The New York Times and the NSC: Good Reporting by David Sanger or "the Pravda Tendency" of the Times?
How did the New York Times scoop the world on October 6 with its front-page story that the White House was putting national security adviser Condoleezza Rice in charge of Iraqi occupation and effectively demoting Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld?
"Condi Rice apparently backgrounded the New York Times," a miffed Rumsfeld told European reporters.
Miffed reporters from other US papers were more direct. They saw the story as confirmation of what they believe is a special arrangement: Times White House reporter David Sanger has a direct line to Rice. She gives him the lead on stories; the Times then carries her spin. Reporters who accompanied President Bush and Rice on their Far East trip said the Sanger/Rice relationship was the talk of Bangkok.
The truth is not so clear. But Sanger's coverage does reveal something about the White House, about deliberate leaks, and about the New York Times.
"This White House has decided what messages will go to which audiences and which media will carry it," says a White House correspondent for a major daily. "It would be foolish not to think the New York Times is not part of that media strategy. It is the daily bible for the foreign-policy establishment and the shortest path to that readership."
There's much to support the idea that Rice and her National Security Council staff feed Sanger and the Times. Sanger's stories about Rice have landed him on the front page more than a dozen times in the last two years.
Sanger broke the story in September 2002 that Bush's new national security strategy would shift the military toward preemptive action rather than reacting to threats. It foretold the attack on Iraq, and it also painted Condoleezza Rice in glowing terms as the architect of the plan.
There's also plenty of reason to see Sanger's scoops as the product of hard work and solid reporting.
The complaints about Sanger come "straight out of the department of sour grapes," says James Harding, bureau chief of the Financial Times. But from the perspective of a British correspondent in Washington, Harding does wonder if the relationship between the Times and the NSC plays to "the Pravda tendency of the Times."
Does David Sanger have special access to Condi Rice, and in return does he give her favorable treatment?
"No," says Sanger. "We've hardly taken their position and run with it."
Sanger, 43, joined the Times in 1982 as a copy boy and news clerk. His role in the team coverage of the space shuttle Challenger disaster earned him a piece of a Pulitzer Prize. The Times sent him to Japan in the late 1980s. He came here to work a foreign-policy and economics beat. He's been writing about the White House since the last year of the Clinton administration.
"Does the NSC talk to us?" Sanger asks. "Sure, we are the New York Times." But Sanger says the NSC clearly talks to other newspapers.
The NSC was talking to Sanger when Sandy Berger was adviser, and the Bush team didn't trust him at first. But Rice and the staff found Sanger to be a thoughtful reporter who cared about the issues, according to a member of the NSC staff.
"Our view was David's a good reporter, the Times is the newspaper of record, let's work with this guy," says the NSC official.
Says another senior administration official: "Some reporters are carping because their own publications did not spend money on foreign-policy coverage that the Times did over the past 20 years. Why are they surprised the Times has such comprehensive coverage?"
Sanger says his story on the national security strategy, which won him an award from the White House Correspondents' Association, was the product of watching the policy evolve. "It was no secret," he says. "The document was very long in brewing. Bush outlined the strategy in a speech. We knew it was going to be a big one."
So Sanger knew what to ask for, and the NSC knew whom to leak it to.
James Harding of the Financial Times sees the logic of the NSC's media strategy and also that both the New York Times and David Sanger do plenty of punchy and critical reporting.
But he sees a basic trade-off.
"The NSC can get across its point of view," he says, "but does it create hostility among other reporters because it didn't spread its goodies around?"
"The flip side," says Harding, "is what it means for the New York Times. What's the cost of getting the drop on big stories? It can be seen less as an arm of the Fourth Estate that analyzes and challenges the White House and more as a subsidiary of the office of global communications."
Sanger says his coverage of North Korea's nuclear-weapons development and his stories with James Risen about the missing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq show the Times's more critical side.
"I think you'll see in our coverage both an explanation of their position and questions we and others raise about the nature of this administration's policies," Sanger says.
Meanwhile, Sanger's "scoop" about Rice taking over from Rumsfeld in Iraq may not have been one.
Says a senior administration official: "Sanger's story was wrong. DOD is still in control."
Sanger says he stands by every word in his story.
-HARRY JAFFE