I think the Times owes a response to James Bamford's reporting on Judith Miller in Rolling Stone <http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/8798997?pageid=rs.Home&pageregion=single7&rnd=1132253345109&has-player=false>. Miller, encouraged by the Rendon PR firm (which had largely created Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress) boosted the claims of Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri" about Iraq's WMDs, even though the CIA had determined him to be a liar. The White House cited Miller's articles in the run-up to war.
Searching on al-Haideri's name at the NYT website, I see this from Daniel Okrent:
<http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C06E7DC1E3EF933A05756C0A9629C8B63&pagewanted=all>
>If a defector like Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri is hailed by
>intelligence officials for providing ''some of the most valuable
>information'' about chemical and biological laboratories in Iraq
>(''Defectors Bolster U.S. Case Against Iraq, Officials Say,'' by
>Judith Miller, Jan. 24, 2003), unfolding events should have
>compelled the paper to re-examine those assertions, and hold the
>officials publicly responsible if they did not pan out.
>
>In that same story anonymous officials expressed fears that
>Haideri's relatives in Iraq ''were executed as a message to
>potential defectors.''
>
>Were they? Did anyone go back to ask? Did anything Haideri say have
>genuine value? Stories, like plants, die if they are not tended. So
>do the reputations of newspapers. Coddling sources -- There is
>nothing more toxic to responsible journalism than an anonymous
>source. There is often nothing more necessary, too; crucial stories
>might never see print if a name had to be attached to every piece of
>information. But a newspaper has an obligation to convince readers
>why it believes the sources it does not identify are telling the
>truth. That automatic editor defense, ''We're not confirming what he
>says, we're just reporting it,'' may apply to the statements of
>people speaking on the record. For anonymous sources, it's worse
>than no defense. It's a license granted to liars.
And this from the Editors <http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F20E15FC3E5A0C758EDDAC0894DC404482>
>On Dec. 20, 2001, another front-page article began, ''An Iraqi
>defector who described himself as a civil engineer said he
>personally worked on renovations of secret facilities for
>biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in underground wells,
>private villas and under the Saddam Hussein Hospital in Baghdad as
>recently as a year ago.'' Knight Ridder Newspapers reported last
>week that American officials took that defector -- his name is Adnan
>Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri -- to Iraq earlier this year to point out the
>sites where he claimed to have worked, and that the officials failed
>to find evidence of their use for weapons programs. It is still
>possible that chemical or biological weapons will be unearthed in
>Iraq, but in this case it looks as if we, along with the
>administration, were taken in. And until now we have not reported
>that to our readers.
The truth, as Bamford reports, is even worse than that, and the Times should come clean with its readers, most of whom probably don't pick up Rolling Stone. --
Doug Henwood Left Business Observer 38 Greene St - 4th fl. New York NY 10013-2505 USA <dhenwood at panix.com> <http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com>
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