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Politics : I Will Continue to Continue, to Pretend....
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To: Sully- who wrote (17780)2/11/2006 6:19:24 AM
From: Sully-   of 35834
 
MSNBC Misreports Latest CIA Leak Development

Media Blog
Stephen Spruiell Reporting

Today on MSNBC, Natalie Allen misreported the latest news on the CIA leak case. Here's what she said:

<<< ALLEN: New testimony from Lewis "Scooter" Libby implicates the very highest levels of the White House in the CIA leak scandal. Court papers show that Libby says his superiors authorized him to leak the name of an undercover CIA operative. >>>


Whoops! Let's take a look at what those court papers actually show:

<<< WASHINGTON (CNN) — Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, told a grand jury he was "authorized by his superiors" to disclose classified information from an intelligence report to reporters, according to the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case.

In a letter to Libby's lawyers, obtained by CNN, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said it is his understanding that Libby testified he was "authorized to disclose information about the National Intelligence Estimate to the press by his superiors." >>>


Nothing in there about the name of an undercover CIA operative. Later in the segment, MSNBC correspondent David Shuster also misquoted the court documents:

<<< SHUSTER: The latest batch of documents came out a couple of days ago. It's these letters, a series of letters between prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and Scooter Libby's defense lawyers, and in the letter Fitzgerald tells them, "As we discussed during our telephone conversation, Mr. Libby testified to the grand jury that he was authorized to disclose information to the press by his superiors." >>>


Notice how Shuster dropped the words "about the National Intelligence Estimate" from his report, thus compounding Allen's original error.

All of this is part of a trend of misreporting on this story that MB reader Kevin K. picked up on:

<<< Here's Fitzgerald's actual written statement:
    "[I]t is our understanding that Mr. Libby testified that 
    he was authorized to disclose information about the NIE 
    to the press by his superiors."
Read the statement carefully. In particular, note the choice of the word "about." This is carefully selected lawyerly language and clearly means something other than "information in the NIE" or "information from the NIE."

Bottom line: Based upon this statement from Fitzgerald, there simply is no way that we can conclude that Libby testified that he was authorized by his superiors to leak classified information. We can conclude nothing more than that Libby has asserted that he was authorized to say something "about" a classified report. That's a whompingly big distinction! >>>


Maybe reporters can be forgiven for not making the "about" distinction clear. But there's no excuse for leaving out the entire sentence about the National Intelligence Estimate.

Video here.
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