Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

My solution: just ignore crap this blatent

"This is the ironic and tragic tale told by James Risen in Tuesday's New York Times."

I guess one could say, "It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

As someone who is going to journalism school this Fall, I have to wonder how otherwise smart, intelligent people can get suckered in by such ridiculous stories. When a "government official" (read: Bush administration crony) tells you that the CIA is solely to blame the the administration's faulty WMD intel, how do you not bust out laughing?

Now, I'm all for "taking both sides into account," and doing your utmost to write "balanced pieces," but you eventually have to make some kind of value judgement about the quality of information you're being fed.

The White House had clear indication that the CIA "intelligence" was crap. It came from Hans Blix in the early days of March 2003. Their reponse was to declare an ultimatum on Saddam Hussein after returning from the Azores summit. The question is therefore not how clueless was the CIA, but how gullible was the White House.

Brad may have a right idea, however this particular example is wrong.

The article is pretty reasonable, for example (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/06/politics/06INTE.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=):
In his book about the Bush administration's planning for the war in Iraq, "Plan of Attack," Bob Woodward reported that Mr. Tenet reassured Mr. Bush about the evidence of the existence of Iraq's illicit weapons after Mr. Bush had made clear he was unimpressed by the evidence presented to him in a December 2002 briefing by Mr. McLaughlin. "It's a slam-dunk case!" Mr. Tenet is quoted as telling the president.

OTOH the post quoted by Brad is crap:
We know that the chief architects of the war -- at the White House and the Pentagon -- waged a running battle with the CIA for the eighteen months leading up to the war, both on the WMD front and on their too-skeptical take on Iraq's ties to al Qaida.

brad reed, i wish you luck in teaching smart young journalism students that the way to advance in their chosen profession is to do the right thing, but methinks that the pressures of groupthink will grind down any values you inculcate.

bubba, good grief, man, what in the world makes you say that the marshall quote is "crap?" We know that this happened; how is that you don't? There were leaks galore from apalled intel sources during the entire build-up to war; there were the (iirc) 7 separate visits that cheney made to langley to hammer on cia analysts; there is the simple certainty that even tenet had to acknowledge - and tell bush and cheney - that they were saying things that simply weren't so.

Bubba, think about the timing of that Woodward anecdote. We're supposed to believe that Bush suddenly had doubts about the WMD evidence AFTER taking his case to Congress and the UN?

Are they referring to Hussein Kamel? Why would his statement, published in full before the war by Newsweek, be less important than the 'families' of Iraqi scientist?

I know it doesn't pertain here, but can someone give me some insight as to the seeming obsession that Mr luskin has with Mssrs. DeLong and Krugman?

I know it doesn't pertain here, but can someone give me some insight as to the seeming obsession that Mr luskin has with Mssrs. DeLong and Krugman?

I know it doesn't pertain here, but can someone give me some insight as to the seeming obsession that Mr luskin has with Mssrs. DeLong and Krugman?

I know it doesn't pertain here, but can someone give me some insight as to the seeming obsession that Mr luskin has with Mssrs. DeLong and Krugman?

I know it doesn't pertain here, but can someone give me some insight as to the seeming obsession that Mr luskin has with Mssrs. DeLong and Krugman?

I know it doesn't pertain here, but can someone give me some insight as to the seeming obsession that Mr luskin has with Mssrs. DeLong and Krugman?

Yes, I went over and got my Dallas Morning News, which carries the Risen story above the fold with the headline: "Cia's Iraq Claims Assailed".

This is by no means a "bad press" story. What I found most disheartening is that this will be the public conclusion of the Senate Select Committee, that the CIA conned Bush into war with Iraq based on a tissue of lies. This is much worse than a bad reporter. This will be the first draft of history, and y'all who remember it differently will be thinking we were always at war with Oceania.

Al least we now know why Bush kept Tenet around so long. A willing fall guy.

I know it doesn't pertain here, but can someone give me some insight as to the seeming obsession that Mr luskin has with Mssrs. DeLong and Krugman?

I know it doesn't pertain here, but can someone give me some insight as to the seeming obsession that Mr luskin has with Mssrs. DeLong and Krugman?

I know it doesn't pertain here, but can someone give me some insight as to the seeming obsession that Mr luskin has with Mssrs. DeLong and Krugman?

I know it doesn't pertain here, but can someone give me some insight as to the seeming obsession that Mr luskin has with Mssrs. DeLong and Krugman?

I know it doesn't pertain here, but can someone give me some insight as to the seeming obsession that Mr luskin has with Mssrs. DeLong and Krugman?

I know it doesn't pertain here, but can someone give me some insight as to the seeming obsession that Mr luskin has with Mssrs. DeLong and Krugman?

I know it doesn't pertain here, but can someone give me some insight as to the seeming obsession that Mr luskin has with Mssrs. DeLong and Krugman?

I know it doesn't pertain here, but can someone give me some insight as to the seeming obsession that Mr luskin has with Mssrs. DeLong and Krugman?

I know it doesn't pertain here, but can someone give me some insight as to the seeming obsession that Mr luskin has with Mssrs. DeLong and Krugman?

I know it doesn't pertain here, but can someone give me some insight as to the seeming obsession that Mr luskin has with Mssrs. DeLong and Krugman?

I know it doesn't pertain here, but can someone give me some insight as to the seeming obsession that Mr luskin has with Mssrs. DeLong and Krugman?

Sven's right: Woodward's tale makes no sense whatsoever. Bush,Cheney, Condie et al were beating the WMD drum beginning in August, and the slam dunk tale is in December.

Sven's right: Woodward's tale makes no sense whatsoever. Bush,Cheney, Condie et al were beating the WMD drum beginning in August, and the slam dunk tale is in December.

I share Brad's general frustration, but I'm not sure I agree with his specific criticism or his implied solution to the problem.

After all, reporting on what a politician says *is* reporting a fact--a nearly indisputable fact, at that. More to the point, what politicians say these days is often deliberately factually obfuscated, implying more than asserting. This puts reporters in a difficult situation.

The answer is agressive investigative reporting, and I'd like to see more of it. But typical reporting *isn't* investigative reporting and newspapers, anyway, don't have the resources to devote to treating every story this way.

I suspect it would be embarrassing for Tenet to announce that he took part in a scripted conversation in front of Bob Woodward, so they're counting on him not to.

Sic semper team players.

It looks like this post got cut off again

I suspect it would be embarrassing for Tenet to announce that he took part in a scripted conversation in front of Bob Woodward, so they're counting on him not to.

Sic semper team players.

Welcome to the club, Ron and Brian Boru. Brad's software works confusingly. 5 seconds after posting, refresh the comments field and see if your comment "took". It almost always did.

McManus is right that this is a Senate Intelligence Committee story, in addition to being a James Risen story. However, a moderate amount of Googling would have allowed Risen to set the story against known facts, and if Risen makes his living doing this particular kind of story, this should have been a piece of cake for him. When a source goes against widely-known facts the reporter should say so.

I think that Somerby ( http://www.dailyhowler.com ) is right: most reporters work to a script. Sometimes this is blamed on the reporters' cliquish pack mentality ("The Heathers"), but I am convinced that they have learned -- from patterns of hiring, firing, promotion and demotion -- what kind of stories they're supposed to write. The big villains are higher up the totem pole; the herd mentality is a result of stuff from above.

I think that a lot of media define their jobs in terms of "what the market wants" and "what the boss wants" without any concern either for professionalism or for their duties as citizens.

The comments of Bubba, supra, notwithstanding, those of us who have followed this twisted tale can see immediately that the NYT story doesn't fit information that has long been available. The White House repeatedly sent back to the CIA "intelligence" that didn't fit its needs. Cheney's visits to Langly weren't to deliver roses.

That Dubya critically questioned intelligence info that supported his decision to invade is laughable. ("I don't do subtle.") I really wondered why the White House cooperated with Woodward. This might be the thread. Call it "plausible deniability."

OK, the CIA has found religion and is going to collectively fall on its sword for the cause. But the main point is, why isn't someone at the NYT current enough on this long running-story to know at least what assertions need to be questioned (not to say researched further)?

The Woodward story's a bogus alibi, sold to a gullible reporter after the fact. Time reported that Bush had made up his mind to hit Saddam in May 2002.
http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/05/06/time.out/index.html

And here's what real reporting looks like, from Knight Ridder in October 2002:
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/nation/1607676

"While President Bush marshals congressional and international support for invading Iraq, a growing number of military officers, intelligence professionals and diplomats in his own government privately have deep misgivings about the administration's double-time march toward war.

"These officials charge that administration hawks have exaggerated evidence of the threat that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein poses -- including distorting his links to the al-Qaida terrorist network....

"They charge that the administration squelches dissenting views and that intelligence analysts are under intense pressure to produce reports supporting the White House's argument that Saddam poses such an immediate threat to the United States that pre-emptive military action is necessary.

"'Analysts at the working level in the intelligence community are feeling very strong pressure from the Pentagon to cook the intelligence books,' said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"A dozen other officials echoed his views in interviews. No one who was interviewed disagreed."

howard, sven:

The post is crap because it claims that CIA "was the proverbial stick in the mud holding up the aggressive posture". CIA analysts did not have what Bush wanted so they could not give it to him - if that's heroic I want a medal too. On the other hand, CIA bosses (Tenet) were willing to say anything Bush wanted ("It's a slam-dunk case!"). It will be sad if CIA is made the only scapegoat but whatever mud they are stuck in is richly deserved.

Damn the Times. The only thing I find reassuring is the numbers of people -- faithful subscribers among them -- who are mad as hell at the paper. I'm a faithful subscriber who may get smart one of these days. The editors at the Times need a... well a punishment not to be named and described in this family blog...!

Might want to take a look at David Corn's website for his p.m. post today ("An Ad Hoc Interview..."), a commentary on his debate with Grover Norquist this morning about F911. Here's the link:

http://www.bushlies.com/blog/

bubba, you'll see no support of george tenet from me; he should have been fired on 9/12/01.

But i don't follow what you are saying: it's very clear that the decision to invade iraq was made independent of current intel data. The point of the intel data was to "sell" the invasion, not to determine if it was necessary (read the full wolfowitz interview, which is online somewhere, that led to the vanity fair story: they all had reasons for invading iraq, but the one they could all agree on was wmds, so wmds became the selling point). The CIA, at first, wasn't helping them sell (see prof delong's brilliant juxtaposition of jim hoagland then and now from a few days ago); then, for whatever complex of reasons - tenet sold out the CIA to keep his job, exhaustion at cheney's browbeating, simple careerism, cherrypicking by feith et al at the OSP - the CIA came onboard.

There's nothing "crap" about this; it was all hidden in plain sight. (Thanks in particular, Carl, for digging out the old Knight Ridder link; when historians examine the prewar coverage, Knight Ridder and select WaPo reporters will be the only ones who don't look awful in retrospect.)

ron, you got a question?

I am coming to think that the high-level journalism is getting to be a bit like academics. True, really outstanding performance is generally rewarded; but so is following the pack and staying inside the envelope of conventional wisdom. By and large reporters are people who are proud to be where they got to, and ready to do what it takes to stay there. It's normal human behaviour that anyone who spends his time in the University sees everyday. There is something systemic in the rise of mediocrity towards the top. (I won't quote the obvious aphorism, which is a bit too strong and I think over the top in this context). The difference is that academic work of that type is part of a huge literature, and doesn't particularly stand out. Good only for deans and promotion committees. But journalism stands out, because there are so few outlets. That's why it's socially so much worse.

As Matt Yglesias points out, Risen himself knew it was implausible, because he'd painted quite the different story just over two months earlier:

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2004/07/index.html#003252
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=242965&category=SEP11&BCCode=SEP11&newsdate=6/25/2004

2-man team at Pentagon made Iraq-al-Qaida connection
Senate committee probes whether report exaggerated Iraq's threat, leading to war

By JAMES RISEN, New York Times
First published: Wednesday, April 28, 2004

WASHINGTON -- Soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, a two-man intelligence team set up shop at the Pentagon, searching for evidence of links between terrorist groups and host countries.

The men, Michael Maloof and David Wurmser, culled classified material, much of it uncorroborated data from the CIA. "We discovered tons of raw intelligence," said Maloof. "We were stunned that we couldn't find any mention of it in the CIA's finished reports."

(Follow the second link for more.)

Bubba, et al.:

What seems to be the entire staff of the CIA and NSC has made a documentary called Uncovered: The Whole Truth in which they rip apart every major element of the Bush story. See http://www.truthuncovered.com/index.cfm?ms=nation

The Bush Administration is lying. The CIA is getting angrier and angrier at the Administration. The Administration will lose this particular urination contest.

zizka wrote, "Welcome to the club, Ron and Brian Boru. Brad's software works confusingly. 5 seconds after posting, refresh the comments field and see if your comment 'took'. It almost always did."

NO NO NO NO NO!

Refresh? What's that mean?

Here's what you do: you hit the "Post" button, then (without waiting long...just 1/2 a second will do) hit the "Preview" button.

Maybe there should be a simple website "Propaganda and Crap" to list these news articles, and their compromised perpetrators. With links to the sites that really dissected each one...

...Certainly the problem is real, but the etiology may be inside-out. I think politicians figured out how to swing the writing process of straight news reporters, long long ago, and the public has ALWAYS let it ride. Because the general public attitude was: distrust of newspapers.

I have never seen evidence that people trusted newspapers in the 19th century, for example. “Yellow journalism,” much of it was called. People even learned later to distrust Hearst. "Believe only half of what you read, and none of what you hear."

Well, what if we’ve just lived through a temporary CHANGE in this long-held attitude, for economic and technological reasons?

To see this, look at the audience relationship to mass communications. We are still in the beginning historical stages of the electro-mechanical media. First came the radio networks, and then television. Are you old enough to remember when television first started? Here was the situation: ALL (but the most outcast!) Americans believed EVERYTHING that was (presented as non-fiction) on television. Walter Cronkhite was the gospel truth! Maybe it was because telvision was just such a fascinating invention: it HAD to be telling the truth.

Maybe also, the enormous sacrifice of WWII, and the survivors’ need to believe that their loved ones fought for the truth, inculcated a reverence for it--for a generation or two. Unquestionably, television started with a genuine public-service mentality.

I think that pitted against this example and competition, newspapers were forced to enter an UNUSUAL period of trying to being more or less meaningful, inciteful, and accurate.

Certainly, this turn-to-truth happened, despite economics reducing the number of newspapers, until there were only a few (or one!) left in each city, and so with little competition-incentive among THEMSELVES to be accurate. The competition was from the godlike TV networks--which happened to be causing reduced paper readership and circulation at the same time.

So then we had the marketing period of these newspaper monoplies happy to advertise themselves as the standard of truth. The “old gray lady,” and that stuff.

On a parallel track, over the same stretch of time, news analysis has blended with straight reportage. Proof of America's educational deterioration over decades is the fact that everyone--politicians, pundits, professors (not our host!), public, everyone--has allowed this. Let’s blame it on the Sixties counter-culture, since we won’t take full responsibility ourselves!

By now, of course, the media techno-octopus has evolved to a 24--7--365 grinder in which "journalists" encounter their own corporate-job security issues, hoping to maintain their salary level--in other words, class interests, inadvertently protecting higher vested interests. Of course the honest ones are not happy about it! Of course the ones true to themselves will flee!

However, the times they are a-changin’, agin: Now we appear to be entering a period when people are finally beginning to distrust the competing SCREEN media. (It was all just a blip in the history of technology.) For example, they no longer automatically believe what they are told on television. I’ll bet that even the partisans secretly discount their own lackeys!

With realistic computer graphic animation, the people will soon learn not to believe what they SEE, either.

That leaves us with: NO competitive truth-check on our monopoly newspapers, the few old gray ladies. Oops!! Look at the extraordinary privateering scandals of this Administration, the policy-corporate connivances!: Almost no investigative reportage!! Why bother breaking the Pentagon Papers or Watergate? Why bother to understand science, religion, or economics? Why bother cleaning up inaccuracies from lazy journalists?

It therefore follows, that the public will now move BACK to NOT BELIEVING the newspapers--perhaps even when the papers are presenting the truth.

And you will depend more upon the personal name and reputation of individual writers and artists, while dismissing others.

Howard:

Thank you for the suggestion to read Brad's article on Jim Hoagland:

+++
That was new stuff, delivered by a determined and effective CIA collection effort earlier this year. Agency information also allowed the president to assert (accurately) that "Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases."
---

The quote above shows that in 2002 the rot in CIA was much deeper than just Tenet ("delivered by a determined and effective CIA collection effort earlier this year"). So the claim

+++
We know that the chief architects of the war -- at the White House and the Pentagon -- waged a running battle with the CIA for the eighteen months leading up to the war, both on the WMD front and on their too-skeptical take on Iraq's ties to al Qaida.
---

is crap. QED.

Adams: The comments of Bubba, supra, notwithstanding, those of us who have followed this twisted tale can see immediately that the NYT story doesn't fit information that has long been available.

My comment was that CIA has very little reason to be proud (and consequently that pro-CIA post by Marshall was crap) - please see my response to howard above.

In fact, I think that intelligence data was used in making the decision - the decision WHEN to invade. The final orders were given after the "UN" weapons inspections proven that Saddam does not have WMD and so there will be no heavy US casualties.

Charles: The Administration will lose this particular urination contest.

Amen to that.

bubba, you must not have read very carefully.

The first hoagland article makes it clear that under browbeating from the bush white house, the cia began changing its tune on iraq.

In short, non-crap; rather, proving marshall's point.

I'm trying to figure out how you read it otherwise....

An interesting sidelight to this is Ayatollah Khamenei speech in Hamadan Iran Monday. He has laid out the Hamadan Doctrine. An attack of Iran by the US will be met with a world wide war. Obviously since Iran is not a world power in the conventional sense it must mean a global terrorist war. Ayatollah Khamenei can hear the NeoCon Likudniks banging the war drum for Iran this time. Apparently he intends a more proactive response then Sadam Hussein envisioned. An attack on Iran could cause a massive uprising in Iraq with Syria entering the fight. Can we win, of course but it will be far more costly than Iraq. Iran may not have the bomb but picture 9/11 with Airliners filled with a giant dirty bomb.

howard:

Ok, lets argue particulars. First, let me win a small victory.

Marshall: waged a running battle with the CIA for the eighteen months

Hoagland/2002: the information that "alowed the president to assert (accurately) that "Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases.""

So the claim that CIA as a whole waged a running battle for the truth for _18 months_ is false (unless Marshall's 18 months started from some other date than 9/11).

bubba, you clearly read the hoagland article, yet somehow we see it completely differently.

Marshall makes the point that there was an ongoing battle between the white house and the cia, a point supported by what hoagland claimed back in 2002 (namely, that the bush white house was browbeating the cia) and further supported by numerous leaks, including the excellent knight ridder article that carl cited at 3:12 p.m. and further supported by tenet's testimony that he had to caution bush and cheney for using inaccurate information.

You seem to think that because the cia did say, well, ok, there is this possibility here (which, in fact, turns out to be inaccurate, but at this late date, who's counting), that means that there was no battle? Or that it ended by 2002?

I guess we're just not going to agree here, because what i see as clear evidence that a battle was going on, you see as "mission accomplished."

howard/II:

Now for the more interesting point. Did CIA at _any time_ make the claim - to the Congress or the public - that Saddam did not have WMDs? Did Tenet or any of his high-level people resign in 2002 and expose the pressure? I said Marshall's post is crap because he makes a heroic act ("holding up the aggressive posture favored by these other forces within the administration") what was at best a simple professionalism ("consistently expressed doubts that Iraq has engaged in international terrorism or trained others to do so since 1993" - Hoagland/2002) and at worst the disgusting servility ("It's a slam-dunk case!").

howard: You seem to think that because the cia did say, well, ok, there is this possibility here (which, in fact, turns out to be inaccurate, but at this late date, who's counting), that means that there was no battle? Or that it ended by 2002?

CIA is an organization. To a large extent the boss (Tenet) speaks for his organization. Anything he ever uttered publicaly supported Bush. If the boss is way out of line, there may be a revolt, lawsuits, mass (say, 10% of the staff) resignations. Not in this case. If a few individuals resisted making the false claims, it is a credit to these individuals but not the agency as a whole.

And if you surrender (like alow the president to assert in 2002 that "Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases." etc. ) you cannot say that you keep on resistance afterwards. Well, at least for those of us from Mars :)

It is perferctly plausible that both claims are true: (i) that the Agency "waged a war with the Administration" over (the political and security issues associated with) the war in Iraq and (ii) that the Agency vastly overstated the case for WMD. Different components at the Agency are responsible for these assessments. One of them appears to have gotten it right; the other got it wrong.

And the Agency does not take overarching policy stands. It does not stake out a policy position (the war is a good or a bad idea) and then marshall all arguments to support it. This for the policy realm.

Did you and the Times reporter collaborate on this one?

I'm a little surprised that anyone would doubt that the CIA is very competent at fact-finding and analysis, figures out what it doesn't know and tries to fix it quick, reports it ALL to the White House, for which it works, soberly for the security of the United States, and periodically sends out confusing and contradictory statements to the media, for future possible use in covering adverse consequences, and for causing long and distracting disputes among its possible critics. American intelligence was into psy-ops by World War II, and the Cold War pushed it further.

Take the John Kennedy approach. He 'read' the NYT in just a few minutes- you can too.

You already know pretty much what they're going to say, and you know that so much of the story will be unsourced that there is no point in looking at the details.

So, hey presto!, just notice that there was a story and you are as well informed as somebody who pores over every column inch. If anyone who read the story makes a surprising allegation, just say, in a plonking tone, "But not in the south..."

Works every time.

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