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.
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 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.
