Network Viewers Still in the Dark on "Smoking Gun Memo" (FAIR Alert!)

FAIR.org ^ | 5-20-05 | FAIR

[Houmatt]

Action Alert (5/20/05)

Following FAIR's call for more mainstream coverage of the "smoking gun memo"—the secret British document containing new evidence that the Bush administration manipulated intelligence to justify its plan to invade Iraq—a steady trickle of news reports have appeared. But that coverage has been downplayed in general and is still completely absent from the nightly news.

The Los Angeles Times published a page 3 story on the memo on May 12, and the Washington Post ran a page 18 story the following day. More than two weeks after the story broke in the Sunday Times of London (5/1/05), it finally made the front page of a major U.S. newspaper, the Chicago Tribune (5/17/05).

After referring to the memo (5/2/05) in a story on the British electoral campaign, the New York Times failed to report on the document's implications about the Bush administration until today (5/20/05); the one-column story didn't mention the manipulation of intelligence until the eighth paragraph. (Times columnist Paul Krugman also discussed the memo on the paper's opinion page on May 16.)

The Washington Post's ombudsman, Michael Getler, who the previous week (5/8/05) had mentioned reader complaints about the Post's lack of memo coverage without evaluating their substance, revisited the issue with a much more critical eye in his most recent column (5/15/05). (The ombud gave back-handed credit to FAIR and the group Media Matters for America—both "self-described media watchdog organizations"—for prompting him to delve into the story.) Getler wrote that Post editors initially told him they didn't pursue the story because they were "tied up with election coverage"—this despite the fact that the leaked memo became a major election story in Britain and likely contributed to Tony Blair's weak returns. When he questioned them again after the email campaign, Getler wrote, "editors agreed that this story should be covered and said they were going to go back and do that"; the Post's May 13 story followed.

Getler called investigation of the memo's conclusions "journalistically mandatory" and suggested that the Post story should have been placed on the front page.

While the memo has begun to get wider coverage in print, broadcasters have maintained a near silence on the issue. The story has turned up in a few short CNN segments (Crossfire, 5/13/05; Live Sunday, 5/15/05; Wolf Blitzer Reports, 5/16/05), but the only mention of the memo FAIR found on the major broadcast networks came on ABC's Sunday morning show This Week (5/15/05), in which host George Stephanopoulos questioned Sen. John McCain about its contents. When McCain declared that he didn't "agree with it" and defended the Bush administration's decision to go to war, Stephanopoulos didn't question him further. A look at the nightly news reveals not a single story aired about the memo and its implications.

When finally questioned by CNN (5/16/05), White House press secretary Scott McClellan claimed he hadn't seen the memo, but that "the reports" about it were "flat-out wrong." British government officials, however, did not dispute the contents of the memo—which can be read in full online at http://downingstreetmemo.com/ —and a former senior American official called it "an absolutely accurate description of what transpired" (Knight Ridder, 5/6/05).

The Chicago Tribune (5/17/05) named several factors that had caused a "less than robust discussion" of the British memo: Aside from the White House's denials, and the media's slow reaction, the paper asserted that "the public generally seems indifferent to the issue or unwilling to rehash the bitter prewar debate over the reasons for the war." Of course, it's hard to judge the public's interest in a story the media have largely shielded them from.

ACTION: Please contact the nightly news programs and ask them to investigate and report on the new evidence that the Bush administration manipulated intelligence to support its plan to invade Iraq.

[Houmatt]

Question: What do we know about this memo?

[Doctor Raoul]

I miss the good old days, back when if Lucy Rameriz embarassed CBS News bigtime, Mike Wallace would have kicked down her door by now.

This is Rathergate Part II.

FAIR isn't FAIR, it's propoganda. Not even well thought out propoganda, but "bumper sticker" propoganda.

[TheGeezer]

I think this is the memo related to Tony Blair's government - and I am SO fuzzy on this - allegedly produced by a member of his government who later committed suicide - it was later discredited as revealing not that intelligence was manipulated, but that it was simply badly done. Or something like that.

Disregarded then as booshwah, finally, IMHO it was resurrected two days before the election in Great Britain by the London Times in an election-influence effort. That's why it has not caught fire and resulted in the resignation of George Bush, the elevation of John Kerry to the presidency by popular acclamation contrary to the constitution, and mass execution of all conservative Americans by liberofascists and radical Islamists.

[processing please hold]

Do you really believe that if this were actually true, the media would let it go. Hell, we had rathergate, the newsweak article and any other piece of lying crap they can throw at Bush to try and bring him down. They have to lie to try and hurt him, if they really had something, it would be splashed on every tv channel and newspaper coast to coast, 24/7.

[facedown]

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...............

[Nick Danger]

What do we know about this memo?

The memo documents a discussion within Blair's cabinet concerning how they are going to respond to British domestic political issues surrounding the war in Iraq. They know they will have to go the UN route (to satisfy British public opinion), while the NSC in the US thinks it's a waste of time (which it was).

What the lefties think are 'smoking guns' are interpretations of events as seen by the Brits. For example, the lefties think this is a Smoking Gun:

Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.

Note that the last sentence is a conclusion drawn by Mystery Figure "C" who is reporting on his trip to Washington. C is not claiming that "they told me they are fitting the facts and the intelligence around the policy." Yet this is the conclusion the lefties have jumped to, and now they would like the Press-Democrat to broadcast their interpretation of the memo as if it were fact.

The danger, of course, is that the Press-Democrat will do just that.

[Canard]

" Note that the last sentence is a conclusion drawn by Mystery Figure "C" who is reporting on his trip to Washington"

"C" is not a mystery figure, it is the traditional way of referring to the head of MI6. At the time the office holder was Sir Richard Dearlove.

[Tunehead54]

If they were really "FAIR" they'd link to the memo itself to let us decide for ourselves and they'd need to detail how they're certain it didn't come from CBS.

---

[Canard]

"I think this is the memo related to Tony Blair's government - and I am SO fuzzy on this - allegedly produced by a member of his government who later committed suicide - it was later discredited as revealing not that intelligence was manipulated, but that it was simply badly done. Or something like that.

Disregarded then as booshwah, finally, IMHO it was resurrected two days before the election in Great Britain by the London Times in an election-influence effort. That's why it has not caught fire and resulted in the resignation of George Bush, the elevation of John Kerry to the presidency by popular acclamation contrary to the constitution, and mass execution of all conservative Americans by liberofascists and radical Islamists."

You're confusing several different things.

The person who committed suicide was Dr David Kelly, a weapons expert and member of the Iraq survey group, in relation to reported claims that he believed the pre-war dossier on Iraqi wmd to have been influenced politically and not to have included caveats that should have been included. This was largely substantiated by the subsequent Butler Report.

The memo discussed here was only first released a few weeks ago, it had not been seen before. It has been implicitly confirmed as genuine by the UK government (ie. a government spokesman has commented on it and no-one has attempted to claim it isn't genuine).

It creates more serious allegations against Blair then Bush imo. As someone else said, regime change in Iraq was a stated policy of the US. Blair specifically denied pursuing this policy (indeed stated that it would be illegal) while, according to this memo, privately committing to it.

[Canard]

You can read the memo here:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1593607,00.html

[gogipper]

"the public generally seems indifferent to the issue or unwilling to rehash the bitter prewar debate over the reasons for the war."

If I recall correctly, both the UK government and the US Senate conducted official investigations of this topic last year
http://www.heritage.org/Research/HomelandDefense/wm534.cfm.

In both cases the allegations that the national executives had manipulated intelligence were disproved. I believe that the British investigation was pretty pointed against the source, perhaps someone can fill in the details.

Here is a summary of the US version:
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


It is worth reading all 511 pages of the Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq—both for what is said and what is left unsaid. Both have a lot to tell us about how to make America safer. The Senate Intelligence Committee’s report makes the case for responsible intelligence reform and offers no evidence that political influence was brought to bear in shaping analysis to support particular policies. On the other hand, the report largely ignores the strategic challenges presented by the Iraqi regime and does not consider how the Select Intelligence Committee fulfilled its own oversight responsibilities in the months preceding the war in Iraq.

[wildbill]

I'm concerned about the "former senior American official" who called it "an absolutely accurate description of what transpired" (Knight Ridder, 5/6/05).

This description is usually shorthand for "Secretary of State." Was this Powell or merely an opinion of Madeline?

[Canard]

"If I recall correctly, both the UK government and the US Senate conducted official investigations of this topic last year"

The UK investigation that you're refering to was the Butler Report. The terms of reference were set by the government and specifically did not include an investigation on whether the reasons for war were justified. Essentially it was a review of the WMD intelligence and the processes involved in collecting and presenting it. It was pretty damning against the UK intelligence processes and the government in terms of how they approached these.

The Butler Report can be found online if you're really interested.

[Nick Danger]

"C" is not a mystery figure, it is the traditional way of referring to the head of MI6.

Me dumb. Me not speak British.

[gogipper]

Exactly, in contradiction to the first sentence of this article:

"...containing new evidence that the Bush administration manipulated intelligence to justify its plan to invade Iraq.."

We know via these official investigations the intelligence was crap and that our intelligence organizations are broken. This is a failure of our entire government (Executive failure and Congressional Oversight), not Bush or Blair 'manipulating intelligence'. What we need to worry about is that it is still broken.

[Canard]

I really have no idea why they still use "C" when the identity of the official is now publically acknowledged. Kinda made sense when they used to keep it secret!

[Chode]

in the words of george galloway... "They are just words on a piece of paper written by who knows who..."

[Canard]

"We know via these official investigations the intelligence was crap and that our intelligence organizations are broken. This is a failure of our entire government (Executive failure and Congressional Oversight), not Bush or Blair 'manipulating intelligence'."

I partially agree. However, the Butler report did find that some caveats that were included in draft versions of the dossier released by the British government, then had these caveats removed in the final version. This can only have been to make the intelligence seem stronger than it actually was. This particularly applied to the '45 minute claim' which, according to the report, should not have been included in the dossier in the form that it was.

[TheGeezer]

Thanks for the clarification.

Regards.

[weegee]

FAIR is unfair. AIM is better.