Bombshell With A Times Delay
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 15, 1999; Page C01
On Thursday, March 4, the New York Times was all set to unload a
lengthy story about Chinese theft of U.S. nuclear secrets but held up at the
request of the FBI.
The next day FBI officials again asked for a delay, but this time the paper
refused. The front-page Saturday story said among other things that the
main suspect -- a Chinese American computer scientist at Los Alamos
National Laboratory whom the paper declined to name -- had failed a lie
detector test.
Executive Editor Joseph Lelyveld said FBI officials justified the initial
request for delay "on grounds that they had an appointment to question this
alleged suspect on Friday. They had set it up in a very low-key way. We
knew things that he didn't know -- in particular that he had flunked his
second polygraph, and that they were aware of a trip that he was
supposed to take to Shanghai."
Since the suspect was apparently unaware of the extent of the FBI's
evidence about the alleged 1980s spying, said Lelyveld, "I guess they
wanted the element of surprise. If the story had appeared a day earlier, he
would have had a heightened awareness of himself as a suspect. It seemed
valid. We only said we'd hold it a day."
It is rare but hardly unprecedented for editors to agree to a law
enforcement request to hold off on a story that might damage an ongoing
investigation or military operation. Perhaps the most famous such example
is when President Kennedy asked the Times not to publish advance details
of the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion -- a decision Kennedy later regretted,
given the disastrous results.
When the FBI renewed its request on the China story, Lelyveld sent word
that he would consider it only if FBI Director Louis Freeh called him
personally. Lelyveld waited until 7 p.m., but no call came, so the Times
went ahead with a story that exploded with maximum political force. Two
days later the government fired the suspect, Wen Ho Lee, who refused to
cooperate with the FBI probe.
Footnote: Some Wall Street Journal news staffers were incensed last week
when a Journal editorial on the Chinese spying cited "the New York
Times, which broke the story Saturday." The next day, the Journal editorial
page, in a rare bit of crow-eating, said that "we embarrassed our
colleagues and ourselves" and that "we should have credited Carla Anne
Robbins of our own Washington bureau."
In January Robbins was the first to report which American missile was
involved and that the suspect had been removed from sensitive projects;
the Times had reported on an unspecified Chinese nuclear theft in late
December, and its March 6 story contained considerable new classified
information. Times Washington Bureau Chief Michael Oreskes said his
reporters Jeff Gerth and Eric Schmitt broke the story, but "I am happy to
give Carla some credit. Carla's story advanced the ball. Journalists
shouldn't be arguing with each other about who's going down in the record
books."
Tab Quotes Bill on Hill
White House spokesman Joe Lockhart is mad at the New York Daily
News. Tom DeFrank, the News's Washington bureau chief, is mad at
Lockhart. And thereby hangs a tale of journalistic ethics and presidential
access.
In a first step toward repairing his frayed relations with the media,
President Clinton held two off-the-record dinners last week in El Salvador
and Guatemala with groups of White House correspondents.
"The president and I have talked about him spending more casual time with
the press," Lockhart said. "It didn't make sense to do this in the heat of the
impeachment process, but it does now." Those sharing the two-hour meals
with a voluble Clinton included reporters from USA Today, the New York
Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street
Journal, the five major TV networks and the three newsmagazines.
But the process sprang a leak. On Friday the News published a story by
Kenneth Bazinet, quoting "participants" as recalling that the president said
Hillary Rodham Clinton could rake in "$20 million" if she passes up a New
York Senate race. Bazinet was on the trip but not at the dinners. Lockhart
called the story "a new low" in which a reporter relies on other reporters as
sources.
"Joe went ballistic," DeFrank said. "He told Ken that 'our relationship is
about to change.' He threatened to cut Bazinet off. . . . No reporter is
bound by the rules of a meeting he didn't attend. The ethical problem is
with the reporters who kissed and told. For Joe to threaten us with
reprisals is a little over the top."
Lockhart says he did no such thing. "That's not true," he said. "That's not
the way I do business." But he said such incidents make it harder to
arrange informal access to the president.
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>>>The scientist met with Chinese officials in 1997, and even this
>>>year was planning to meet with the Chinese to transfer technology.
>>>So much for Shuh's claim that the security breach was limited to
>>>pre-Clinton. |
