FAIR-L
Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
Media analysis, critiques and activism
MEDIA ADVISORY:
Media Silent on Clark's 9/11 Comments:
Gen. says White House pushed Saddam link without evidence
June 20, 2003
Sunday morning talk shows like ABC's This Week or Fox News Sunday
often make news for days afterward. Since prominent government
officials dominate the guest lists of the programs, it is not unusual
for the Monday editions of major newspapers to report on interviews
done by the Sunday chat shows.
But the June 15 edition of NBC's Meet the Press was unusual for the
buzz that it didn't generate. Former General Wesley Clark told
anchor Tim Russert that Bush administration officials had engaged in
a campaign to implicate Saddam Hussein in the September 11 attacks--
starting that very day. Clark said that he'd been called on
September 11 and urged to link Baghdad to the terror attacks, but
declined to do so because of a lack of evidence.
Here is a transcript of the exchange:
---
CLARK: "There was a concerted effort during the fall of 2001,
starting immediately after 9/11, to pin 9/11 and the terrorism
problem on Saddam Hussein."
RUSSERT: "By who? Who did that?"
CLARK: "Well, it came from the White House, it came from people
around the White House. It came from all over. I got a call on
9/11. I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, 'You got to
say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has
to be connected to Saddam Hussein.' I said, 'But--I'm willing to say
it, but what's your evidence?'
And I never got any evidence."
---
Clark's assertion corroborates a little-noted CBS Evening News story
that aired on September 4, 2002. As correspondent David Martin
reported: "Barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed
into the Pentagon, the secretary of defense was telling his aides to
start thinking about striking Iraq, even though there was no evidence
linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks." According to CBS, a Pentagon
aide's notes from that day quote Rumsfeld asking for the "best info
fast" to "judge whether good enough to hit SH at the same time, not
only UBL." (The initials SH and UBL stand for Saddam Hussein and
Osama bin Laden.) The notes then quote Rumsfeld as demanding,
ominously, that the administration's response "go massive...sweep it
all up, things related and not."
Despite its implications, Martin's report was greeted largely with
silence when it aired. Now, nine months later, media are covering
damaging revelations about the Bush administration's intelligence on
Iraq, yet still seem strangely reluctant to pursue stories suggesting
that the flawed intelligence-- and therefore the war-- may have been
a result of deliberate deception, rather than incompetence. The
public deserves a fuller accounting of this story.
If you'd like to encourage media outlets to investigate this story,
please see FAIR's Media Contact list:
http://www.fair.org/media-contact-list.html
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