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News media and Iraq (last updated September 24, 2004)
Fahrenheit 9/11 criticizes the major U.S. news media for going along with the war, focusing on television reporters who announced their support or admiration for the United States and its military capabilities. The movie arguably misses a larger issue, which is the degree to which the major news media carried through its responsibilities in covering the question of whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
Editors of least two major media organizations, the New York Times and the Washington Post, admitted in the spring and summer of 2004 that they should have done a better job questioning the rationale for invading Iraq.
In a May 26, 2004 self-critique, the New York Times' editors wrote that they had re-examined their coverage and "found a number of instances 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."
Washington Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. told Post media reporter Howard Kurtz that "we were so focused on trying to figure out what the administration was doing that we were not giving the same play to people who said it wouldn't be a good idea to go to war and were questioning the administration's rationale. Not enough of those stories were put on the front page. That was a mistake on my part."
Washington Post assistant managing editor Bob Woodward, famous for his investigative work in the Watergate scandal, told Kurtz that he believed he was part of the "groupthink" that believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction even without hard evidence that such was true. Woodward explained that reporters could not get into Iraq and thus "couldn't get beyond the veneer and hurdle of what this groupthink had already established."
Dependence on Exiles, on Ahmed Chalabi
In their self-critique, the New York Times' editors noted that many of the articles they now wished had been done differently "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 … 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."
The most prominent such exile, whom the New York Times identified by name, was Ahmed Chalabi, an Iraqi exile who headed the Iraqi National Congress, an opposition group.
Other reporters who wrote about Iraq have downplayed Chalabi and the INC as their sources. In a summer 2004 article for the Columbia Journalism Review, Douglas McCollam wrote that he tried contacting about 40 reporters whom an INC list identified as the authors of stories published from October 2001 through May 2002 which the INC took credit for, and that "a review of the list show that [the INC's] Information Collection Program succeeded in heavily influencing coverage in the Western press in the run-up to the war."
Chalabi, a Shiite Muslim, lived much of his life outside Iraq. Educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a mathematician, he lived in Iraq but then fled in 1958, around the time that the ruling Hashemite family was overthrown and King Faysal II killed but about a decade before the Ba'ath Party of which Saddam Hussein was a member took power in another coup. Chalabi went to Jordan, where he founded a bank, but left in 1989 amidst charges of embezzlement. Chalabi was convicted in absentia but claimed that Jordan had been pressured by Iraq into harassing him.
After the Gulf War, Iraqi groups opposing Saddam Hussein's rule met and formed the Iraqi National Congress, a group that appeared to pose a viable alternative. Chalabi was selected to run the INC. In the mid-1990s, the INC recruited an army but achieved little success. The INC then received millions of dollars from the United States under the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, which made regime change in Iraq the policy of the United States and provided funding to opposition groups.
Opinions on Chalabi appeared to be generally positive before the U.S. military action in Iraq of 2003.
For example, former U.N. weapon inspector Scott Ritter wrote in his 1999 book that Chalabi "is an imposing, highly educated man with an admirable passion for a free Iraq," though he also noted that Chalabi "does not command wide support outside the Shi'a membership of the INC."
Vice President Dick Cheney even bragged in a December 2001 interview about meeting Chalabi. When discussing dealing with Iraq, he said that "we'll want to work, I think, with the Iraqi opposition, with the Iraqi National Congress. I personally met with Mr. Chalabi myself in years past, and I would expect that they will be a part of a continuing effort as we think about how best to deal with that threat." The transcript is on-line here.
Others were more skeptical. Bob Woodward wrote in his 2004 book "Plan of Attack" that while Chalabi "had become the darling of senior Defense officials who saw him and his London-based exile organization as a potential armed insurgent force," the State Department and the CIA "viewed Chalabi with skepticism - too slick, they felt, too divisive, out of touch with the horrors of life under Saddam."
After Saddam Hussein was removed from power, the United States appeared to give much support to Chalabi as a possible leader. Chalabi and about 700 fighters from the Iraqi National Congress were airlifted by the United States from northern Iraq shortly after the beginning of combat operations, and Chalabi was the head of finance of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council that controlled Iraq after Hussein's fall and before the return of sovereignty in June 2004.
President George W. Bush met with Chalabi during a visit to Iraq around Thanksgiving 2003. On November 27, 2003, he was asked if he had seen Chalabi and answered: "I did see Chalabi. I met with - well, let's see, I had the dinner, you saw that. I wasn't sure how long you were there, you probably timed it, but an hour or so." A transcript of these remarks is on-line here.
Chalabi was even one of three special guests of First Lady Laura Bush at the 2004 State of the Union address. In fact, the following White House photo shows Chalabi standing behind Mrs. Bush as she applauds Dr. Adnan Pachachi, then president of the Iraqi Governing Council.
However, questions began arising about Chalabi and his loyalties in early 2004, especially as U.S. weapons inspectors failed to find the weapons of mass destruction that so many had believed would be found. Lead U.S. weapons inspector David Kay testified in a Jan. 28, 2004 Senate hearing that he had concluded that there was little evidence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction at the time the United States began military action there and that U.S. intelligence assessments were inaccurate and probably outdated. Kay also called for an independent inquiry into prewar intelligence. Just a week before, Bush had cited Kay's work as helping justify U.S. action in Iraq.
Chalabi was then accused of providing information to Iran and of giving false information to the United States government as well as to reporters. An April 2004 report by the General Accounting Office noted that the State Department had questions about the INC's program to collect information on Hussein's regime and "doubted the value of the information obtained through the program." In May, Iraqi police raided the INC compound, raising more questions about Chalabi.
In June 2004, President George W. Bush tried to distance himself from Chalabi. "My meetings with him were very brief. I mean, I think I met with him at the State of the Union and just kind of working through the tope line, and he might have come with a group of leaders. But I haven't had any extensive conversations with him," Bush said on June 1. A transcript of these remarks is on-line here.
Sources: The Times and Iraq, New York Times, May 26, 2004. Howard Kurtz, The Post on WMDs: An Inside Story, Washington Post, August 12, 2004. Douglas McCollam, The List: How Chalabi played the press, Columbia Journalism Review, July/August 2004. General Accounting Office, State Department: Issues affecting funding of Iraqi National Congress Support Foundation (April 2004) (Report GAO-04-559). Kenneth Katzman, Iraq: U.S. Regime Change Efforts and Post-War Governance, Congressional Research Service (August 29, 2003). Scott Ritter, Endgame: Solving the Iraq Crisis (Simon & Schuster, 1999, 2002). Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (Simon & Schuster, 2004).
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