Reporter's plagiarism claims scalp of editor as New York Times becomes the news

Gary Younge in New York Friday June 6, 2003

Courtesy - The Guardian, UK

The editor of America's most venerated newspaper, the New York Times, resigned yesterday after one of the most embarrassing journalistic scandals in American history prompted severe criticism of his managerial competence and abrasive style. In a hastily arranged and highly emotional ceremony in the paper's third-floor newsroom, during which some reporters sobbed, Howell Raines, 60, announced his resignation, picked up his straw hat from the office he had just vacated and left the building with his wife. Mr Raines' parting words to his former staff were: "Remember, when a great story breaks out, go like hell." it also became apparent that the main source on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programme for the paper's bioterrorism expert, Judith Miller, had been the Pentagon's favoured Iraqi, Ahmad Chalabi. That in turn suggested that the Pentagon and Mr Chalabi had used the paper to help create the justification for war. Read the Full Report

 New York Times covers up for lies on Iraq war

By Bill Vann

World Socialist Website

6 June 2003

In the face of a mounting international scandal over US and British falsehoods about weapons of mass destruction, advanced to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq, Thomas Friedman, the New York Times’s chief foreign affairs columnist, has leapt into the breach to assure the paper’s readers that whether Bush and Blair lied about WMDs is beside the point.

His June 4 column in the Times is a demonstration of the cynicism of the media—including its erstwhile “liberal” representatives—and its contempt for democratic principles.

Friedman declares that the failure to discover Iraqi weapons of mass destruction is not “the real story we should be concerned with.” The question of WMDs was, he says, “the wrong issue before the war, and it is the wrong issue now.”

The Times columnist argues that there is no point getting upset about the US president launching a war under false pretenses. This is a minor technicality. “Because there were actually four reasons for this war: the real reason, the right reason, the moral reason and the stated reason.”

Curiously, one often raised reason is absent from Friedman’s list—namely, Iraq’s oil wealth. This is a glaring omission, coming as it does in the wake of statements from top administration officials who planned the war acknowledging that Iraq’s possession of the world’s second-largest oil reserves was the decisive factor in the decision to go to war.

Explaining why Washington invaded Iraq—where no weapons of mass destruction were found—while opting for a diplomatic approach to North Korea, which has openly touted its nuclear weapons program, US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told delegates to a security summit in Singapore last weekend: “The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil.”

In an earlier interview with Vanity Fair, Wolfowitz tacitly acknowledged that the charge of Iraqi chemical and biological weapons was a pretext. “For reasons that have a lot to do with the US government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on: weapons of mass destruction,” the Pentagon’s number-two man said.

Friedman’s omission is all the more curious—and damning—since he himself published a column in the New York Times last January 5 bearing the headline “A War for Oil?” in which he declared he had “no problem” with a war waged to gain control of Iraq’s petroleum reserves.

In his latest column, Friedman writes, “The real reason for this war, which was never stated, was that after 9/11 America needed to hit someone in the Arab-Muslim world. Afghanistan wasn’t enough.” Washington could have picked any Arab country, he argues. “Smashing Saudi Arabia or Syria would have been fine. But we hit Saddam for one simple reason: because we could...”

Friedman is unabashed in his thuggery. His answer is worthy of any thief asked to explain why he mugged an elderly woman. Iraq was an irresistible target because the 1991 Persian Gulf War, followed by a decade of United Nations sanctions, continuous US-British bombing in the “no-fly zones,” and the work of United Nations weapons inspectors had left the country virtually defenseless. And there was that small matter Friedman chooses to ignore: Iraqi oil.

Friedman is a fan of brutality and force, a taste he acquired while covering the bloody exploits of Ariel Sharon and the fascist Falange during the Lebanese civil war two decades ago. If the toll in human lives exacted in Afghanistan was not enough to balance the scales for September 11, why not slaughter thousands, if not tens of thousands more in Iraq?

The point, he suggests, is to terrorize the entire Arab and Islamic world, subjugating it to the requirements of Washington and Israel.

Having dispensed with the “real reason,” he moves on to the “right” and “moral” ones. The “right reason” for the war, he claims, is “the need to partner with Iraqis, post-Saddam, to build a progressive Arab regime.” Such a regime, Friedman suggests, would represent an antidote to a supposed terrorist threat by serving as a “model” for “angry, humiliated young Arabs and Muslims, who are produced by failed or failing Arab states.”

“Partnering”—a term that generally describes two companies setting up a joint enterprise—is a strange word to use for what could better be described as plunder. One could as easily speak of Hitler’s Germany “partnering” with the Poles to create Lebensraum in the east.

The contours of Friedman’s “progressive Arab regime” that is supposed to serve as a “model” for all of the Arab “failed states” have already begun to emerge. Its principal foundation is the sweeping privatization of Iraq’s state sector, beginning with its oil fields. Accompanying these measures, the US viceroy in Baghdad, L. Paul Bremer, has already announced more than half a million layoffs of Iraqi state workers.

Washington has made it clear that it will impose a “free market” economic model on Iraq—the same model that has produced a string of “failed states” from Latin America to Africa—regardless of what its people desire. This model will assure that the current mass unemployment and desperate poverty remain permanent. Politically, the regime will be a militarized puppet of the US.

The notion that such a state will inspire hope among “angry, humiliated young Arabs” is a measure of the appalling ignorance that merges seamlessly with Friedman’s arrogance and bloodlust.

Finally, there is the “moral reason” for the war—the fact that the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein repressed its own people. Never mind that the CIA helped bring the Baathists to power and provided them with lists of socialists and nationalists who became their first victims.

“Once the war was over and I saw the mass graves and the true extent of Saddam’s genocidal evil, my view was that Mr. Bush did not need to find any WMDs to justify the war for me,” says the Times columnist.

The unearthing of human remains in Iraq was, according to Friedman, the irrefutable answer to anyone’s questioning the morality of the war. That the bulk of these unearthed victims were Shiites, massacred with the tacit approval of the US government when they rebelled in the wake of the first Persian Gulf War, does not enter into Friedman’s moral calculations.

Moreover, the unearthing of similar remains in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile and Argentina—all victims of dictatorships installed by the CIA and the Pentagon—apparently escaped his notice. Had he seen the skulls and skeletons at those sites would it have caused a comparable epiphany, convincing him of the immorality of US imperialist interventions?

Friedman proudly declares that whether or not any WMDs are found or even existed is for him a matter of indifference. The “genocidal evil” that he perceived in the mass graves uncovered after the war was sufficient justification. “But I have to admit that I’ve always been fighting my own war in Iraq,” he tells his readers. “Mr. Bush took the country into his war.”

Friedman was never fighting his “own war in Iraq,” not even in his own head. His job involved not fighting, but lying. After luncheon consultations with the war’s Pentagon plotters, he crafted lying bits of sophistry to justify an illegal act of aggression. His specialty was to cloak a filthy and predatory enterprise in “progressive” and “moral” trappings.

The “Bush team,” Friedman tells his readers, opted, “for PR reasons,” not to disclose its “real reason” for war, not to mention its supposed “right” and “moral” motives.

Friedman, it should be pointed out, acknowledged during the buildup to the Iraq war that there existed no popular support for attacking the Middle Eastern country. In a column published February 5, he commented that he was “struck by an incredible contrast...between the audacity of what they [the Bush administration] intend to do in Iraq—a audacity that, I must say, has an appeal for me—and the incredibly narrow base of support that exists in America today for this audacious project.”

An avowed advocate of war, Friedman found himself compelled to admit that in public appearances around the country, “there was not a single audience I spoke to where I felt there was a majority in favor of war in Iraq.”

Faced with the same dilemma, the administration bombarded the public with phony propaganda about “weapons of mass destruction.” It sought to terrorize the American people into supporting a war. It claimed repeatedly that Saddam Hussein’s regime had a huge stockpile of nerve gas, biological weapons and possibly even atomic bombs, and was preparing to hand them over to the same band of terrorists that leveled the World Trade Center.

That this is no big deal for the leading foreign affairs columnist at the New York Times is itself a testimony to the degeneration of the media and the disappearance of any significant base of support for democratic rights within the ruling elite, including its supposedly liberal wing.

One only has to recall the furor unleashed by the Times, the Washington Post and others over Richard Nixon’s secret bombing of Cambodia, not to mention his lying over what his administration tried to dismiss as a “second-rate burglary” at the Watergate complex some three decades ago.

Now, confronted with overwhelming evidence that a US administration launched an unprovoked war against a country that posed no threat to the American people based on lies and fabrications whose like has not been seen since the days of Adolf Hitler, the response is to invent “moral” alibis.

Implicit in this attempted whitewash is the idea that the American people have no right to know why the government sends its soldiers to kill and die in another country, much less to exercise any influence on the decision to go to war.

This is not a new idea. Herman Goering, the number-two man in Hitler’s Third Reich, described the same concept quite well in an interview conducted in his Nuremberg jail cell: “Naturally, the common people don’t want war, neither in Russia nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship...All you have to do is tell them that they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

TONY BLAIR'S SPELL IS BUSTED; OWN PARTY DENOUNCES LIES

see the heated discussion on the topic.

"The truth is that nobody believes a word now that the Prime Minister is saying," and challanged Blair to publish the intelligence to back up his claims", Opposition leader Ian Duncan Smith, breaking from his common front with Blair on the Iraq war, said.

Cook concludes: "As Rumsfeld might express it, we have been
suckered. Britain was conned into a war to disarm a phantom
threat in which not even our major ally really believed. The
truth is that the United States chose to attack Iraq, not because
it posed a threat, but because they knew it was weak and expected its military to collapse. It is a truth that leaves the British
government in an uncomfortable position...." And it strains
international relations. Cook recommends that the Blair government face the truth.

"There is always a bigger problem in denying reality than in
admitting the truth. The time has come for the British government
to concede that we did not go to war because Saddam was a threat to our national interests. We went to war for reasons of U.S. foreign policy and Republican domestic politics." Click below for Full Report.

TONY BLAIR'S SPELL IS BUSTED; OWN PARTY DENOUNCES LIES

 Two most senior journalists pay price for humiliation heaped on paper by scandal

Gary Younge in New York
Friday June 6, 2003
Courtesy The Guardian, UK

The editor of America's most venerated newspaper, the New York Times, resigned yesterday after one of the most embarrassing journalistic scandals in American history prompted severe criticism of his managerial competence and abrasive style.

In a hastily arranged and highly emotional ceremony in the paper's third-floor newsroom, during which some reporters sobbed, Howell Raines, 60, announced his resignation, picked up his straw hat from the office he had just vacated and left the building with his wife. Mr Raines' parting words to his former staff were: "Remember, when a great story breaks out, go like hell."

The paper's managing editor, Gerald Boyd, 52, who was appointed by Mr Raines, also resigned. The paper's publisher, Arthur Sulzberger, told the staff: "Given the events of the last month...Howell and Gerald concluded that it was best for the Times that they step down. This is a day that breaks my heart."

He thanked the pair "for putting the interest of this newspaper, a newspaper we all love, above their own". Mr Raines' predecessor, Joseph Lelyveld, will take over while a replacement is found.

The paper's top two editors are the most senior casualties to date of a scandal that erupted five weeks ago when the Times discovered that Jayson Blair, a 27-year-old reporter, had "committed frequent acts of journalistic fraud".

An internal investigation of Blair's work revealed a litany of plagiarism, deception and inaccuracies relating to 36 of the 73 articles he had written between October 2002 and April this year.

Blair's resignation on May 1 was followed by a front-page story and a humiliating correction inside detailing his fabrications in more than 14,000 words on four broadsheet pages. Blair would later boast that he had "fooled some of the most brilliant people in journalism".

In a journalistic culture that worships at the altar of objectivity and prides itself on accuracy and accountability one cannot overestimate how deep a blow the Blair ordeal was for the Times or how widespread the ramifications of it would be.

In a world where factcheckers are commonplace and corrections columns have been in place for decades, this was regarded not as an individual aberration but as a systemic failure. The scandal has caused other newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune and the Buffalo News, to call staff meetings to examine their working practices.

The investigation made it clear what Blair had done; the more difficult question was how had he been able to get away with it for so long.

Many fingers pointed at Howell Raines. The mood in some parts of the paper after the debacle was a mixture of sombre and seditious. Some reporters and editors argued that Mr Raines' bullish management style, crusading editorial approach and desire to promote youth and energy over age and experience had all contributed to Blair's promotion and the paper's failure to prevent his fraud.

A few days later Mr Sulzberger held a staff meeting at the Astor Plaza Theatre, near the Times offices, so employees could question Mr Raines and Mr Boyd in person. One of the paper's writers, Joyce Purnick, described it as a "raw, emotional and candid session". "I believe that at a deep level you guys have lost the confidence of many parts of the newsroom," said Joe Sexton, a deputy editor of the metro section, which covers the New York area. "I do not feel a sense of trust and reassurance that judgments are properly made...People feel less led than bullied."

Questions were also asked about the paper's affirmative action policies.

Blair is black and some journalists argued that he had been overpromoted because of the paper's desire to elevate reporters from ethnic minorities.

Mr Raines entertained the suggestion: "You have a right to ask if I, as a white man from Alabama, with those convictions, gave him one chance too many," he said. "When I look into my heart for the truth of that, the answer is yes."

The meeting offered Mr Raines, not known for being self-effacing, a rare opportunity for contrition. He took it. "I'm here to listen to your anger, wherever it's directed," he told his staff. "To tell you that I know that our institution has been damaged, that I accept my responsibility for that and I intend to fix it...I was guilty of a failure of vigilance that, since I sit in this chair where the buck stops, I should have prevented."

But if the meeting provided the opportunity for a postmortem examination, Mr Raines also saw it as a chance to acknowledge concerns about his editorship after almost two years in the chair.

He took up the post, with the official title of executive editor, in early September 2001 - a week before the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre. The paper's coverage of the attacks was lauded and won six Pulitzer prizes.

But his management style, at times insensitive and autocratic, alienated many. Several senior national correspondents left - one, Kevin Sack, went on to win a Pulitzer for the Los Angeles Times. Mr Raines wanted to make it clear that he was aware of the criticism.

"You view me as inaccessible and arrogant," he said. "I heard that you were convinced there's a star system that singles out my favourites for elevation. Fear is a problem to such an extent, I was told, that editors are scared to bring me bad news."

A business reporter, Alex Berenson, asked him if he had considered resigning. Mr Raines said no, or at least not unless he was asked to by Mr Sulzberger, who was sitting next to him. He would not accept the resignation even if it were offered, Mr Sulzberger said.

Quite what happened in the intervening three weeks to change their minds is not clear.

An internal review of reporting practices and management checks and balances was ordered but the paper started to implode under the weight of internal rancour and frustration.

More scandals and scalps followed. Last week one of Mr Raines' favourites, the Pulitzer-winner Rick Bragg, resigned days after the editor suspended him with pay. Bragg admitted that an unpaid assistant had done virtually all of the reporting for a story on oyster fishers in Florida for which he took full credit. Bragg said such practices were commonplace; his colleagues publicly disagreed. Other freelancers who had worked for the paper said they too had been denied bylines.

It also became apparent that the main source on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programme for the paper's bioterrorism expert, Judith Miller, had been the Pentagon's favoured Iraqi, Ahmad Chalabi. That in turn suggested that the Pentagon and Mr Chalabi had used the paper to help create the justification for war.

Mr Raines spent the past few days trying to win over some of his sternest critics within the paper, arguing his case over dinner and in private.

"Everyone is kind of stunned," said one reporter. "These are two guys who put their whole life into the paper and they certainly didn't set out to do anything bad.

"My first reaction was maybe this would allow people to move on, but none of it's good really."

Whether the resignations will quell the controversy remains to be seen. "I think the focus now becomes Arthur Sulzberger," said the New York magazine critic Michael Wolff. "And, in fact, I think that's the root of what's happened here. It's all about survival of the publisher at this point."