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They love not to know
April 17, 2006 03:59 AM
The NYT officially enters the farce era of its narrative arc with yesterday's editorial endorsement of, well, ignorance.
Mr. Bush did not declassify the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq — in any accepted sense of that word — when he authorized I. Lewis Libby Jr., through Vice President Dick Cheney, to talk about it with reporters. He permitted a leak of cherry-picked portions of the report. The declassification came later....Obviously, we do not object to government officials talking to reporters about important matters that their bosses do not want discussed. It would be impossible to cover any administration, especially one so secretive as this, unless that happened. (Judith Miller, who then worked for The Times, was one of the reporters Mr. Libby chose for this leak, although she never wrote about it.) But the version of the facts that Mr. Libby was authorized to divulge was so distorted that it seems more like disinformation than any sincere attempt to inform the public. [Emphases mine]
Oh dear. So the Times would prefer no information at all to "cherry-picked" information that is not declassified in an "accepted sense of that word." Even when the information would otherwise be kept secret, or could shed new light on a president's decision to go to war. The Times will just curse the darkness, thank you very much.
Let's put aside the question of accuracy. (The information, cherry-picked or otherwise, was in fact an accurate reflection of the intelligence community's consensus on Iraq at the time. The NIE just happens to have been wrong.) Does the Times really believe there are disinterested sources in the political world who, out of the goodness of their hearts (presumably), set aside time to leak complete, unbiased and otherwise secret information to reporters? Perhaps the editorialists consult an oracle. Or manatees! (link to video)
The unhappy reality is that there are sources who basically give you the full picture... and then there is the source who doesn't reveal that he was recommended for an intelligence mission by his wife, who works at the CIA in the very area he was sent to investigate. He also doesn't tell you that he serves as an unpaid adviser to one of the incumbent president's potential challengers in the next election, and uses your credulity to press his agenda. And when he is later revealed to have all the credibility of a carnival barker, your decision to believe him makes you look foolish. Yes, that's the type of source that can really burn you. At least reporters knew where Libby was coming from....
American Politics | Iraq | Journalism | News Media
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