Posted on 11/03/2003 11:19:48 PM PST by JohnHuang2
MEDIA MATTERS
David Kay rebukes
Washington Post
WMD-search chief says reporter misidentified source in weapons hunt
Posted: November 4, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Kenneth R. Timmerman
© 2003 Insight/News World Communications Inc.The head of the CIA's Iraq Study Group that is investigating Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction programs issued a stinging rebuke of the Washington Post on Saturday. David Kay alleged that Post reporter Barton Gellman knowingly misrepresented information he had gathered in Iraq about the hunt for Saddam's WMDs and had misidentified a key source as well as the information Kay had provided Gellman in an interview.
Gellman's front-page story, which ran Oct. 26, was titled "Search in Iraq Fails to Find Nuclear Threat". Citing unnamed "investigators" as his source, Gellman stated breathlessly that "it is now clear [Saddam] had no active program to build a [nuclear] weapon, produce its key materials or obtain the technology he needed for either."
Gellman alleged that the Iraq Survey Group headed by Kay was keeping secret its most important internal judgments because they disproved the CIA's key prewar contentions and would embarrass the Bush administration. According to Gellman, Kay's men secretly concluded "that Iraq's nuclear-weapons scientists did no significant arms-related work after 1991, that facilities with suspicious new construction proved benign and that equipment of potential use to a nuclear program remained under seal or in civilian industrial use."
To reinforce the seriousness of his charges, Gellman quoted Australian Brig. Gen. Stephen D. Meekin as saying that the aluminum tubes found in Iraq that the CIA had claimed could have been used for uranium enrichment centrifuges were "innocuous." Gellman called that finding "pivotal, because the Bush administration built its case on the proposition that Iraq aimed to use those tubes as centrifuge rotors to enrich uranium for the core of a nuclear weapon."
Gellman used Meekin to debunk Bush administration claims in several different areas, claiming that the Australian commanded "the Joint Captured Enemy Materiel Exploitation Center, the largest of a half-dozen units that report to Kay." The only problem, as Kay wrote to the Post in a comment editors relegated to the "Free for All" section on Saturday, was that none of it was true.
Meekin, Kay wrote, "does not report, nor has he ever reported, to me in any individual capacity or as commander of the exploitation center." Furthermore, Meekin was not involved in the Iraq Study Group's investigation of Saddam's WMDs. Instead, his outfit was responsible for making a repertory of Saddam's conventional weapons programs. Indeed, as Meekin wrote in a separate letter that the Post printed side-by-side to Kay's, he had "stressed on a number of occasions" in his interview with Gellman that he did not report to Kay and that his outfit looked only at conventional weapons. "I did not provide assessments or views on Iraq's nuclear program or the status of investigations being conducted by the Iraqi Study Group," Meekin wrote.
Insight asked Washington Post editorial-page editor Fred Hiatt why the Post ran the Kay and Meekin letters in the weekend "Free for All" section, instead of on the more prominent op-ed page during the week.
"The Free for All page is designed primarily to give space to letters and short pieces that take the Post to task, whereas letters to the editor on the daily letters page may present substantive arguments on issues of the day without representing a complaint about coverage," Hiatt replied. "I do not regard any of these pages as more or less prominent."
Washington Post ombudsman Michael Getler, who worked for the Post as a reporter and editor for 26 years before taking up his current post in November 2000, told Insight he was "looking into" the Gellman/Kay story but would not comment on whether the Post stood by Gellman's reporting. "Anything I do will be in my column this Sunday," he said. So far, he added, he hasn't interviewed Gellman in relation to Kay's complaints of misreporting and misrepresentation. The ombudsman's column is where the Washington Post comments on reports that its news coverage is biased or has contained serious inaccuracies.
Off The Mark
David Kay (search), the chief weapons inspector in Iraq, has sent a letter to The Washington Post calling last week's story headlined "Search in Iraq Fails to Find Nuclear Threat" -- "wildly off the mark." Kay says much of The Post's analysis comes from an Australian army commander who, The Post says to the contrary, is not involved in Kay's hunt for weapons of mass destruction nor does he have any expertise in nuclear weapons.
The Post published Kay's letter, and alongside it is one from that Australian General who says he did not give The Post -- "views on Iraq's nuclear program or the status of investigations" conducted by Kay.
Sop, both the principles in this story, Meekin and Kay, have stated that Gellman's article in the Post was erroneous. Let's see if the Post corrects the mistake soon.
[www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17707-2003Oct25.html]
And David Kay's letter:
[www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49199-2003Oct31.html]
He has already received his just do, from his fellow travelers. A rung up on the journalism ladder, slaps on the back for a job well done, and free drinks at their favorite watering hole. I hope he suffered a terrible hangover.!!
http://www.insightmag.com/news/547471.html
Cross reference to the thread on Kay's letter:
| The Hunt for Iraq's Weapons (David Kay corrects Post Writers for misrepresenting) ^ |
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| Posted by Pikamax On 11/01/2003 11:20 PM CST with 17 comments WashingtonPost ^ | 11/01/03 | David kay washingtonpost.com The Hunt for Iraq's Weapons Saturday, November 1, 2003; Page A21 The Oct. 26 front-page article "Search in Iraq Fails to Find Nuclear Threat" is wildly off the mark. Your reporter, Barton Gellman, bases much of his analysis on what he says was told to him by an Australian brigadier, Stephen D. Meekin. Gellman describes Meekin as someone "who commands the Joint Captured Materiel Exploitation Center, the largest of a half-dozen units that report to [David] Kay." Meekin does not report, nor has he ever reported, to me in any individual capacity or as commander of the exploitation center |
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That would be MORE corrections. (Maybe they should replace Gellman with Jayson Blair?)
| Washington Post runs a "correction" to their David Kay Story. ^ |
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| Posted by Pikamax On 11/03/2003 10:51 AM CST with 2 comments WashingtonPost ^ | 10/25/03 | Barton Gellman _____Correction_____ An Oct. 26 article incorrectly described the size of the force searching for evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program. Of those hunting forbidden weapons in Iraq, 1 percent, not one-tenth of 1 percent, are devoted to the search for nuclear arms. The story also erred in describing the qualifications of William Domke, an employee of an Energy Department laboratory. He is an authority on Iraq's former centrifuge enrichment program, but he is not a physicist. |
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HA!!
Why you dreamer, you. {g}
Hey bert!!
Another sense of humor on a par with yours. :o)
In this day & age of form over substance Sultan, it's the *accusation* that matters; &, what'll *stick*.
So in that sense I guess it's, "Mission Accomplished."
As for this WP *ombudsman*?
Personally I'd recoomend anyone with a lust for life stay the hell away from a guy like that outa a very real fear of errant lightening strikes or -- what could only be described as -- a clear case of spontaneous combustion.
That the Compost heap would do this doesn't surprise me one bit, I hate to have to say.
Been *tracking* the Liberal-Socialist sycophant quislings scurring around the nation's mediot nests too long to be moved a'tall by what's tantamount to a "Rather" ordinary & very pedestrian Liberal-Socialist attempt at distorting the truth.
The WP is infected with the same disease as the NYSlimes, SeeBS et al.
There's really only one way to deal with these lying, shameless outfits & that's the way G.Gordon Liddy does.
With a buzzer for censoring each & everytime an offending name must be uttered.
I'm just grateful this had nothing to do with FR's favorite son.
...MeeknMing! :o)
hehehe ! Howdy, friend !Speakin' of SeeBS ...
That is from Freeper 'Autoresponder'.
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