Dana
>"ver 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."
>
>More on the site.
>HYPERLINK "http://tinyurl.com/3abn4"http://tinyurl.com/3abn4
>
>-Gel
>
>
>
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