Big News Orgs Punt On Bush's Iran Intel Lie; CNN's Ed Henry Gets It Right
December 6, 2007 -- 10:52 AM EST // //
One thing that always mystifies this blog: When the President is caught in a lie or a contradiction on something as urgent as war, why are the big news orgs so reluctant to do stand alone stories on it, with this key info right in their headlines and ledes?
Case in point: Today's coverage of White House flack Dana Perino's surprising statement last night. In it, Perino left little doubt that Bush had dissembled the day before about when he learned that new intelligence said the Iran nuke threat might be bogus. Perino said that Bush was told in August that Iran's nuke program "may be suspended." Bush had claimed he hadn't been given any new info about this until "last week."
Today, neither The New YorkTimes nor The Washington Post have stand-alone stories on this. By contrast, CNN's Ed Henry quite properly did put this info right in the headline and lede:
Bush told in August that Iran nuke program 'may be suspended'The Washington Post, by contrast, buried this info in its 11th paragraph, and used so many euphemisms that no reader could possibly have any clue as to what really happened:WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush was told in August that Iran's nuclear weapons program "may be suspended," the White House said Wednesday, which seemingly contradicts the account of the meeting given by Bush Tuesday.
The White House also sought to clarify Bush's ambiguous remarks Tuesday about how much he learned when Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, first told him in August of new information that might alter the U.S. assessment of Iran's nuclear activities that was being prepared for delivery to Congress.In WaPo's telling, the White House was "clarifying" Bush's "ambiguous" statement from the day before -- even though Bush's declaration that he hadn't been given key info until last week contained no ambiguity whatsoever.Press secretary Dana Perino said in a statement that McConnell told Bush "that if the new information turns out to be true, what we thought we knew for sure is right. Iran does in fact have a covert nuclear weapons program, but it may be suspended."
Meanwhile, The New York Times put this in the 12th graf of its piece today, saying that the White House had "revised" its account -- another euphemism. While The Times piece was a laudable news-break on another aspect of all this, making it understandable that it had the lede it did, there's no reason not to do a separate stand-alone piece on the Bush fib revelations, or at least to highlight them better.
Look, here's the deal. The biggest story of the Bush Presidency by far was that he misled the nation into an unnecessary and disastrous war. Now Bush is again talking war, and he apparently hyped the Iran threat this fall in the full knowledge that our intel might have been telling us that his own threat talk was bogus. This is important. Bag the tentativeness, the euphemisms, and the instinct to bury this sort of uncomfortable info, please.
After all, these revelations present a host of new questions. If Bush had been told that the Iran threat just might be inoperative, why did the White House keep escalating the rhetoric? The White House was saying last month that this new NIE info wouldn't be publicly released. Why the reversal? Was the White House opposed to its release, with the intention to keep hyping the threat, as has been alleged?
Bottom line: There are lots of threads for reporters to pull on here. Might be a good idea to start pulling on them, you know, right now, so we don't make the same catastrophic mistake as we did last time around and let this stuff go unexamined until it's too late.
Comments section temporarily disabled. To reach the homepage of this blog, click here.