Observers Note Media Suppression of Osama-Saddam Connections

Most of the media are suppressing the revelation, in a Weekly Standard story by Stephen Hayes released over the weekend, of a lengthy list compiled by the Defense Department of information gathered by various intelligence agencies about 13 years of connections between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. ABC, CBS and NBC have yet to mention it while CNN and the New York Times have only cited it briefly in opinion columns or segments, not news stories, and though the Washington Post has reported on it, the paper has devoted nine times more words to a probe of the leak of the memo than to the powerful contents of it.

ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, who has jumped on anti-Bush administration leaks from the Senate Intelligence Committee, kept the memo off Sunday’s This Week and on Imus in the Morning on MSNBC a few days later he was more upset by the leak than by the content.

FNC’s Brit Hume, Wednesday night in the “Grapevine” segment on his Special Report with Brit Hume, highlighted the lack of media interest in the intelligence compilation which, if true, would undermine a major premise pushed by much of the media:
“Over the weekend the Weekly Standard published a quote 'top secret’ U.S. government memo detailing more than a decade of intelligence indicating an operating relationship between al-Qaeda and Iraq. The Pentagon has since confirmed the memo’s authenticity, but the memo has been almost entirely overlooked by major media. The nation’s leading news magazines have completely ignored it, USA Today has completely ignored it, the New York Times has yet to mention it on its news pages, though a column today did mention it, and the Washington Post got around to mentioning first on Sunday, dismissing it in the sixth paragraph of a much broader story.”

Hume was picking up on a Tuesday “Press Box” posting on Slate.com by Jack Shafer, “Case Open: Why is the press avoiding the Weekly Standard's intelligence scoop?”

Shafer described how the Hayes piece “quotes extensively from a classified Oct. 27, 2003, 16-page memo written by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith at the request of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The committee, which is investigating the administration's prewar intelligence claims, asked Feith to annotate his July 10 testimony, and his now-leaked memo indexes in 50 numbered points what the various alphabet intelligence agencies (CIA, FBI, DIA, NSA) had collected about a Saddam-Osama connection.”

After recounting how only Rupert Murdoch outlets have pursued the story broken in the magazine he owns, such as the New York Post and FNC, Shafer suggested that “one possible explanation” for why most of the media have suppressed the disclosure “is that the mainstream press is too invested in its consensus finding that Saddam and Osama never teamed up and its almost theological view that Saddam and Osama couldn't possibly have ever hooked up because of secular/sacred differences. Holders of such rigid views tend to reject any new information that may disturb their cognitive equilibrium.”

Shafer noted how a Tuesday Washington Post story by Walter Pincus, on an investigation being launched into the leak of the memo quoted by Hayes, featured “one anonymous 'former senior intelligence officer’” whom Pincus quoted as sniffing “that the memo is not an intelligence product but 'data points...among the millions of holdings of the intelligence agencies, many of which are simply not thought likely to be true.’"

Shafer guffawed: “Help me! Many a reporter has hitched a ride onto Page One with the leak of intelligence much rawer than the stuff in Feith's memo. You can bet the farm that if a mainstream publication had gotten the Feith memo first, it would have used it immediately -- perhaps as a hook to re-examine the ongoing war between the Pentagon and CIA about how to interpret intelligence. Likewise, you'd be wise to bet your wife's farm that had a similar memo arguing no Saddam-Osama connection been leaked to the press, it would have generated 100 times the news interest as the Hayes story.”

Shafer scolded the press, though he noted that he remains unconvinced: “I write this not as a believer in the Saddam-Osama love child or as a non-believer. My mind remains open to argument and to data both raw and refined. Hayes' piece piques my curiosity, and it should pique yours. If it's true that Saddam and Osama's people danced together -- if just for an evening or two -- that undermines the liberal critique that Bush rashly folded Iraq into his 'war on terror.’ And if it's true, isn't that a story? Or, conversely, if Feith's shards of information direct us to the conclusion that his people stacked the intel to justify a bogus war, isn't that a story, too? Where is the snooping, prying, nosy press that I've heard so much about?”

The November 17 CyberAlert reported how on Fox News Sunday the day before, Fred Barnes had challenged his journalistic colleagues to pick up the Hayes exclusive and observed: “I love the press's in particular selective use of intelligence, which they accuse the Bush administration of, the same people who will raise doubts about this intelligence are praising the CIA assessment of what's going on in Iraq right now.”

     Checking with the MRC staff, I learned that no one has seen a syllable on ABC, CBS or NBC about the Hayes story or DOD memo, though on Wednesday’s Imus in the Morning on MSNBC, Don Imus asked ABC’s George Stephanopoulos about it: “What do you know about this leaked memo from the Defense Department linking Osama bin Laden to Saddam Hussein?"
     Stephanopoulos admitted he didn’t know much: "You know, not a whole lot. You're talking about the one that was printed in the Weekly Standard."
     Imus: "Yeah."
     Stephanopoulos showed a sudden concern for a leak and focused on it and not the content: "And it had this appendix which showed various instances where Saddam Hussein may have been working with al-Qaeda. All I can tell you is what our military analyst, Tony Cordesman at ABC -- he's also at Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies -- said. He first of all said it was outrageous that it was leaked. I mean, we can complain about leaks all day long on both the Republican and Democratic side, but what he said was that, what was especially outrageous about it is that this, all these instances that were detailed are very, very raw intelligence that has been uncorroborated, so that it doesn't, it basically doesn't prove anything, other than some people may have tried to establish contacts. He says it doesn't advance it beyond what we've known before and, as I said, I trust him -- he's credible, he's non-partisan and he's been right more often than not."

Maybe ABC could let its viewers know about what it considers well-known already.

On CNN, MRC analyst Ken Shepherd has seen only one brief mention: Tucker Carlson noted the story during Monday’s “Political Alert” on Crossfire.

Clay Waters, Editor of the MRC’s TimesWatch project (www.timeswatch.org ) reported no news story through Wednesday and only this reference in a Wednesday column by Bill Safire: "(The secret memo detailing 50 instances has gone relatively uncovered by major media because it surfaced in the current Weekly Standard, but is the subject of an automatic leak investigation -- yet another time-wasting mistake.)"
[Web Update: Five days after the Weekly Standard story broke, the New York Times, on Thursday, November 20, ran a story inside (page A14 of Washington edition, page A18 of New York edition) discounting the import of the Feith memo. For the story by Douglas Jejl, headlined "More Proof of Iraq-Qaeda Link, or Not?": www.nytimes.com]

FNC, the MRC’s Amanda Monson noticed, has talked about it on Fox and Friends and run stories on Fox Report and Special Report with Brit Hume, in addition to discussion on prime time shows such as Hannity & Colmes and hourly news update mentions on Saturday when the Hayes story was first released.

Nighttime MSNBC shows, such as Scarborough Country and Buchanan & Press, which had Hayes on as a guest on Monday night, have also given air time to his scoop.

In a broader story headlined, “CIA Finds No Evidence Hussein Sought to Arm Terrorists,” the Washington Post’s Walter Pincus on Sunday gave 78 words to the DOD memo/Hayes story: “Yesterday, allegations of new evidence of connections between Iraq and al Qaeda contained in a classified annex attached to Feith's Oct. 27 letter to leaders of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence were published in the Weekly Standard. Feith had been asked to support his July 10 closed-door testimony about such connections. The classified annex summarized raw intelligence reports but did not analyze them or address their accuracy, according to a senior administration official familiar with the matter.” See: www.washingtonpost.com

But on Tuesday, November 18, the Post devoted 729 words to a story by Pincus headlined: “CIA Seeks Probe of Iraq-Al Qaeda Memo Leak.” See: www.washingtonpost.com

     For an excerpt of Hayes’ article, see the November 17 CyberAlert: www.mediaresearch.org

     For the complete Hayes piece as published in the November 24 Weekly Standard magazine: weeklystandard.com

     On Wednesday, the Weekly Standard posted an update from Hayes, “The Saddam-Osama Memo (cont.): A close examination of the Defense Department's latest statement,” in which Hayes examined the DOD’s efforts to discount the relevance of the memo. See: weeklystandard.com

Meanwhile that idiot, Petah Jennings, spends way more time on the silly Rush Limbaugh "money laundering" story than he does on this one of incredible importance. Actually Petah has spent NO time on this story. To do so would undermine his and his fellow liberals whole thesis about there being NO CONNECTION between Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

The leak is the real story, right? The Pentagon Papers? Well, the big story is that Ellsberg leaked it--they should have put him in jail. Same for whoever leaked the Iran/Contra story. Lock him up. And let's find Deep Throat so we can put him behind bars.

Ditto!

Man, I am really beginning to HATE the CNNABCCBSNBC's of the world. They are twisting the importance of this more than anything I have ever witnessed. This is evil and wrong, what they're doing.

One of them needs to swallow their pride and report what the memo MEANS, and pronto!

Media suppression? Surely you jest! Why, look at all the coverage the Dem collusion memos to filibuster judges and the intelligence committee memo got, which are two HUGE stories. Did you blink and miss it? But we all know about the Scott Peterson 'hair', don't we?

CNN actually had Tancredo on Lou Dobbs today. I don't get home in time to watch it, so I don't know what he said, but I was shocked they had him on! The other networks suck at covering any anti-Dem news, but at least they're not 24/7 tabloid cr@p like Fox is starting to be.

...In other news this evening, the Pentagon reports the capture of alleged terrorist Osama bin Laden. And to recap our top story, the Gallup organization is publicizing a deepening slide in the approval of the U.S. public over the war in terrorism. Ted Koppel will explore this phenomenon is greater detail this evening, including what it could mean for Bush's re-election chances, tonight on Nightline. Don't miss it.

The Pentagon has since confirmed the memo’s authenticity, but the memo has been almost entirely overlooked by major media. The nation’s leading news magazines have completely ignored it, USA Today has completely ignored it, the New York Times has yet to mention it on its news pages, though a column today did mention it, and the Washington Post got around to mentioning first on Sunday, dismissing it in the sixth paragraph of a much broader story.”

But, I thought this memo had been impeached?

Just starting to understand that reality?

I dont mean to slam you, but it has been rather blatantly obvious for several decades that the "mainstream media" ceased to be what they still attempt to portray themselves as, long ago.

Boomers run the media industry now.

An entire generation of people who actually believed the marketing department is much more important than the production and quality controll departments in a corporation.

The same people who gambled, and lost, gazillions of dollars by investing their retirement incomes in companies who had no business plan, no tangible products, no other- than-investor revenue, no accounts recievable departments, but were high tech and had a .com in their names, so must be a good buy!

Holders of such rigid views tend to reject any new information that may disturb their cognitive equilibrium.”

Just like a Kalman filter with the State Disturbance Covarianceset to too low a value, in their case the value would arbitrarily close to zero. In which case the filter soon "makes up it's mind" what the "state" is and ignores the inputs". But at least the Kalman filter doesn't have an agenda. (Don't worry if you don't understand, not many would, but the real geeks should appreciate it ;)

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.