William Safire’s NYT column on the fiasco last week in which the world press uniformly reported:
“Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie” went the Times headline. “Al Qaeda-Hussein Link Is Dismissed” front-paged The Washington Post. The A.P. led with the thrilling words “Bluntly contradicting the Bush Administration, the commission. . . .” This understandably caused my editorial- page colleagues to draw the conclusion that “there was never any evidence of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. . . .”
All wrong. The basis for the hoo-ha was not a judgment of the panel of commissioners appointed to investigate the 9/11 attacks. As reporters noted below the headlines, it was an interim report of the commission’s runaway staff, headed by the ex-N.S.C. aide Philip Zelikow. After Vice President Dick Cheney’s outraged objection, the staff’s sweeping conclusion was soon disavowed by both commission chairman Tom Kean and vice chairman Lee Hamilton.
“Were there contacts between Al Qaeda and Iraq?” Kean asked himself. “Yes . . . no question.” Hamilton joined in: “The vice president is saying, I think, that there were connections . . . we don’t disagree with that” – just “no credible evidence” of Iraqi cooperation in the 9/11 attack.
Jeff Jarvis weighs in.
update- This isn’t incompetence. It’s outright deliberate misrepresentation by the LA Times.