Bunglers ignored.
www.mediaresearch.org
Thursday night ABC's World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News skipped the bipartisan Senate Government Affairs Committee report issued by Republican Senator Fred Thompson and Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman documenting how the Clinton administration bungled the investigation of Chinese espionage. CNN's The World Today, FNC's Fox Report and the CBS Evening News all ran full stories.
Instead of touching on the latest development on the China-front critical of Clinton's team, ABC led with a CDC report on increased life expectancy and followed with full pieces on how many vacation destinations have just as much air pollution as big cities, post-vacation stress, controversy over dredging the Delaware River around Philadelphia and a look at a spa in France which uses grape seeds as a skin conditioner which supposedly slows the aging process.
Like CBS, the August 5 NBC Nightly News opened led with the office shooting in Pelham, Alabama that killed three, but instead of touching on Chinese espionage NBC ran multiple stories on the heat and drought and wrapped up with a story on new discoveries about how the brain controls sleep.
On the CBS Evening News Bill Plante outlined the basic findings but avoided naming names, such as Janet Reno:
"The bi-partisan report paints a scathing picture of incompetence in the FBI and Department of Energy, an investigation flawed from the outset by one blunder after another."
After a soundbite of Fred Thompson citing how there were communications failures among key officials and poor judgment, Plante introduced Lieberman: "The committee's top Democrat was equally critical."
Joe Lieberman: "There was what was to me a shocking lack of thoroughness, competency and urgency in the government's investigation of this very important and critical case."
Plante: "Among the findings, for four years investigators overlooked the fact that suspect Wen Ho Lee had signed a waiver which would have allowed his computer to be searched; The Department of Justice, for the first time in a case like this, refused an FBI request for a special surveillance warrant against Lee; investigators had multiple suspects but only two, Wen Ho Lee and his wife, were actually investigated."
Of course, any watcher of Carl Cameron on the Fox News Channel or reader of CyberAlert learned all that months ago.
Plante then showed Wen Ho Lee telling Mike Wallace of his innocence and allowed Bill Richardson to concede the investigation was botched but maintain that Lee is the right suspect.
On CNN's The World Today reporter Gene Randall pointed out how "Janet Reno was a special target" of the report and Julie Kirtz, in her Fox Report piece, ran a clip of Reno defending herself at her daily media briefing.
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