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Contributors
Cliff Kincaid- Contributor
Cliff Kincaid, serves as editor of the Accuracy
in Media (AIM)
Report. A veteran journalist and media critic, Cliff has
appeared on the Fox News programs Hannity & Colmes and
The O'Reilly Factor, where he debated O'Reilly on global
warming, the death penalty,
and the homosexual agenda. He was a guest co-host on CNN's Crossfire
(filling in for Pat Buchanan) in the 1980s, where he confronted
the then-Libyan Ambassador to the U.N. with evidence of Libyan
involvement in international terrorism. Through his America's
Survival, Inc., organization (www.usasurvival.org), he has been
an advocate on behalf of the families of victims of terrorism
and has published reports and held conferences critical of the
United Nations. His articles have appeared in the Washington
Post, Washington Times, Chronicles, Human Events, Insight, and
other publications. He served on the staff of Human Events for
several years and was an editorial writer and newsletter editor
for former National Security Council staffer Oliver North at
his Freedom Alliance educational foundation. He has written or
co-authored nine books on media and cultural affairs and foreign
policy issues. Cliff is married and has three sons.[go to
Kincaid index]
 Will
USA Today Apologize To Cheney?
Don't
hold your breath...
[Cliff Kincaid] 7/21/04
Last April
29, just a few days before the Gannett company’s annual meeting, USA
Today ran a favorable story about Joseph Wilson’s new book. The
story, by Mark Memmott, began with Wilson’s charge that
Vice President Dick Cheney engaged in the “effective betrayal
of our country” by allegedly playing a role in the release
of the name of Wilson’s wife, a CIA employee named Valerie
Plame.
No evidence was provided
for this claim and there was no indication that USA Today,
which is owned by Gannett, had contacted Cheney’s
office for comment.
Wilson’s book was titled The
Politics of Truth. Ironically,
he is now fending off charges that he lied about his mission
to investigate Iraq’s interest in uranium. The recent Senate
Intelligence Committee report on the CIA said that Wilson, who
joined the Kerry campaign as a foreign policy adviser, actually
confirmed President Bush’s “controversial” State
of the Union statement that Iraq sought uranium from Africa.
The Senate report cites evidence that Wilson’s CIA wife
recommended him for the Africa mission.
The conventional story
line for a year has been that Wilson contradicted the president’s State of the Union statement
and that Wilson’s wife was outed in retaliation. The “outing” has
led to a federal investigation of whether the disclosure violated
a law against releasing the names of covert CIA operatives.
But it’s Plame who should be under investigation. Plame’s
recommendation of her husband for the job may have violated federal
nepotism laws. On page 346 of his book, Wilson himself notes
that the law against nepotism would forbid his wife from recommending
him for the job, which may be why he says she had nothing to
do with it. The evidence, according to the committee, also includes
a memo from Plame to the CIA recommending her husband’s
involvement.
Plame’s name was disclosed to columnist Bob Novak because
some official or officials knew she was involved in the Wilson
mission and found this objectionable. However, Novak said that
he was not the recipient of a planned leak and they “asked
me not to use her name.” The notion that her “outing” violated
the law ignores the fact that an investigator doing basic research
on corporate databases could easily expose her CIA front company
and “cover” as an energy consultant.
But rather than push for an investigation of violations of federal
nepotism laws, the White House panicked under a media assault
engineered by Wilson and gave way to critics who wanted the White
House investigated for an alleged role in the leak to Novak.
The
Washington Post, to its credit, has now admitted that Wilson
fed the paper false information. Other news organizations, including
USA Today, should also come clean.
It’s worth remembering that there were already plenty
of doubts about Wilson’s charges even before his book came
out. At Accuracy
in Media, we had published those doubts, noting
that while Wilson claimed there was no evidence of Iraq seeking
uranium from Africa, the British government had obtained an account
of Wilson’s report on his mission to Africa that disclosed
that such an attempt by Iraq had in fact been made.
On May 4, I had waved
a copy of the Memmott article at the Gannett meeting, as further
evidence of the bad reporting standards
at this paper, which had just gone through a plagiarism and fakery
scandal with former reporter Jack Kelley. Newspaper executives
at the meeting claimed the story had gone through proper editing
procedures. But USA Today’s new editor, Ken Paulson, was
concerned enough to ask me for a copy of the Memmott article,
saying he wanted to discuss it at a staff meeting. He said, however,
that he thought the Wilson book was worth a story since it promised
to be a bestseller. Less than two months later, it was reported
by Editor & Publisher that Paulson had “made several
changes aimed at improving the paper’s credibility and
public image,” including tightening up on the use of confidential
sources. Nothing, however, was done about the Memmott piece.
This is a crucial time for the media. Their credibility has
been rocked by a series of scandals. Now they have been exposed
as willing shills for a Kerry adviser who concocted a phony scandal
for the purpose of damaging Bush. USA Today in particular has
some explaining and apologizing to do. Will editor Paulson do
the right thing?
But the release of
the Senate report is more than an opportunity for the media
to set the record straight about Wilson, his mission
and Bush’s claims. It should be an opportunity to call
off the probe into the Novak leak and initiate an official inquiry
into what Plame and her CIA associates were up to.CRO
copyright
2004 Accuracy in Media
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