By Brigitte L. Nacos
Tim Russert of NBC-TV was a crucial witness in the trial of
Lewis Libby in that he contradicted the defendant’s claim that it was the “Meet
the Press” host who first told him about Valerie Plame. Today, on the Imus in the Morning show, Russert
underlined how important it is for journalists to get information from public
officials apart from the propaganda in official press releases and
announcements. Sure enough, especially when you have an administration as
secretive as the present one, the press and the public remain clueless unless
reporters are able to gather news from sources that do not speak on the record.
Will public officials clam down in the wake of the Libby case for fear that
they can no longer count on reporters’ confidentiality? After all, not only
Russert but other journalists as well were forced to testify about their
contacts with Libby and other sources. I do not believe for a moment that
things will drastically change. As John F. Kennedy once said, “The ship of
state is the only one that leaks from the top.” In the Libby case, the
information came from the propagandists-in-chief in the White House and in
almost all such cases, those who leak information push their own agenda.
Whether officials are for or against particular policies or personalities, they
will “confide” in the press in order to advance their causes and not worry
about what might go wrong a la Libby. Actually, the Libby trial told us nothing
about good reporting in the public interest but a lot about the relationships
between the centers of power in Washington and elite reporters of the
mainstream media: When the vice-president’s office (and presumably other
offices as well) wants its propaganda released, we learned, staffers seek out
the so-called liberal media. The Libby case began, when former ambassador
Joseph Wilson questioned the White House’s best laid plans about the alleged reasons
for going to war against Iraq,
namely, Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. It was for this reason
that Mr. Wilson became the target of Mr. Cheney’s thirst for revenge. As the Washington
Post reports today,
Libby's conviction on two counts of perjury, one count of making false statements and one count of obstructing justice stemmed from what he told investigators about his role in disclosing the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame. Her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, a retired ambassador, was sent by the CIA to Africa to assess reports that Iraq had sought to buy nuclear material there. In the spring and early summer of 2003, Wilson infuriated Cheney and other White House officials by accusing President Bush of twisting his findings to justify the Iraqwar. The prosecution contended Libby told reporters that Plame worked at the agency to insinuate that her husband was chosen for the CIA mission because of nepotism.
If you want to read what former colleagues of Valerie Plame think about this case, visit the No Quarter blog.
The lead editorial in the Post states that the “fall of this skilled and long-respected public servant [Libby] is particularly sobering because it arose from a Washington scandal remarkable for its lack of substance.” Lack of substance? The substance was and is closely tied to the administration’s false claims about the Iraqi threat in order to enlist public support for the Iraq war. The substance was and is that the effort to smear the Wilsons in the context of the propaganda campaign in favor of the Iraq war resulted in Mr. Libby’s perjury and conviction. But in the Post’s editorial Libby is the good guy and Wilson the one who made false claims.
But what would one expect from an editorial page that has supported the Iraq war all along. The Post’s editorial ends with the following sentence: “Mr. Fitzgerald was, at least, right about one thing: The Wilson-Plame case, and Mr. Libby's conviction, tell us nothing about the war in Iraq.” Wrong. The case tells us a great deal about the Iraq war. While the Libby trial was not directly about Iraq war issues, it arose from the administration’s disinformation campaign to convince the American public that Iraq posed an imminent threat to our national security.
The mainstream media failed to scrutinize the administration’s claims against Iraq and in fact slanted their reporting heavily in favor of pro-war voices during the build-up period to the war. While the Washington Post and the New York Times apologized later for that bias, nothing has changed for the Post’s editorial page.
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