[Media-watch] NYTimes explains its flawed Iraq reporting (INC/ICP/Chalabi) - NYTimes - 26/05/2004

[Julie-ann Davies]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/international/middleeast/26FTE_NOTE.html?8dpc

The Times and Iraq

Published: May 26, 2004

Over the last year this newspaper has shone the bright light of hindsight on
decisions that led the United States into Iraq. We have examined the
failings of American and allied intelligence, especially on the issue of
Iraq's weapons and possible Iraqi connections to international terrorists.
We have studied the allegations of official gullibility and hype. It is past
time we turned the same light on ourselves.

In doing so - reviewing hundreds of articles written during the prelude to
war and into the early stages of the occupation - we found an enormous
amount of journalism that we are proud of. In most cases, what we reported
was an accurate reflection of the state of our knowledge at the time, much
of it painstakingly extracted from intelligence agencies that were
themselves dependent on sketchy information. And where those articles
included incomplete information or pointed in a wrong direction, they were
later overtaken by more and stronger information. That is how news coverage
normally unfolds.

But we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous
as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial
then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to
stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in
re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged - or failed to emerge.

The problematic articles varied in authorship and subject matter, but many
shared a common feature. They depended at least in part on information from
a circle of Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles bent on "regime change"
in Iraq, people whose credibility has come under increasing public debate in
recent weeks. (The most prominent of the anti-Saddam campaigners, Ahmad
Chalabi, has been named as an occasional source in Times articles since at
least 1991, and has introduced reporters to other exiles. He became a
favorite of hard-liners within the Bush administration and a paid broker of
information from Iraqi exiles, until his payments were cut off last week.)
Complicating matters for journalists, the accounts of these exiles were
often eagerly confirmed by United States officials convinced of the need to
intervene in Iraq. Administration officials now acknowledge that they
sometimes fell for misinformation from these exile sources. So did many news
organizations - in particular, this one.

Some critics of our coverage during that time have focused blame on
individual reporters. Our examination, however, indicates that the problem
was more complicated. Editors at several levels who should have been
challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism were perhaps too
intent on rushing scoops into the paper. Accounts of Iraqi defectors were
not always weighed against their strong desire to have Saddam Hussein
ousted. Articles based on dire claims about Iraq tended to get prominent
display, while follow-up articles that called the original ones into
question were sometimes buried. In some cases, there was no follow-up at
all.

On Oct. 26 and Nov. 8, 2001, for example, Page 1 articles cited Iraqi
defectors who described a secret Iraqi camp where Islamic terrorists were
trained and biological weapons produced. These accounts have never been
independently verified.

On Dec. 20, 2001, another front-page article began, "An Iraqi defector who
described himself as a civil engineer said he personally worked on
renovations of secret facilities for biological, chemical and nuclear
weapons in underground wells, private villas and under the Saddam Hussein
Hospital in Baghdad as recently as a year ago." Knight Ridder Newspapers
reported last week that American officials took that defector - his name is
Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri - to Iraq earlier this year to point out the
sites where he claimed to have worked, and that the officials failed to find
evidence of their use for weapons programs. It is still possible that
chemical or biological weapons will be unearthed in Iraq, but in this case
it looks as if we, along with the administration, were taken in. And until
now we have not reported that to our readers.

On Sept. 8, 2002, the lead article of the paper was headlined "U.S. Says
Hussein Intensified Quest for A-Bomb Parts." That report concerned the
aluminum tubes that the administration advertised insistently as components
for the manufacture of nuclear weapons fuel. The claim came not from
defectors but from the best American intelligence sources available at the
time. Still, it should have been presented more cautiously. There were hints
that the usefulness of the tubes in making nuclear fuel was not a sure
thing, but the hints were buried deep, 1,700 words into a 3,600-word
article. Administration officials were allowed to hold forth at length on
why this evidence of Iraq's nuclear intentions demanded that Saddam Hussein
be dislodged from power: "The first sign of a `smoking gun,' they argue, may
be a mushroom cloud."

Five days later, The Times reporters learned that the tubes were in fact a
subject of debate among intelligence agencies. The misgivings appeared deep
in an article on Page A13, under a headline that gave no inkling that we
were revising our earlier view ("White House Lists Iraq Steps to Build
Banned Weapons"). The Times gave voice to skeptics of the tubes on Jan. 9,
when the key piece of evidence was challenged by the International Atomic
Energy Agency. That challenge was reported on Page A10; it might well have
belonged on Page A1.

On April 21, 2003, as American weapons-hunters followed American troops into
Iraq, another front-page article declared, "Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of
War, an Iraqi Scientist Is Said to Assert." It began this way: "A scientist
who claims to have worked in Iraq's chemical weapons program for more than a
decade has told an American military team that Iraq destroyed chemical
weapons and biological warfare equipment only days before the war began,
members of the team said."

The informant also claimed that Iraq had sent unconventional weapons to
Syria and had been cooperating with Al Qaeda - two claims that were then,
and remain, highly controversial. But the tone of the article suggested that
this Iraqi "scientist" - who in a later article described himself as an
official of military intelligence - had provided the justification the
Americans had been seeking for the invasion.

The Times never followed up on the veracity of this source or the attempts
to verify his claims.

A sample of the coverage, including the articles mentioned here, is online
at http://www.nytimes.com/critique . Readers will also find there a detailed
discussion written for The New York Review of Books last month by Michael
Gordon, military affairs correspondent of The Times, about the aluminum
tubes report. Responding to the review's critique of Iraq coverage, his
statement could serve as a primer on the complexities of such intelligence
reporting.

We consider the story of Iraq's weapons, and of the pattern of
misinformation, to be unfinished business. And we fully intend to continue
aggressive reporting aimed at setting the record straight.