Michael Rubin, Isikoff's Prior Use of Faulty Source

[Laurie Mylroie]

From the list of Michael Rubin, previously at DoD and now at AEI (May 17, 2005):

This was not the first time Isikoff has used faulty or fabricated sources.

In reporting the myth that Doug Feith’s office created its own intelligence unit, he relied on Karen Kwiatkowski, who associated with the Lyndon LaRouche movement.  Kwiatkowski said on tape that she was Isikoff’s chief source.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq interviewed Kwiatkowski based on her press statements and found that she could not give a single example to back up any of her allegations.  Simply put, she had never been to the unit she described nor as a Morocco desk officer, had she attended any Iraq planning meetings.  But Isikoff accepted her word without criticism and without asking the basic questions an investigative reporter should.

(pp.282-283 accessible at: http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/13jul20041400/www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/creports/pdf/s108-301/sec9.pdf)

Isikoff was more interested in badmouthing the Pentagon than in evaluating his sources.  His editors allowed him to get away with it because it was fashionable to badmouth Feith and the Bush administration.  Now people are dead.  Not only Isikoff, but his editors should resign over his pattern of fabrication.

 -Michael Rubin