The Top 10 Distortions by the Times in Campaign 2004
Times Watch Special Report
"Is the New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?" That was the provocative title of Times' Public Editor Daniel Okrent's July 25 column. Okrent's answer to his own question was equally stimulating: "Of course it is."
However, Okrent insisted in a later column that the Times' liberalism manifested itself only on hot-button social issues, such as abortion and gay marriage, and that the paper's political coverage stayed fair and balanced throughout 2004. But Times Watch tracked the paper from the beginning of the year to election eve and found its campaign coverage to be as liberally skewed as its treatment of social issues.
What follows, in roughly chronological order, is a dubious roll call of the 10 worst distortions by the Times from Campaign 2004......
1) An Ominous Beginning: Democratic "Plans to Help Middle Class," but Bush "Underfinanced" Education
As Campaign 2004 began in earnest, the Jan. 6 edition of the New York Times offered an ominous preview of the upcoming presidential campaign from the paper's skewed perspective.
On the left side of the page, reporters Edward Wyatt and David Halbfinger presented the views of two Democratic primary challengers, Gen. Wesley Clark and Sen. John Kerry, in "Clark and Kerry Offering Plans to Help Middle Class." Both candidates lambasted Bush's tax policy, while no Republican spokesman received space to defend Bush.
Contrast that with Richard Stevenson's Republican offering that same day, "Bush Pushes Education as Election Year Opens," which followed Bush to an inner-city school in St. Louis. Unlike the Democratic story, the one on Bush included criticism of the president's education plan from two Democratic primary candidates, Gov. Howard Dean and Rep. Dick Gephardt.
In the headline to the Democratic story ("Clark and Kerry Offering Plans to Help Middle Class"), the Democratic tax plans were shown as helpful. In contrast, Bush's headline portrayed the president as cynically "pushing" education in an election year ("Bush Pushes Education as Election Year Opens").
The cut-out lines showed even more skew: While the Democratic plans appealed to everyday folks ("Gearing proposals to appeal to everyday Americans"), Bush's education ideas were couched in Democratic criticism ("Defending programs that Democrats say he underfinanced.").
2) Misrepresenting the 9/11 Report on Iraq/Al Qaeda Links
The Times' long refusal to tie Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to the terrorist group Al Qaeda culminated in a false headline over a story on the June release of the 9/11 Commission report.
Reporters Philip Shenon and Christopher Marquis grabbed the June 17 front page with the erroneously headlined story "Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie; Describes A Wider Plot For 9/11," the first in a series of blame-Bush stories the Times filed in the wake of the report.
The misrepresentation was so blatant that Vice President Dick Cheney took the rare step of criticizing by name the paper and the "outrageous" headline, on the CNBC show "Capital Report." When host Gloria Borger suggested the press was making a distinction between Iraq-Al Qaeda ties in general and Iraq-Al Qaeda ties to 9/11 in particular, Cheney responded: "No, they're not. The New York Times does not. 'The Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Ties,' that's what it says. That's the vaunted New York Times….I've watched a lot of the coverage on it and the fact of the matter is they don't make a distinction. They fuzz it up. Sometimes it's through ignorance. Sometimes it's malicious. But you'll take a statement that's geared specifically to say there's no connection in relations to the 9/11 attack and then say, 'Well, obviously there's no case here.' And then jump over to challenge the president's credibility or my credibility."
Lee Hamilton, the Democratic co-chairman of the 9/11 commission, agreed the media had overblown the matter: "The Vice President is saying, I think, that there were connections between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's government. We don't disagree with that. What we have said is what the governor just said, we don't have any evidence of a cooperative, or a corroborative relationship between Saddam Hussein's government and these al Qaeda operatives with regard to the attacks on the United States. So it seems to me the sharp differences that the press has drawn, the media has drawn, are not that apparent to me."
Republican commission member John Lehman echoed that criticism in an interview for CNN's "Inside Politics," and brought up the Times' coverage: "We had previously pointed out that, particularly in Sudan, there is very hard evidence of collaboration on the X gas and other evidence, and additional contacts between Saddam's intelligence service and al Qaeda in the assistance in training in weapons, chemical and biological weapons, anthrax manufacture, and that's what we had in our report yesterday, but unfortunately, the New York Times sort of highlighted only one half of that."
3) Suggesting Political Motivation Behind Terror Warnings
When Tom Ridge, the secretary of Homeland Security, issued a terror warning following the Democratic Convention in Boston, the lead editorial of Aug. 3 obnoxiously accused Bush of playing political games with terror warnings: "It's unfortunate that it is necessary to fight suspicions of political timing, suspicions the administration has sown by misleading the public on security. The Times reports today that much of the information that led to the heightened alert is actually three or four years old and that authorities had found no concrete evidence that a terror plot was actually under way. This news does nothing to bolster the confidence Americans need that the administration is not using intelligence for political gain."
So, after long lambasting Bush for not taking terrorism seriously before 9/11, the Times promptly turned around and accused him of playing politics with terror threats for electoral gain.
Todd Purdum's Aug. 4 front-page news analysis, "War and Peace, and Politics --Dealing With the Crucial Issue of Terrorism In the Heat of a Tight Presidential Contest," also recycled charges of Bush's politicization of terror threats: "'We don't do politics in the Department of Homeland Security,' Secretary Tom Ridge said on Tuesday in dismissing any suggestion that his latest threat warning had a political motive. But on Sunday, Mr. Ridge, a former Republican congressman and governor of Pennsylvania, did do some politics all the same, when he declared that the intelligence behind his alert was 'the result of the president's leadership in the war against terror.' John Kerry may not share that view, of course, but it is hard for him to say so, and the biggest thing the Democrats may have to fear in this campaign is the power of fear itself….Mr. Bush must also take pains not to be seen as letting the political tail wag the terrorism dog. Word that much of the newly discovered intelligence that prompted the latest alert was years old led even some law enforcement officials to wonder why Mr. Ridge had raised the threat level just now."
4) Same Campaign Tactic, Two Different Takes
The Times hit the campaign trail with Bush and Kerry in mid-August and found the two camps employed quite similar tactics to rally voters. Yet the Times filed two very different takes. While Bush "fields softballs from the faithful" that sometimes "aren't even questions at all," Kerry supporters merely "raised hands with questions rather than waving signs with slogans."
White House reporter Elisabeth Bumiller's Aug. 16 story, "On the Road, Bush Fields Softballs From the Faithful," opened by talking about Bush's Q&A sessions: "His father loved them, Richard Nixon started them and President Bush has turned them into the near-daily warm bath of his re-election campaign. Last week alone, in Virginia, Florida, New Mexico and Oregon, Mr. Bush had four 'Ask President Bush' question-and-answer sessions with rapt Republican audiences. The week before he had one in Columbus, Ohio, and this week he has one scheduled for St. Croix, Wis."
Bumiller emphasized the softball nature of the questions: "As anyone who has sat through the 90-minute forums knows, the questions are not hand grenades that detonate onto the evening news. Take, for example, one of the first queries at the 'Ask President Bush' session in Beaverton, Ore., on Friday: 'I'm wondering if I can get some inauguration tickets?' Or consider this from Albuquerque on Wednesday: 'Can I introduce my mother and mother-in-law, who are new citizens to this country?' Many times the questions aren't even questions at all. Exhibit A might be these words from an audience member in Niceville, Fla., on Tuesday: 'I'm 60 years old and I've voted Republican from the very first time I could vote. And I also want to say this is the very first time that I have felt that God was in the White House.'"
Bumiller summarized: "The result is often a love-in with heavily Christian crowds. Mr. Bush relaxes, shows off his humor and appears more human than in his sometimes tongue-tied and tense encounters with the press. He clearly relishes the sessions: As of this coming Wednesday in Wisconsin, Mr. Bush will have had 12 such campaign forums, which is one less than the number of solo news conferences he has had in three and a half years in the White House."
By contrast, Jodi Wilgoren's Aug. 17 story from the Kerry campaign, "Front-Porch Chat: Birth of a Kerry Campaign Tactic," soft-pedaled the cynicism in favor of celebrating the middle-class folks lucky enough to be used as Kerry backdrops: "For every porch picked, there are those passed over," Wilgoren wrote while telling the story of a Springfield, Ore. homeowner.
She explained: "So goes the back story of the Kerry campaign's newest signature, the 'front porch visit' -- though the porch is optional. Mr. Kerry and his running mate, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, have held 10 such homespun events, in middle-class neighborhoods across Iowa, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and here in Oregon since stumbling across the form in mid-June."
In contrast with Bumiller's cynical take on Bush, the Kerry-Edwards ticket came off as positive and "homespun" under Wilgoren's sympathetic eye: "The low-key, invitation-only events, where perhaps 100 people sit around red-checked picnic tables, raising hands with questions rather than waving signs with slogans, mimic the town-hall style campaigning for the Iowa caucuses at which both Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards excelled. For Mr. Kerry, porch visits follow the chili feeds he held at firehouses all over New Hampshire and Iowa. The first one happened almost by accident. Before a rally at a park in Columbus, Ohio, Mr. Kerry's aides sent him to the home of Lynette Farmer, thinking it would be a good image for them to walk together to the event. They chatted on Ms. Farmer's porch, and a gimmick was born. Situated mainly in swing states, the visits are intended to emphasize the Democrats' kitchen-table economic appeal -- light on partisanship, laden with 'we're here for you.'"
5) A Double Standard on Acceptance Speeches
Reporter Todd Purdum came away unimpressed with President Bush's acceptance speech at the Republican Convention in Manhattan. Criticism of the Bush administration dominated his front-page analysis, "Bold Strokes, Few Details," right from the start: "For a nation divided over his stewardship, distressed about the economy and dubious about the war with Iraq, President Bush had one overriding message last night: He's still the one."
Purdum sniffed: "But he offered few critical details of the second-term domestic agenda he outlined. His big policy ideas -- restraining government spending, simplifying the tax code, offering tax credits for health savings accounts, allowing personal investment accounts for Social Security -- were vague. And the specific proposals he cited -- increasing money for community colleges, opening rural health centers -- were mostly small."
Later he characterized Bush's tax-cut push as "steamrolling" a "compliant Congress," before continuing: "But Mr. Bush's promise then to 'extend the promise of prosperity to every forgotten corner of this country' remains unmet, slow job growth makes his assertion last night that 'we have seen a shaken economy rise to its feet' debatable, and the war is enmeshed in what even he recently acknowledged as a 'miscalculation of what the conditions would be.'….Mr. Bush's own stated rationale for deposing Saddam Hussein has shifted repeatedly, the unconventional weapons that he said threatened the world have not been found, and his opponents contend that his actions have inflamed Muslim extremists and put Americans at greater risk."
By contrast, Purdum's reaction to Kerry's acceptance speech at the Democrat's Boston Convention in July warmed to its subject, and the headline added to the pro-Kerry glow: "Strong Show of 'Strength' -- Speech to Big Audience As a Test of Leadership."
Purdum opened with a zestful, "Mission Accomplished" vibe: "For months, John Kerry and his supporters have told voters that he is strong enough to keep the nation safe and caring enough to make it comfortable with him as president. On Thursday night his goal was to show the biggest audience of his life that both claims were true, and he gave it his best shot. In an emphatic speech that used some variation of the word 'strength' 17 times, Mr. Kerry portrayed himself not only as a plausible, but also as a vastly preferable commander in chief to President Bush, one whose own combat service left him with a special understanding of the twin American traditions of force and restraint."
Later Purdum gushed: "Mr. Kerry may well have turned a corner on the path toward inspiring his party, and inviting swing voters to put him in the White House. He perspired visibly in the overcrowded hall, but his delivery was fluid, relaxed and assured, and he smiled often."
6) Elisabeth Bumiller's Conspiracy Theorizing on Bush's Debate "Bulge"
Before and after the final presidential debate in Tempe, Ariz., White House reporter Elisabeth Bumiller twice treated a left-wing Internet-based conspiracy theory as legitimate news.
Her first bit of rumor-mongering came on Oct. 11, when she picked up on Web chatter that Bush was "wired" for his first debate to receive answers from anti-liberal bogeyman Karl Rove. (This after the Times ignored a similar rumor on the Drudge Report about John Kerry removing a "cheat sheet" from his jacket before the first debate).
Her story, "The Mystery of the Bulge in the Jacket," came complete with an "incriminating" photo of Bush's back. Bumiller gasped: "What was that bulge in the back of President Bush's suit jacket at the presidential debate in Miami last week? According to rumors racing across the Internet this week, the rectangular bulge visible between Mr. Bush's shoulder blades was a radio receiver, getting answers from an offstage counselor into a hidden presidential earpiece. The prime suspect was Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's powerful political adviser. When the online magazine Salon published an article about the rumors on Friday, the speculation reached such a pitch that White House and campaign officials were inundated with calls."
Bumiller actually took the charge seriously: "First they said that pictures showing the bulge might have been doctored. But then, when the bulge turned out to be clearly visible in the television footage of the evening, they offered a different explanation….Ms. Devenish could not say why the 'rumpling' was rectangular."
She followed up a week later in her October 18 "White House Letter," after the last presidential debate: "There are also two story lines from the presidential debates that to the exasperation of President Bush's advisers won't go away: the bubble and the bulge. The bulge -- the strange rectangular box visible between the president's shoulder blades in the first debate -- has set off so much frenzied speculation on the Internet that it has become what literary critics call an objective correlative, or an object that evokes large emotions and ideas."
Bumiller attempted to hook the conspiracy theory into a metaphor of anti-Bush criticism: "The bulge is in many ways related to the bubble, which is the word Mr. Bush himself uses to describe the isolation of the presidency. In this case, Mr. Bush's critics argue that he has so walled himself off from dissent in his bubble that he was ill-prepared to take on the challenge of Senator John Kerry in their three debates. Therefore, Mr. Bush had to make use of the bulge, which is most popularly rumored to be a radio receiver that transmitted answers from an offstage adviser into a hidden presidential earpiece. In the last two weeks, the bulge has taken on a life of its own to become a symbol to Mr. Bush's critics of all that is wrong with his presidency."
As Bryon York reported on National Review Online, the main source of the theory, author Dave Lindorff, is a "pioneer in comparing George W. Bush to Adolf Hitler." York quoted Lindorff: "'It's going a bit far to compare the Bush of 2003 to the Hitler of 1933. Bush simply is not the orator that Hitler was. But comparisons of the Bush administration's fear mongering tactics to those practiced so successfully and with such terrible results by Hitler and Goebbels on the German people and their Weimar Republic are not at all out of line.'"
7) Ron Suskind's NYT Magazine Cover Story on Bush's "Intolerance of Doubt"
Two weeks before the election, the Times' Oct. 17 Sunday Magazine featured a cover story by liberal author and Bush antagonist Ron Suskind entitled "Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush."
Suskind is the author of the book "The Price of Loyalty," a hit piece on Bush based on accounts from former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and hailed by liberals for its hostile portrayal of the president.
In the cover story, Suskind pondered: "What underlies Bush's certainty? And can it be assessed in the temporal realm of informed consent? All of this -- the 'gut' and 'instincts,' the certainty and religiosity -- connects to a single word, 'faith,' and faith asserts its hold ever more on debates in this country and abroad. That a deep Christian faith illuminated the personal journey of George W. Bush is common knowledge. But faith has also shaped his presidency in profound, nonreligious ways. The president has demanded unquestioning faith from his followers, his staff, his senior aides and his kindred in the Republican Party. Once he makes a decision -- often swiftly, based on a creed or moral position -- he expects complete faith in its rightness."
Suskind wrote how that "certainty" manifested itself: "The disdainful smirks and grimaces that many viewers were surprised to see in the first presidential debate are familiar expressions to those in the administration or in Congress who have simply asked the president to explain his positions. Since 9/11, those requests have grown scarce; Bush's intolerance of doubters has, if anything, increased, and few dare to question him now. A writ of infallibility -- a premise beneath the powerful Bushian certainty that has, in many ways, moved mountains -- is not just for public consumption: it has guided the inner life of the White House….A cluster of particularly vivid qualities was shaping George W. Bush's White House through the summer of 2001: a disdain for contemplation or deliberation, an embrace of decisiveness, a retreat from empiricism, a sometimes bullying impatience with doubters and even friendly questioners."
8) Tarring "Unsubstantiated" Swift Boats Veterans, Plugging False Bush "AWOL" Smear
Perhaps no issue revealed as much about the Times' double standard as did its treatment of Bush and Kerry's respective Vietnam War campaign controversies. Throughout 2004, the Times faithfully pursued Democratic charges that Bush failed to fulfill his National Guard obligations during the Vietnam War, yet dismissed as partisan and "unsubstantiated" the allegations from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, sticking the warning label of "unsubstantiated" on the group's allegations no less than 20 times. By contrast, not once did the Times describe even the wildest "Bush-was-AWOL" charges as "unsubstantiated."
Here's a sample of the stark difference in coverage:
"Democratic Chief Says 'AWOL' Bush Will Be an Issue After a Nominee Emerges"
-- Headline over a Feb. 2 story by Katharine Seelye.
"In a rare broadcast interview that he agreed to do as his poll numbers were falling and Democrats were increasingly hopeful of ousting him in November, Mr. Bush said on 'Meet the Press' that he was far from alone in judging Saddam Hussein to be a threat. He rebutted accusations that he did not complete all of his duties while in the National Guard in 1972."
-- Richard Stevenson, Feb. 9.
"Until this month, the Republican defense of Mr. Bush's military record, sticking to the bare essentials, had successfully neutralized a succession of newspaper articles that raised questions about Mr. Bush's service. But now, with Iraq casualties mounting, with angry Democrats coalescing behind a decorated Vietnam veteran and with credibility questions dogging Mr. Bush, the broad-brush defense has been abandoned."
-- David Barstow, Feb. 15.
"Republicans had expected Mr. Bush to enter the general election campaign benefiting from his leadership in the war on terrorism. But the continued deaths of American troops in Iraq, the apparent absence of stockpiles of banned weapons there and the questions about Mr. Bush's service in the Guard in the Vietnam era have all eaten into his support, left the White House scrambling and emboldened Democrats."
-- Richard Stevenson, Feb. 18.
Yet the Times dismissed as "unsubstantiated" allegations by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth:
"But on close examination, the accounts of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth prove to be riddled with inconsistencies. In many cases, material offered as proof by these veterans is undercut by official Navy records and the men's own statements."
-- Jim Rutenberg and Kate Zernike, Aug. 20.
"The national counsel for President Bush's re-election campaign resigned on Wednesday, less than 24 hours after he acknowledged that he had provided legal advice to a veterans group that has leveled unsubstantiated attacks on Senator John Kerry's Vietnam War record in a book and on the air."
-- Elisabeth Bumiller, Aug. 26.
"[Democrats] argue that the Bush family has long resorted to brutal political tactics when cornered and is known for its parallel campaign tracks, one on the high road, and one on what Democrats would call the low road. Those accusations have grown particularly strong in the last month, in which Mr. Kerry has been the subject of unsubstantiated charges by veterans about his Vietnam combat medals."
-- Adam Nagourney, Sept. 1.
9) A Slanted Voter Guide
The meat of the Times' Voter Guide (released October 26, the Tuesday before the election) was a two-page spread on the party's respective tickets. The guide's pronounced pro-Democratic bias stood out in the story's headlines to photo captions as well as the text itself.
First, the Republican side: Richard Stevenson's article on Bush, "The Bush Philosophy: Resolute, No Matter What" included this caption to a photo of Bush on stage: "President Bush greeting Senator John Kerry after the debate on Oct. 13 in Tempe, Ariz. On issues, Mr. Bush reaches out sparingly."
Stevenson characterized Bush's "polarizing record": "As he faces the voters this year as an incumbent, Mr. Bush, 58, has assembled a weighty if polarizing record on foreign and domestic policy that leaves no doubt where he stands on the big issues….In pursuing his agenda with a Republican-led Congress, he has mixed charm, strong-arm politics, intense party discipline and a degree of certitude that has been inspiring to his supporters and maddening to his opponents. On many issues, big and small, his approach often seems binary: yes or no, good or evil, with us or against us."
Stevenson then highlighted pro-Kerry talking points: "In part because of the tax cuts, a huge budget surplus has given way to a substantial deficit. And many other indicators suggest that things have gotten worse rather than better for many Americans. The number of people without health insurance has grown. Poverty levels are up….The bloodshed in Iraq, the economy's inability to generate jobs in large numbers, the tight presidential race, all have taken some of the swagger out of Mr. Bush, but not his basic self-confidence and optimism."
Raymond Hernandez's profile of Vice President Dick Cheney, "Cheney, From Any Perspective, Made His Role Matter," featured a fearsome-looking Cheney in the background of a shot of Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, a metaphor for the story's theme of the veep working in the background for Bush.
Hernandez worked in Democratic criticism: "Democrats argue that Mr. Cheney is one of the most divisive figures in American politics -- a man whom they hold largely responsible for what they call the right-wing extremism of the Bush administration."
The Democratic ticket received a substantially more positive presentation. While the profiles of Bush and Cheney highlighted attacks by Democrats, neither of the articles on Kerry and Edwards mentioned Republican criticism. Todd Purdum's analysis of Kerry, "Kerry: Apart From the Crowd," featured this cut-out line: "Time and again, he has proved himself most focused in the crunch." The caption to a photo of Kerry arriving in Arizona for the last presidential debate fawned: "Polls said he outperformed the president."
Purdum's actual story began: "If John Kerry is elected, he will win with one of the longest but least clear-cut records of any candidate in modern times, with a personal life shaped by early independence and youthful service under fire and a public career that has blended liberal orthodoxies with stabs of skepticism and episodes of sailing against the wind." Purdum did bring up Kerry's liberal voting record, but only to suggest it wasn't really all that liberal: "If Mr. Kerry's relationships are complex, so are his ideas. Based on his roll call votes in 2003, The National Journal ranked him the most liberal member of the Senate. But his lifetime voting -- and speaking -- record is considerably more complicated than that ranking would suggest."
Purdum ended with this morale booster for the Kerry camp: "But time and again, Mr. Kerry has proved himself most disciplined and focused in the crunch, whether in the brown waters off Vietnam, in the frozen cornfields of Iowa, where his caucus victory against the odds last winter set him off on the road to the nomination, or in the three televised debates this fall, in which polls showed the public solidly believed he outperformed Mr. Bush. If the modern presidency amounts to one perpetual crisis, Mr. Kerry might well have a good idea of just what he is in for."
Reporter Randal Archibold's profile of vice presidential nominee Sen. John Edwards carried the sunny headline "In His Rapid Rise, Edwards Carries A Common Touch." The cut-out line was even more fawning: "The odds are against him? The son of a mill worker likes those odds." And the caption to a photo of Edwards signaling to supporters from a bus window read: "Senator John Edwards's ability to connect helped him in the Democratic primaries."
Archibold's underlying article wasn't quite so nauseatingly sweet, pointing out that Edwards' "record of legislative accomplishment is thin."
10) "Looted Iraqi Explosives" Scoop: Bombshell or Politically Motivated Dud?
On Oct. 25, just eight days before the election, the Times trumpeted a two-column lead story, "Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site in Iraq," about events that happened at least 18 months ago. The story blamed the Bush administration for letting almost 400 tons of powerful explosives disappear from the Al Qaqaa weapons cache in Iraq. Grim news -- but was it true?
Subsequent reporting suggested the premise of the NYT's suspiciously timed story (the possible source of which was the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the anti-Bush Mohamed ElBaradei) was vastly overblown, with considerable doubt soon raised as to whether heavy weaponry had been removed from the Al Qaqaa site before or after U.S. troops arrived.
According to reporters James Glanz, William Broad and David Sanger: "The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives -- used to demolish buildings, make missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons -- are missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations. The huge facility, called Al Qaqaa, was supposed to be under American military control but is now a no man's land, still picked over by looters as recently as Sunday. United Nations weapons inspectors had monitored the explosives for many years, but White House and Pentagon officials acknowledge that the explosives vanished sometime after the American-led invasion last year."
The Times glided right by the possibility that the weapons were already gone by the time U.S. forces arrived: "A senior Bush administration official said that during the initial race to Baghdad, American forces 'went through the bunkers, but saw no materials bearing the I.A.E.A. seal.' It is unclear whether troops ever returned."
In a tonal shift from the paper's typical downplaying of the threat of Saddam Hussein, the Times emphasized Iraqi weaponry to expose the administration's alleged failure: "The explosives missing from Al Qaqaa are the strongest and fastest in common use by militaries around the globe."
But an "NBC Nightly News" report that very night seemed to refute the paper's premise. According to reporter Jim Miklaszewski: "April 10, 2003, only three weeks into the war, NBC News was embedded with troops from the Army's 101st Airborne as they temporarily take over the Al Qaqaa weapons installation south of Baghdad. But these troops never found the nearly 380 tons of some of the most powerful conventional explosives, called HMX and RDX, which is now missing. The U.S. troops did find large stockpiles of more conventional weapons, but no HMX or RDX….Were the explosives at Al Qaqaa when U.S. troops arrived? It's not clear. But Pentagon officials say it's possible Saddam Hussein had the explosives moved and hidden before the war. Officials here say the Iraqi military was dispersing many of its weapons before the U.S. invasion, but there's apparently no hard intelligence to prove that's what happened to the high explosives at Al Qaqaa….But one U.S. official tells NBC News that recent disagreements between the administration and the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency makes the agency's release of this explosive information, one week before elections, appear highly political."
Neither the search by the 101st Airborne, nor the anti-administration leanings of the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, made it into the Times' story.
Undaunted, the paper continued to make its "explosives" scoop an issue against Bush, running a front-page follow-up the next day from David Sanger, "Iraq Explosives Becomes Issue In Campaign."
Sanger's story opened: "The White House sought on Monday to explain the disappearance of 380 tons of high explosives in Iraq that American forces were supposed to secure, as Senator John Kerry seized on the missing cache as 'one of the great blunders of Iraq' and said President Bush's 'incredible incompetence' had put American troops at risk. Mr. Bush never mentioned the disappearance of the high explosives during a long campaign speech in Greeley, Colo., about battling terrorism….White House officials said they could not explain why warnings from the international agency in May 2003 about the stockpile's vulnerability to looting never resulted in action."
A caption to a picture of Bush with troops in Nebraska read: "Mr. Bush did not mention the issue of missing explosives in Iraq." That's rich, given that Tuesday's Times doesn't mention details of the NBC News report that could well have negated their big anti-Bush "bombshell."
In one of several follow-up stories about the Times' conveniently timed scoop, reporter David Halbfinger patted his paper on the back in his Oct. 27 story: "The disappearance of the explosives has roiled the presidential campaign since the report on Monday, by The New York Times and CBS News, that some of them may have been removed from an ammunition dump after American troops passed by and failed to secure the area."
The New York Times credited itself for "roiling" the Bush campaign with its "explosives" scoop, but in fact that's what the paper did throughout Campaign 2004 -- all in an attempt to ensure smooth sailing for Navy veteran John Kerry, while making the water as choppy as possible for President Bush's ship of state.
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