a legal basis for secrecy," remarked Tom Blanton, director of the Archive." The language that the Times publicized can be seen side-by-side with the relevant portions of the February 18, 1992 draft (see document 3 below) that was the subject of the leak.

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Bullying CBS Didn’t Work Out So Well This Time, Did It Turdblossom?

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I noted that the two most important bits of 60 Minutes’ Siegelman piece that magically didn’t show when they were scheduled in Northern Alabama pertained to Bill Canary’s invocation of "his girls" and Karl Rove’s past work with Dana Jill Simpson on oppo research.

Karl Rove took to Fox today, channeling his best good ol’ boy, to defend his honor [my transcription throughout].

Ah did not ask her or anyone to dig up dirty photographs of the Governor.

[snip]

But she has never worked on any campaign in Alabama I’ve ever work on and I’ve never asked her to do a darn thing.

I found his answer to this question very interesting.

Did CBS News or 60 Minutes ever call you for comment? [inaudible]

Well, they called me five months ago about this and uh, my sense was it was an off the record conversation and I want to honor that but it seemed to me they were looking at the story. When they decided to go with the story CBS I would a thought would have called back and said "we decided to go with the story, would like to be, you know, would you like to have a comment?"and the first I heard about it is when they put out the news release on Thursday.

[snip]

They didn’t bother to call me after five months and the first I heard about it is when I read it on the AP news wire.

There are two things that are interesting about this. First, as a friend of the blog noted in an email, five months ago was maybe a month after Karl took time off to spend time with his son who had gone away to school.

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McCain’s Favors for Iseman Involved Helping Far Right-Wing Families to Sustain their Shell Companies

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When I noted that John McCain’s lobbyist gal had represented the two networks that would, in 2004, show the anti-Kerry propaganda piece, Stolen Honor, I admitted I didn’t know precisely whether or how John McCain had helped the second of these two networks, Sinclair Broadcasting’s shell company, Glencairn Broadcasting. Today, the NYT makes it very clear that McCain used the same kind of inappropriate, pushy tactics for Sinclair as he had with Paxson.

In late 1998, Senator John McCain sent an unusually blunt letter to the head of the Federal Communications Commission, warning that he would try to overhaul the agency if it closed a broadcast ownership loophole.

The letter, and two later ones signed by Mr. McCain, then chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, urged the commission to abandon plans to close a loophole vitally important to Glencairn Ltd., a client of Vicki Iseman, a lobbyist. The provision enabled one of the nation’s largest broadcasting companies, Sinclair, to use a marketing agreement with Glencairn, a far smaller broadcaster, to get around a restriction barring single ownership of two television stations in the same city.

I gotta say, "unusually blunt," coming from Mr. Straight Talk for Lobbyists Express is saying something. The article goes on to note that McCain was partnering with Conrad Burns on this matter–some real gutter diving for a guy who claims to be above corruption.

The NYT article suggests more about the relationship between Iseman and McCain.

For its part, Glencairn appeared to have been getting little support in Congress until it retained Ms. Iseman in 1998.

Edwin Edwards, who was the president of the company at the time, said in a recent interview that after retaining Ms. Iseman, he was able to get heard by Mr. McCain.

“We were pounding the pavement in Washington,” Mr. Edwards said. “We recruited help from as many people as we could. We knocked on every door just trying to get support.”

Labaton suggests–but doesn’t say it–that companies with business interests before McCain could hire Iseman as the best way to get entre to him. Buy Vicki Iseman and you get McCain. No wonder she was bragging about her access to him. Read more →

Did Iseman and McCain Enable Conrad Black to Commit Fraud with CanWest?

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On July 31, 2000, Alcalde & Fay–and their lobbyist Vicki Iseman–terminated their lobbying activities for CanWest, a big Canadian media company. That day, CanWest had achieved the goal Alcalde & Fay had been assisting with: the acquisition of much of Conrad Black’s media empire in Canada.

Iseman and her colleagues had been lobbying the FCC, the House of Representatives, and the Senate (including John McCain, with whom McCain’s advisors believed Iseman had an inappropriate relationship at the time) to win approval for the foreign purchase of American broadcast companies–that is, Conrad Black’s properties, which were headquartered in Chicago.

Iseman’s role in the deal is significant for a couple of reasons. First, the deal greatly contributed to the consolidation of media in Canada:

In the largest media deal in Canadian history, CanWest Global Communications, a company that started 20 years ago with a North Dakota television station, is to pay $2.36 billion for dominant dailies in 8 of Canada’s 10 provinces. Mr. Black is to gain a seat on the CanWest board and is to become the second-largest shareholder, after the family of the company founder, Israel H. Asper.

”The borders are gone, we have to grow,” Mr. Asper, Global’s chairman, told a news conference in Toronto today, comparing his acquisition to Tribune Media’s recent purchase of The Los Angeles Times. ”We don’t intend to be one of the corpses lying beside the information highway.”

Mr. Black said in a statement that his company, Hollinger International, ”believes this intimate association with a highly successful telecaster built by an entrepreneurial spirit compatible with Hollinger is the best possible assurance of the strength of the newspaper franchises.”

Like Conrad Black before them, the family running CanWest exerts a great deal of editorial control–going so far as to distribute corporate editorials to be run in all their properties.

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