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Over the last year this newspaper has shone the bright light of
hindsight on decisions that led the United States into Iraq. We
have examined the failings of American and allied intelligence,
especially on the issue of Iraq's weapons and possible Iraqi connections
to international terrorists. We have studied the allegations of
official gullibility and hype. It is past time we turned the same
light on ourselves.
In doing so - reviewing hundreds of articles written during the
prelude to war and into the early stages of the occupation - we
found an enormous amount of journalism that we are proud of. In
most cases, what we reported was an accurate reflection of the state
of our knowledge at the time, much of it painstakingly extracted
from intelligence agencies that were themselves dependent on sketchy
information. And where those articles included incomplete information
or pointed in a wrong direction, they were later overtaken by more
and stronger information. That is how news coverage normally unfolds.
But we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not
as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that
was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently
qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish
we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence
emerged - or failed to emerge.
The problematic articles varied in authorship and subject matter,
but many shared a common feature. They depended at least in part
on information from a circle of Iraqi informants, defectors and
exiles bent on "regime change" in Iraq, people whose credibility
has come under increasing public debate in recent weeks. (The most
prominent of the anti-Saddam campaigners, Ahmad Chalabi, has been
named as an occasional source in Times articles since at least 1991,
and has introduced reporters to other exiles. He became a favorite
of hard-liners within the Bush administration and a paid broker
of information from Iraqi exiles, until his payments were cut off
last week.) Complicating matters for journalists, the accounts of
these exiles were often eagerly confirmed by United States officials
convinced of the need to intervene in Iraq. Administration officials
now acknowledge that they sometimes fell for misinformation from
these exile sources. So did many news organizations - in particular,
this one.
Some critics of our coverage during that time have focused blame
on individual reporters. Our examination, however, indicates that
the problem was more complicated. Editors at several levels who
should have been challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism
were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper. Accounts
of Iraqi defectors were not always weighed against their strong
desire to have Saddam Hussein ousted. Articles based on dire claims
about Iraq tended to get prominent display, while follow-up articles
that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried.
In some cases, there was no follow-up at all.
On Oct. 26 and Nov. 8, 2001, for example, Page 1 articles cited
Iraqi defectors who described a secret Iraqi camp where Islamic
terrorists were trained and biological weapons produced. These accounts
have never been independently verified.
On Dec. 20, 2001, another front-page article began, "An Iraqi
defector who described himself as a civil engineer said he personally
worked on renovations of secret facilities for biological, chemical
and nuclear weapons in underground wells, private villas and under
the Saddam Hussein Hospital in Baghdad as recently as a year ago."
Knight Ridder Newspapers reported last week that American officials
took that defector - his name is Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri -
to Iraq earlier this year to point out the sites where he claimed
to have worked, and that the officials failed to find evidence of
their use for weapons programs. It is still possible that chemical
or biological weapons will be unearthed in Iraq, but in this case
it looks as if we, along with the administration, were taken in.
And until now we have not reported that to our readers.
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On Sept. 8, 2002, the lead article of the paper was headlined "U.S.
Says Hussein Intensified Quest for A-Bomb Parts." That report
concerned the aluminum tubes that the administration advertised
insistently as components for the manufacture of nuclear weapons
fuel. The claim came not from defectors but from the best American
intelligence sources available at the time. Still, it should have
been presented more cautiously. There were hints that the usefulness
of the tubes in making nuclear fuel was not a sure thing, but the
hints were buried deep, 1,700 words into a 3,600-word article. Administration
officials were allowed to hold forth at length on why this evidence
of Iraq's nuclear intentions demanded that Saddam Hussein be dislodged
from power: "The first sign of a `smoking gun,' they argue,
may be a mushroom cloud."
Five days later, The Times reporters learned that the tubes
were in fact a subject of debate among intelligence agencies. The
misgivings appeared deep in an article on Page A13, under a headline
that gave no inkling that we were revising our earlier view ("White
House Lists Iraq Steps to Build Banned Weapons"). The Times
gave voice to skeptics of the tubes on Jan. 9,
when the key piece of evidence was challenged by the International
Atomic Energy Agency. That challenge was reported on Page A10; it
might well have belonged on Page A1.
On April 21, 2003, as American weapons-hunters followed American
troops into Iraq, another front-page article declared, "Illicit
Arms Kept Till Eve of War, an Iraqi Scientist Is Said to Assert."
It began this way: "A scientist who claims to have worked in
Iraq's chemical weapons program for more than a decade has told
an American military team that Iraq destroyed chemical weapons and
biological warfare equipment only days before the war began, members
of the team said."
The informant also claimed that Iraq had sent unconventional weapons
to Syria and had been cooperating with Al Qaeda - two claims that
were then, and remain, highly controversial. But the tone of the
article suggested that this Iraqi "scientist" - who in
a later article described himself as an official of military intelligence
- had provided the justification the Americans had been seeking
for the invasion.
The Times never followed up on the veracity of this source
or the attempts to verify his claims.
A sample of the coverage, including the articles mentioned here,
is online at nytimes.com/critique.
Readers will also find there a detailed discussion written for The
New York Review of Books last month by Michael Gordon, military
affairs correspondent of The Times, about the aluminum tubes
report. Responding to the review's critique of Iraq coverage, his
statement could serve as a primer on the complexities of such intelligence
reporting.
We consider the story of Iraq's weapons, and of the pattern of misinformation,
to be unfinished business. And we fully intend to continue aggressive
reporting aimed at setting the record straight.
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