[Media-watch] FW: Media Silent on Clark's 9/11 Comments

[david Miller]

>                                  FAIR-L
>                     Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
>                Media analysis, critiques and activism
>
> MEDIA ADVISORY:
> Media Silent on Clark's 9/11 Comments:
> Gen. says White House pushed Saddam link without evidence
>
> June 20, 2003
>
> Sunday morning talk shows like ABC's This Week or Fox News Sunday often
> make news for days afterward.  Since prominent government officials
> dominate the guest lists of the programs, it is not unusual for the Monday
> editions of major newspapers to report on interviews done by the Sunday
> chat shows.
>
> But the June 15 edition of NBC's Meet the Press was unusual for the buzz
> that it didn't generate.  Former General Wesley Clark told anchor Tim
> Russert that Bush administration officials had engaged in a campaign to
> implicate Saddam Hussein in the September 11 attacks-- starting that very
> day.  Clark said that he'd been called on September 11 and urged to link
> Baghdad to the terror attacks, but declined to do so because of a lack of
> evidence.
>
> Here is a transcript of the exchange:
>
> ---
> CLARK: "There was a concerted effort during the fall of 2001, starting
> immediately after 9/11, to pin 9/11 and the terrorism problem on Saddam
> Hussein."
>
> RUSSERT: "By who? Who did that?"
>
> CLARK: "Well, it came from the White House, it came from people around the
> White House.  It came from all over.  I got a call on 9/11. I was on CNN,
> and I got a call at my home saying, 'You got to say this is connected.
> This is state-sponsored terrorism.  This has to be connected to Saddam
> Hussein.'  I said, 'But--I'm willing to say it, but what's your evidence?'
>  And I never got any evidence."
> --- 
>
> Clark's assertion corroborates a little-noted CBS Evening News story that
> aired on September 4, 2002.  As correspondent David Martin reported:
> "Barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the
> Pentagon, the secretary of defense was telling his aides to start thinking
> about striking Iraq, even though there was no evidence linking Saddam
> Hussein to the attacks."  According to CBS, a Pentagon aide's notes from
> that day quote Rumsfeld asking for the "best info fast" to "judge whether
> good enough to hit SH at the same time, not only UBL."  (The initials SH
> and UBL stand for Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.)  The notes then
> quote Rumsfeld as demanding, ominously, that the administration's response
> "go massive...sweep it all up, things related and not."
>
> Despite its implications, Martin's report was greeted largely with silence
> when it aired.  Now, nine months later, media are covering damaging
> revelations about the Bush administration's intelligence on Iraq, yet
> still seem strangely reluctant to pursue stories suggesting that the
> flawed intelligence-- and therefore the war-- may have been a result of
> deliberate deception, rather than incompetence.  The public deserves a
> fuller accounting of this story.
>
>
> If you'd like to encourage media outlets to investigate this story, please
> see FAIR's Media Contact list:
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