12/10/12 – Peter Hart – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
Our first guest on the show today is Peter Hart from Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.
Welcome back to the show, Peter.
How are you doing?
I'm doing great.
Well, good.
I'm very happy to have you here.
And you know what I was thinking is the difference between Syria and Iraq and their chemical weapons is that Syria was our ally in the first Gulf War against Iraq.
And so they didn't have to give up all their chemical weapons by the end of 1991 like Iraq did.
And so they actually do have some.
As best I can tell, that fact is not in dispute.
Yeah, that's one of the things that makes this story a little bit different.
Whereas with the run up to the Iraq War in 2003, you did have people who were questioning whether there was a stockpile of chemical weapons.
Not many people in the mainstream media, but there were people who were experts in nonproliferation who were not entirely certain that Iraq still had the stockpiles.
They turned out to be correct, of course.
So there are some important political differences between the two stories.
But the similarities still, as I'm sure you've been thinking about over the last couple of days, are pretty remarkable.
Right.
Okay.
So give us the background here.
And you do such a great job.
The article at fair.org is this time trust anonymous WMD claims because they've got specific intelligence.
Oh, good, good.
Specific intelligence, as opposed to before, back when it wasn't specific.
So anyway, for anybody who was living under a rock last week, you might have missed it.
There was this huge storm of propaganda about how the government of Syria is about to use chemical weapons on the heroic rebel.
So please kind of take us through how this happened.
Yeah.
You know, if you were watching TV, it happened the third, the fourth, the fifth of December last week.
And it really came from some reports in the New York Times that if you went back and read them, or if you read them in real time, they were a little bit sketchy.
But the idea was that intelligence officials, all of whom are unnamed, are picking up signs of activity at chemical weapons sites in Syria.
They weren't really sure based on the first stories.
This is December 2nd.
And then I think in December 3rd, they weren't really sure exactly what was happening because you're just looking at aerial satellites and probably some drone imagery.
You can't honestly understand or have any sense of what's happening on the ground.
But you had a series of stories.
And this is how it happened with Iraq.
Anonymous sources talking to the New York Times saying, we think we're picking up something suspicious.
This is unusual.
I mean, on the surface, it looks the same as normal activity.
But once you think about it, maybe it's not.
So you had two or three days of that in the Times.
By the third day that I saw that December 4th, the Times was now reporting on Obama's reaction to this anonymous intelligence.
So here we have this circular logic.
Anonymous officials tell us this.
We keep reporting it.
There's some discussion about it.
The White House responds.
And then the White House response, as the New York Times put it, the White House has effectively confirmed the earlier reports of activity at chemical weapon sites.
That kicks off all the TV coverage, which is even less skeptical than the New York Times stuff that you saw last week.
So we have again this 2002-2003 Iraq redux.
We've got chemical weapons sites and satellite images on TV.
They're talking about mysterious trucks that are moving from location to location.
And the TV reporting, the skepticism or even the lack of clarity is gone.
We're talking about people on CBS Evening News, on NBC Nightly News saying, we are seeing a mixing of chemical precursors and the loading into bombs, which is something no one can see from these aerial photographs or the satellite imagery.
So you have this sense that we're very quickly being rushed into something.
And of course, the obvious question anyone's going to have to ask, besides the first one, which is, does anyone know this is happening?
And the answer is no.
The second question is, well, why is this story coming up right now?
And I think that's the thing people need to key in on, because the speculation is probably, I think that's what is the most interesting aspect of what's going on.
Who wants us to believe this story and who wants this intervention or crisis mentality to be fomented on the American public?
All right.
So there's a pretty clear parallel, maybe, to the Judith Miller story about Saddam Hussein intensifies quest for a bomb parts that she reported with Michael Gordon.
And it all came from the vice president's office.
And then they all went on a Sunday morning shows each and every Sunday morning show this week and meet the press and face the nation and whatever.
And then they all cited the same New York Times piece saying, look, even the New York Times is saying that this is all true, even the New York Times.
Right.
So now we know it's true, that kind of thing.
But that was obviously a very well orchestrated move by Karl Rove and the White House Iraq group set that up and went out and deliberately did this kind of thing.
Now, I'm not drawing the distinction.
I'm only wondering if you think there is one.
I admit that I was watching the TV and I didn't really I kind of playing catch up with this a little bit.
And so I didn't really get the gist of of the way this came across in the first place.
Was this did it seem to you?
I don't know if you could cite evidence, but did it seem to you that this was Obama and Hillary and now we're going to ratchet up some chemical weapons propaganda to get into a war?
Or was this maybe someone a little bit lower?
Put one quote in The Times.
It sort of sounds like the way you describe it is all the so-called journalists in America thought this was really interesting and all just took turns embellishing it themselves.
Or was it really orchestrated from the National Security Council?
We want this story out there kind of thing.
Can you give me some insight on that?
It's it's baffling.
You know, the main action that's been taken that we know about with the White House in regard to the White House is Obama saying that would be a red line if Syria facade was to start giving indications that he was going to use chemical weapons.
I don't even know what that means, you know, and I don't know what the policy implication of that is supposed to be.
If we sound like airstrikes or something.
Yeah.
And that would be even more unusual as a policy goal, because that's not going to do anything to stop someone from using chemical weapons.
And in fact, it's some of the experts that you've seen cited in other kinds of reporting, better reporting, in my view, say, you know, launching airstrikes on chemical weapons sites.
It's a horrible idea.
So what is the policy goal here with Iraq?
You knew exactly what it was.
It seemed like they were rolling out an advertising campaign to invade Iraq because of this.
We don't have that sense that that's the plan in Syria.
I don't think anyone really believes outside of a couple of uber hawks in the Republican Party that there's any goal to ratchet up U.S., direct U.S. military involvement.
Now, could it be something else?
Could it be some hardening of the quote-unquote free Syrian Army coalition?
Some move to equip them with better weapons, that kind of thing.
That seems plausible, at least.
But on the surface, the political goals don't line up with what we saw in Iraq.
You mentioned Michael Gordon being one of the authors of those 2002 Iraq stories.
He, of course, is one of the co-authors of these current stories.
So he is someone who I suppose people in the national security world go to when they need to talk, when they need to drop anonymous stories about this kind of thing.
So, you know, Judith Miller is the person who does not work at the Times any longer.
Michael Gordon is the one who wrote the same stories, but for whatever reason, is still working it.
Right.
Wow.
You know, I didn't even realize that he was on the original byline there.
Of course, I'm sure you remember, we probably talked at the time in 2007 about how he was behind every story in the Times in the first half of 2007 about how every problem in Iraq is because of Iran and how if there's copper inside a homemade landmine, then that means it came from Iran, because everyone knows that.
And he published, what, 25 stories or something in the first half of 2007 like that, trying to lie us into war, trying to encourage strikes on the Revolutionary Guard camps inside Iran, because that's what Dick Cheney wanted.
And in fact, the articles might as well have said, because that's what Dick Cheney wants right in him anyway.
It was so obvious.
Yeah.
You know, and he's had this record going back to Iraq pre-2003 and then 2007.
The alarmism is always there.
And I think in this case, you have the same story.
It's just the political goals are a little harder to understand.
And that's why, you know, you line up some of this Times reporting with some of the other articles.
You see that McClatchy had a piece, I think, that came out on Saturday.
Well, actually, hold that for a second, because first came the NBC story, and the NBC story is titled Pentagon debunks.
So what the hell does that tell us?
Oh, yeah.
Well, that's that.
This makes it even more confusing, because that was on Tuesday of last week.
That's the piece that I first saw.
And it said no evidence from Pentagon that that this is happening.
Wednesday, NBC on their air is talking about this as if there is, in fact, plenty of evidence.
So, you know, internally, what happened at NBC?
It's the same Pentagon correspondent.
If he misunderstood the tip he was supposed to get or if he was talking to the wrong anonymous sources, the ones who aren't urging some kind of crisis on us right now.
So, yeah, we had in the space of 24 hours, two very different messages being sent by the same outlet.
It seemed like they were the skeptic, and then they jumped along with the chorus pretty quickly, which I find really remarkable.
You know, what could possibly be going on there?
This is one of the dangers when you're relying so much on what your official anonymous sources are telling you, that no one knows who these people are.
But you go to this McClatchy piece, which is full of international experts on chemical weapons talking about how this storyline doesn't really add up.
And one of the most fascinating things, I think, that came out of that is the acknowledgement that we used to talk just a few months ago about serious chemical weapons.
And the danger was not that Assad was going to use them.
The danger was that some of the rebel groups could come upon them and use them themselves.
So there were concerns about securing those weapon sites and making sure that they stayed out of the hands of the rebel armies that are trying to take over the government.
That was the concern just months, if not weeks ago.
And now we've flipped the script and we're afraid of Assad using them himself based on what seems like the monitoring of truck movement in and out of these weapons sites, which to me, you know, doesn't make a lot of sense.
But McClatchy actually did the kind of reporting that I think you would expect journalists to do if they were interested in pushing back against a propaganda line instead of being willing enablers of it.
All right.
Now, the dictators of Syria are politicians, so I wouldn't take their word for it.
But for what it's worth, anyway, they have made an official statement on these chemical weapons.
I don't know about recently.
Maybe you do.
But in the past, they said we would only ever use them for foreign invasion.
And of course, it wouldn't make any sense to use them against rebels in a neighborhood anyway, would it?
I don't know.
No.
And that's one of the points that's been raised by McClatchy.
And you have a couple of arms control experts saying that it would really be tactically it would border on insanity to do this.
That's not saying that it's completely impossible.
The Syrian government has long said that they would not use them in this context.
They usually add some line about whether or not they even exist.
So they have some kind of strategic ambiguity about the existence of the program itself.
But the question that you have to ponder and this is, again, raised in the McClatchy piece, there's a paper that they cite that was written by two researchers that was in arms control today.
And they talked about this being the rebel rhetoric on chemical weapons, and that the Free Syrian Army has warned about Assad using chemical weapons.
And that's where this story gets interesting, I think, because we if we know anything about Syria and the conflict there, you know, that it's been in many ways, a very intense propaganda war, and the Free Syrian Army and its allies have been able to wage a very effective propaganda war.
And this could be evidence of that we could be seeing a storyline that is, if not planted by the Free Syrian Army or people allied with them, then a storyline that they will no doubt encourage.
And that's the only argument, if you really want to unpack all this, that's the only argument to me that makes any kind of sense that they are trying to increase the international pressure on Assad to give up or to increase the likelihood that they themselves will be armed by various actors in the international community.
That's the only policy outcome that makes a lot of sense.
You know, if you're looking to, to get people to increase the flow of arms or intelligence or money to your side, then it makes sense for you to talk up the weapons that could be deployed by the enemy.
So that I think when you when you factor that, and I think it's the only way that this story begins to make sense that we're seeing some kind of information warfare on some level where it whether it's dictated or motivated by the Free Syrian Army, or whether it's a leak from the Pentagon, just intended to, to send a message to Assad, that in other words, that this story is less about what Syria might be doing, than what we want Syria to think about what we have in mind, putting pressure on Assad to resign or to that sort of thing.
That's the I think the reality of a story like this is that you're dealing not in what is being reported, you're trying to figure out what the political gains are from this story being circulated the way it is.
Yeah, well, the Democrats, I don't really know what they're doing here.
I mean, they apparently Barack Obama does not want to, you know, spend too much money backing suicide bombers, but he does want to spend some and he doesn't want to outright, you know, pass them out, you know, RPGs and suicide belts.
But he doesn't mind at all of Saudi Arabia and Qatar do it.
And then he's got these guys leading the front lines of his proxy war over there.
And then at the same time, he says he wants to add them to the terrorism list and make it illegal for him to back them anymore.
And then all for what so they can achieve the fall of a regime that's going to lead to and this is the only thing they care about is Israel, it's going to lead to increased threats to Israel.
Like you were saying before about the what happens when these suicide bomber guys are the ones who have their hands on the chemical weapons, you know, just weeks ago.
And I think that's what's unusual about this particular story.
So you have to figure out who benefits from this story being reported the way it does.
Yeah, the suicide bombers.
Oh, and Hillary Clinton.
Well, then the question you have to ask is, you know, if you if you if you think that's the answer, then then why is this story coming out this way?
What do they hope to gain by it?
And I don't think that the US government, the official policy is because we want to send 10s of 1000s of troops to Syria, you know, just weeks ago, their old line on chemical weapons was, it would take something like 70,000 US troops to get on the ground to secure those weapon sites, which is another way of saying we're not going to do that.
So why is this story coming out?
Are there people at the Pentagon who are mad about the White House policy on Syria that are mad in the way that john McCain is?
And we're saying, you know, we need a more muscular approach to Syria.
So the way to do that is to send out these stories about chemical weapons.
It's really a puzzle.
And the problem, the media problem we have, I think, is that the people who are doing reporting on this, the people who are filling up TV airtime, are not going to ask the kinds of questions or pose the kind of difficult questions that we need right now.
You know, on meet the press, they had Jeffrey Goldberg talking about this, because he was a expert on the region.
Well, you know, if anybody remembers their run up to Iraq, he was one of the principal reporters who got the WMD story horribly, horribly wrong.
Why is he on TV explaining Syria to anyone?
Yeah, and ties between Saddam and al Qaeda, too.
And of course, he's the guy who in the interview with Barack Obama, he was saying, Hey, yeah, and you agree with me, right, that regime change in Syria would be good for Israel, because it would help weaken Iran's position in the region, right?
And Barack Obama said, Yeah, exactly.
And neither of them even pretended to throw in a mention for the poor, innocent civilians of Syria that they want to save from being gassed to death.
Yeah, so you've got you've got Jeffrey Goldberg on television talking about this, you have Michael Gordon on the pages of the New York Times, telling you about this to reporters who did a lot to drum up the Iraq war are and you know, like that across the entire media spectrum, right?
Is that by I don't know, say, early fall 2003, when the last of them stopped lying to themselves that they were going to stumble on a warehouse full of Sarah, they all just kind of silently looked at each other and said, Well, we're all equally guilty.
And so we're all just going to let this go.
And we're all just going to move right on.
Okay, okay, good.
And they all just went right on, right?
Yeah, well, it's time to move forward, not backward.
No accountability whatsoever for the reporters that lied us into war last time.
And so here we are again.
Now, if there were consequences, maybe reporting would look different.
And you know, the most ironic thing about all of this, or the most telling thing is that we're holding up a McClatchy story as evidence of here's the kind of reporting that journalists in Washington should be doing, which is exactly what we were doing in 2002 and 2003. pointing to one or two outlets here and there and saying, in this case, the exact same outlet and saying, Look at this story, doesn't this raise the kinds of questions that that everyone should be raising?
If you want to ask if anything's been learned from Iraq, the answer seems to be no.
Right.
And by the way, you know, it was Knight Ritter at the time, but got bought out by McClatchy there.
And then I always like recommending to people because it's really great stuff.
I mean, it really is groundbreaking stuff.
If you go to the Bill Moyers documentary, buying the war, it's kind of hard to find, you got to really be patient and click around.
But one of those pages is full of resources.
And they have links there to the Jonathan Landay and Warren P. Strobel stories of the late summer of 2002 and three, where they first break this story of the Office of Special Plans at the Pentagon, where they're lying us into war, and how the CIA guys are all mad about it.
And the CIA guys say all the intelligence is the same as before, which says they don't have nothing.
And there it all is right there.
It's great reporting, too.
It's not just that they sort of kind of were on to it.
It's that they nailed it in the summer, right when Cheney gave his veterans of foreign wars speech that was full of nothing but lies and half truths.
The result of that, I guess, was Landay and Strobel's phone started ringing off the hook from mid-level CIA guys saying, Hey, you want to know what's going on?
We'll tell you what's going on.
Because they were mad because they were, of course, going to be the ones to take the blame like they eventually were.
Yes, exactly.
Yep.
Well, there you go.
I'm glad you mentioned that.
And people again, it's a buying the war is the name of that great documentary by Bill Moyers, where he has a lot of great media criticism in there.
But links to those original stories back then, they're really good.
All right.
Well, listen, thank you so much for your time.
I really appreciate your insight on this.
And just the encyclopedic keeping up on it all for us.
It's your resource there, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting on the Web is an invaluable resource and I really appreciate it.
Oh, thank you.
All right, everybody.
That's Peter Hart, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, fair.org, F-A-I-R.org.
Hey, man, you still there?
Yes.
Hey, good.
Hey, I wanted to ask you real quick.
I saw this thing about on your website about Bradley Manning and the media blackout.
And I was wondering, I think I saw a link about the New York Times having an internal fight about whether they were going to finally even send a reporter to cover it or something.
Did you have news on that?
They had, you know, their public editor wrote a web piece that actually ended up in a Sunday paper.
She took the position at the time should be at the trial.
And Scott Shane, one of their national security reporters, did show up for, I think, part of one day.
But the D.C. bureau chief, David Leonard, was saying, you know, his response, you know, why didn't the Times send a reporter all the way to Maryland to cover this rather important news was that we can't cover everything and it's a relatively routine story and blah, blah, blah.
Yeah, it's very routine.
You know, it's one of these great lessons because you had all of these people from outside the New York Times, which is, of course, the vast majority of us, writing to say, you know, writing pieces about, you know, how on earth could the Times skip out on this story?
They relied on WikiLeaks for these explosive front page articles.
They relied on WikiLeaks for on Iraq, on Afghanistan, on the cables.
And then they're not they're not covering the trial.
They're not covering the Manning trial, even when Manning takes a very dramatic first person account of what happened.
Well, and Chris Floyd pointed out that all they did was run an AP piece that was very uncharitable to his side of the story whatsoever to paraphrase him as just a whiny little brat.
And then, you know, the piece that the Times did finally run, people had some problems with it, but it was, I think, an improvement on on running the little AP wire service piece.
But the lesson, I think, is that you had all of these critics, Chris Floyd, Kevin Estola, all of these people writing about how could the Times not be here?
And I have to think that it caused some people inside the paper to wonder, what are we doing?
How are we deploying our resources?
So you did end up seeing them pay attention to this.
And it really I don't think would happen if people hadn't been raising a fuss about it.
So it does.
You can't move these institutions.
They're not going to cover the news the way you or I might want them to.
But they're going to pay attention to things because I think the critical attention becomes too impossible to ignore.
It's so hard to get like a real accounting of what's going on inside a paper like that because they don't they don't talk much.
But I think this is one case where thanks to having a pretty good public editor right now, Margaret Sullivan, there's there's a way for critics to be heard inside the paper and on the New York Times website.
Right.
OK, listen, we're way over time.
Thank you so much again for your time, Peter.
No problem.
Take care.
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