MediaBloodhound

Special Report: NPR Goes Easy on ABC News Spokesman in Debat Affair

Editor's Note: This is the second in a series of posts on ABC News' Alexis Debat scandal (all background information is here, which includes some updates to the original post). While this story disappeared in the mainstream media over a week ago and, largely, in the alternative/progressive media as well, MediaBloodhound's coverage will be ongoing. One of the worst breaches of journalistic standards in U.S. history demands much more attention than this surreal but all-too-real tale has received.

Over the weekend, NPR's often excellent program On the Media aired two interviews concerning the Alexis Debat scandal at ABC News. One featured journalist Laura Rozen, who, as national security correspondent for Mother Jones and on warandpiece.com, has led the way on this story in the U.S. (and, personally, has been of great help in confirming aspects of this scandal about which I've written).The other featured ABC News vice president and spokesman Jeffrey Schneider. Bob Garfield hosted both.

If you've been keeping up with this story, Garfield's segment with Rozen sheds no new light, but does a fine job in providing an overview of flim-flam artist Alexis Debat. Its one glaring weakness is Garfield's failure to address ABC News' culpability in both being bamboozled by Debat and having created and sanctioned the shady news-gathering environment in which he operated. Giving Garfield the benefit of the doubt, one might argue he was saving those questions for ABC's Mr. Schneider. Unfortunately, he also fails to substantively challenge the ABC News spokesman on these points.

The following is the full but brief transcript (the segment was only about 5-6 minutes) of the interview with Schneider, along with my responses:

BOB GARFIELD, HOST: When ABC News learned of Debat’s bogus Ph.D. last May, the network swiftly fired him. It also scrutinized the stories in which Debat had served as a source, but did not find any inaccuracies. This week, in response to news that Debat faked not only his credentials but entire interviews, ABC has opened a second, more extensive investigation into all the stories he touched. But unlike The New York Times after Jayson Blair or USA Today after Jack Kelly, ABC is working internally and has no plans for an outside investigation. Jeffrey Schneider is senior vice president and spokesman for ABC News. He says his company is determined to get to the bottom of the Debat problem.

JEFFREY SCHNEIDER, ABC SPOKESMAN: I could understand why people might want a third party to look at these things. And it’s impossible for me at this point to say whether that would be something that could happen. I do, however, have great confidence in our ability to, I think, answer these questions to the satisfaction of ourselves and to our audience.

No follow-up from Garfield.

ABC News relied on someone for six years who’s been proven to be a fraud. In hiring Debat, it failed to even verify the most basic information on his resume, such as his fabricated Ph.D. from the Sorbonne and greatly embellished “French Defense Ministry official” position (which, via the French government, the French news service AFP confirmed was a fiction back in 2002). Moreover, as Laura Rozen reported in Mother Jones, two journalists familiar with Debat’s work portray the leader of ABC News’ investigative unit, Brian Ross, “not only as the victim of Debat's alleged deceptions, but as an enabler, who has promoted sensational stories—including some that Debat brought the network—at the expense at times of rigorous journalism standards.”

I don’t doubt your “great confidence” to answer these questions to ABC News' satisfaction, Mr. Schneider. Quite the opposite. Nor do I doubt your same confidence in answering these questions to the satisfaction of your audience - especially because ABC News has failed to report this scandal on air (more on this below); consequently, having kept your audience almost completely in the dark, quelling their concerns should be a less than formidable task.

Rather, considering ABC’s negligent track record with regard to Alexis Debat, on what basis should anyone else have confidence in your internal investigation?

BOB GARFIELD, HOST: Now, other news organizations when they discover that they have a liar in their ranks, there, at some point, tends to be disclosure to the audience. In what form has your disclosure taken place?

JEFFREY SCHNEIDER, ABC SPOKESMAN: At the time that we demanded his resignation, you know, we did not ring the bell loudly. Obviously against the backdrop of these outright fabrications, you would say, you know, "How could ABC not have stood up and said very loudly, you know, this guy lied on his resume?" All I can tell you is at the time we felt that demanding his resignation and getting it was appropriate.

Again, no follow-up from Garfield.

The answer to his question? ABC News has yet to offer such an official disclosure to its audience. ABC News online, on its investigative unit's The Blotter, has posted two entries pertaining to Debat’s faked interviews, but it provides little to no information on Debat’s prominent and unethical role at ABC News for the prior six years. To date, ABC has not only failed to officially disclose the details of this scandal to its audience, but also to even report the story on its evening news broadcast, World News, on which some of the biggest Debat-contributed scoops aired.

GARFIELD: There’s one particularly sensitive story I want to ask you about in which Debat played a role. And that was the report that Pakistani militants, who had been involved in cross-border skirmishes in Iran, had been “secretly encouraged and advised by American officials.” A story that suggests that, at least by one or two degrees of separation, the United States is involved in trying to overthrow a government.

SCHNEIDER: You know, that is a story that we worked on for several months, five or six months is my understanding. Debat’s information was a piece of that story, but by no means did the story stand on Debat’s information. We have very good sources both in European and U.S. intelligence and governments. You know, at the end of the day, we want to be the first to report that there’s a problem with that story. So far, through the two reviews we’ve done, we don’t find that problem. But we sure are looking hard.

Once more, no follow-up.

Could you please tell us, Mr. Schneider, which piece of that story, then, was Debat’s? Secondly, did it check out?

GARFIELD: You know, in the end, Jeffrey, I suppose it’s hard for any news organization to protect itself against a liar. What will you do in the future in the hiring of consultants, and maybe just, uh, reporters and producers as well, to make sure that their resumes actually hold up and that they are what they claim to be?

That’s quite a softball. I don't blame Mr. Schneider for overswinging.

SCHNEIDER: You’re right, Bob. If somebody is willing to lie to your face, that does create a difficult situation. It’s also complicated by the fact that time and again he had good information. And not only did he have good information, occasionally he would stand in the way of our other reporting, saying, you know, “I know that’s not the case. Don’t report that.” Particularly there was the issue of this terrorist from Amman being taken into custody supposedly, and Debat waved us off the story. And some weeks later, after we had actually reported that this guy was in custody, it became clear that he was not in custody. You know, he clearly did lie, and was a liar about many things, and yet he did provide solid information that other sources we’re happy to confirm. It’s, uh, it’s really appalling and tragic and, you know, at the same time it’s a pretty interesting story that we want to get to the bottom of.

Last but not least, no follow-up.

First, from the beginning, ABC News’ failure to verify Debat's background, coupled with the network's unethical use of his services, has also been "appalling." Most of us have seen better vetting of a resume for, say, a low-level desk job. But to fail so miserably at vetting the CV for such a powerful position at ABC News - one in which Debat would contribute to stories with national security implications that, among other potentialities, might ultimately influence peace or war between nations - is a monumental blunder.

What’s more, Debat’s dubious multifarious role as attributed source, anonymous source, reporter and analyst is such a patent transgression of sacrosanct journalism standards, it’s surprising Garfield never touches on this. (Did he fail to do his homework with regards to this point, or was there some agreement between Garfield/On the Media and Schneider that this topic would not be addressed?)

Moreover, on its face, Schneider's reply is contextually absurd: “If somebody is willing to lie to your face, that does create a difficult situation.” Well, yes. But that’s part of what's supposed to separate a gullible average Joe from an experienced, capable investigative news team. Which is not to say mistakes still won’t be made. ABC News’ handling of Alexis Debat, however, reveals not an honest mistake or two, but widespread institutionalized dysfunction.

Finally, while Schneider provides a portrait of Debat’s once seeming impeccable reliability as a defense for ABC News having been fooled, he unwittingly further exposes the systemic problems of his network's news-gathering process. If ABC News had reason to put so much trust in Debat and his information, then why did it ignore his vehement warning that the Amman story was untrue? Why didn't this compel ABC News to check and recheck the story - which, logically, would include verifying Debat’s separate information - before running it?

Again, that’s not a Debat problem; that’s an ABC News problem.

In some instances, we already have evidence that suggests, at times, ABC News failed to confirm information obtained solely by Debat from his sources (ostensibly, that's why Brian Ross' producer Rhonda Schwartz is currently trekking around tribal areas in Pakistan). But this comment from Schneider appears to suggest that in other cases, as with the Amman story, even when ABC News rejected information acquired by Debat, it still failed to verify his sources' information. Such unethical and sloppy standards and practices would only give more weight to the allegations that ABC News' investigative unit was more concerned with playing the hot hand - the one with the bigger scoop wins - than it was in presenting factually accurate news stories.

Lastly, Schneider either fails to realize, or refuses to acknowledge, something else one might glean from his Amman anecdote: that Debat may have used such moments to trumpet the quality and dependability of his information in order to influence a more lax vetting of his stories in the future. Sort of the reverse tactic employed by a pool shark or ringer: rather than lead with his worst effort to lure gullible amateurs into eventual high-stakes losses, it's possible that Debat fed ABC News some stellar verifiable nuggets (received from high-ranking neocons who played a role in his post-9/11 ascension?) in order to gain their confidence and push through future unchecked, or shoddily vetted, scoops. Maybe this was Debat's game plan before he even walked through the doors at ABC back in 2001.

Whatever the case, the fact of the matter is, ABC News should have verified Debat’s sourced information regardless of his track record – but especially considering the inherent ethically challenged role in which he operated for the network.   

GARFIELD: All right, Jeffrey, thanks again.

SCHNEIDER: Thanks a lot, Bob. Take care.

GARFIELD: Jeffrey Schneider is the senior vice president and spokesman for ABC News.

And he and his network are still getting away with painting Debat as a lone wolf.

Special Report: ABC-Debat Scandal, Unanswered and Unasked Questions

(updates below)

L’Affaire Debat is not a movie. Yet. Though the curious case of Alexis Debat – former longtime ABC News terrorism analyst, contributing journalist and prominent news source - could be someone’s first draft screenplay before all the questions surrounding the story are unraveled (if they ever are).

Before jumping into some of this scandal's many unanswered and unasked questions, here’s a brief recap of the back story (full background is here,here,here and here).

• Alexis Debat, who’s been ABC News’ go-to guy since October 2001 for all things “war on terror”-related, including high-profile stories on Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan, was “discreetly dismissed” in June by ABC News after it couldn’t confirm credentials on his resume, primarily his purported Ph.D. from the Sorbonne.

• The French news site Rue89 reported on September 7 that Debat had fabricated an interview with Senator Barack Obama in the Summer 2007 issue of the French magazine Politique Internationale (in which he quoted Obama as saying the Iraq War was "a defeat for America”). He conducted other alleged interviews for the same publication with Former President Bill Clinton, Senator Hillary Clinton, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, all of which were subsequently confirmed to have been fabricated as well.

• After Rue89 journalist Pascal Riché broke the story, ABC News made an official announcement it had forced Debat to resign in June, saying it had investigated his reports at the time but would undertake a new investigation, reviewing all stories in which Debat played a hand. Additionally, Riché’s story also revealed that Debat never received a Ph.D. from the Sorbonne, and debunked Debat’s claim that he served as an advisor to the French Ministry of Defense on transatlantic issues – he was an intern for five months in 2000 (since 2001, Debat has often been identified as a former French Defense Ministry official or analyst in U.S. media). 

• Debat’s close association with neocon think-tanks, publications, editors and luminaries rounds out this rough back-story: he served as a Senior Fellow for National Security and Terrorism at the Nixon Center (before resigning last Wednesday) and a regular contributor to the Nixon Center’s foreign policy magazine The National Interest (its honorary chairman is Henry Kissinger) and the aforementioned Politique Internationale (at which prominent neocon Amir Taheri functioned as its longtime editor).

And now for those questions:

The Ethics Behind ABC News’ Use of Debat

1) How could ABC News and Brian Ross, who led the investigative unit under which Debat worked, not realize this was a serious breach of journalistic standards?

In her article for Mother Jones, journalist Laura Rozen (who’s led the way in covering and breaking parts of this story in the U.S.) sums up ABC News’ inherent ethical breach:

But in ABC's use of Debat as a paid “consultant" who also had for the past year and a half an appointment at the Nixon Center, ABC also frequently had him reporting on its blog, the Blotter, and appearing as a "source" inside others' stories, blurring the line between source (and a paid one at that, with outside -- also paid -- affiliations) and a journalist, not clearly identified in the report. ABC also sent Debat frequently abroad, to gather information which he would put on the air and on the investigative unit's website.

While the focus of this scandal has so far been largely on uncovering Debat’s deceptions (pertaining to his credentials and the credibility of the stories in which he played a role), no one duped ABC News and Ross into running their investigative unit in such a dubious, unprofessional manner. In fact, in choosing to do so, they arguably paved the way for someone like Debat to take advantage of the situation.

2) How many people at ABC News are culpable in sanctioning this shady news-gathering process?

Certainly Brian Ross, who, even though he worked very closely with him for years, has made this all about Debat. But what about his longtime producer Rhonda Schwartz? Or ABC World News anchor Charles Gibson, on whose nightly newscast Ross often appeared with a big scoop obtained through these unsound channels? As yet, no one at ABC News has taken responsibility for establishing and maintaining the environment in which Debat operated.

The Right Guy for the Job?

1) How did Alexis Debat, with no prior viable journalism experience of any kind, wind up in a position at ABC News in which he was investigating and reporting on such high-profile stories? Who made the call to hire him, and why?

Forget for a moment that Debat’s most impressive alleged credentials are all bogus (in reality, he’s a short-lived French Defense Ministry intern with no Ph.D. from the Sorbonne, who fabricated interviews with nine world leaders). Even in his fantasy resume, nothing would have prepared him adequately for his investigative role at ABC News - those interviews were his sole link to any viable journalism. Factor in they're fake and his lack of experience is breathtaking, which leads to a logical follow-up…

2) Did Debat fabricate those interviews to bolster his journalism credentials and credibility?

The question keeps coming up: why would Debat take such a risk? Why not just be happy with his plum (if unethical) role at ABC News? But had Debat actually conducted those interviews, it surely would’ve lent more credence to his standing as a national and international journalist, especially in context of his flimsy experience. And, not that ABC knew about the faked interviews (no one has concluded whether it did or not), but, had the interviews occurred, Debat’s employers at ABC might well have welcomed this shot-in-the-arm to his thin journalism portfolio.

In addition to his lack of experience, his deep neocon ties may be another reason behind the make-believe interviews: sit-downs with such high-profile leaders – and not a neocon or even traditional conservative among them – might have been viewed as a deft way to play down his undeniable but below-the-rader neocon partisanship. A buffer, possibly, for both ABC News and Debat against potential future accusations of institutionalized bias. (Saving up for that rainy day that's now come to pass.)

3) Did anybody at ABC News check Debat’s credentials before, first, relying on him as a source and, subsequently, hiring him as an analyst and contributing reporter? If so, who?

As journalist Laura Rozen notes, “In fact, the French news service AFP reported as far back as 2002 that according to the French government, Debat had never been a defense ministry official.”

A former U.S. government officer also told Rozen that he warned "a top ABC producer last year who called him for some reason, that Debat 'is a phony.'" (Incidentally, this producer, Rhonda Schwartz, Brian Ross’ longtime producer, is the same person who is now being dispatched to verify Debat’s sources in Pakistan.) Schwartz explained to Rozen that “she recollects the conversation” but framed her description of it by focusing on the fact that he told her “Debat is not former French intelligence,” ignoring the radioactive term "phony" and all of its implications.

Schwartz went on to say that ABC, at the time of the call, already knew Debat was a “former French Ministry Defense desk officer.” Another frame that misleadingly paints Debat’s, albeit downgraded, role in a more positive light. “Officer” retains the air that Debat, who was nothing more than a lowly intern for five months, held a position of authority at the French Ministry of Defense. Clearly, ABC News would be sensitive on this point (think of the multitude of stories over the last six years in which it's misrepresented Debat to millions of its readers and viewers). Thinking you're getting terrorism analysis from an officer is one thing, but an intern? Schwartz's words appear deliberate.

Putting on the Brakes, Taking off the Blinders

1) When did ABC News put Debat "under review"? And for how long? During this time, was Debat still contributing to ABC News as he had since 2001-2002?

Schwartz also tells Rozen this conversation happened when Debat was “already under review by ABC.” But Debat was still contributing to stories as late as May 14, 2007 and was forced to resign in June. After a conversation with Schwartz, Rozen’s U.S. government source agrees with Rozen's timing of when the conversation took place.

But the timing seems very questionable.

It’s highly unlikely that Rozen's government source, when speaking with Schwartz to confirm their initial conversation, confused one year’s time with that of only four months. So if that’s not the case, then Schwartz, wittingly or unwittingly, seems to imply that ABC News had put Debat “under review” much earlier than it is letting on. If so, why would it continue to rely on him in the same capacity as it had for the previous six years during the review?

2) How could someone who forged something as public as an interview with a world leader (several of them) be expected to operate ethically in the shadowy world of anonymous sources on a national security, counter-terrorism beat?

After Rozen picks apart an ABC News story (one of the most dubious of Debat's tenure) about a Pakistani guerrilla organization called Jundulla, she perfectly encapsulates not only why Debat has lost all credibility but the patently unscrupulous methods at the heart of this scandal:

Are Debat's interviews with tribal sources -- which form the very essence of this report -- any more real than his interviews with Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Alan Greenspan, Nancy Pelosi, and Kofi Annan? The evidence says no. History shows no. Knowledgeable regional experts say no. That people who fabricate something as easily, provably deniable as an interview with Senators and presidential candidates and the UN Secretary General cannot be trusted to be telling the truth about what the Pakistani tribal sources are telling them is, of course, obvious. The capacity for an extraordinary degree of mendacity demonstrated by Debat claiming to have conducted such high profile fake interviews speaks for itself.

Notice nowhere in the above report does a US or other official confirm what Debat is providing and the story is asserting. And that ABC used Debat as the channeled reporter on the main substance of the piece, providing the information from the tribal sources, and then featured him as a confirming commenter/analyst in the report. It's a sleight of hand an ordinary viewer might not have noticed, but nevertheless not worthy of a serious news organization that cares about telling its viewers and readers the truth.

In other words, if you remove the information provided by Mr. Debat in this report, and his presence in the report as an expert analyst, there would be nothing there but background information on Jundullah, and U.S. officials denying the report.

In an email I received yesterday, a veteran mainstream journalist with investigative experience on the domestic “war on terror” beat said of the Debat affair:

To say the least, that beat [Debat's] is tailor-made for flimflam artists as sources. An overly credulous reporter can get in a lot of trouble very fast. (What's the definition of an "exclusive"? A story no one else wanted/trusted.)

It's an apt preface to this revelation in Rozen's Mother Jones piece:

Two journalists familiar with Debat's work point to ABC chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross not only as the victim of Debat's alleged deceptions, but as an enabler, who has promoted sensational stories—including some that Debat brought the network—at the expense at times of rigorous journalism standards.

3) Why didn’t ABC News thoroughly investigate Debat’s work directly prior to, or right after, his forced resignation in June?

ABC News says it did. Yet all indications (which include word from sources inside ABC) are that it did little more than uncover Debat’s false Ph.D. claim before letting Debat walk off quietly into the sunset and acting as if their whole shady but mutually beneficial relationship had never existed.

Of course, ABC News had as much, if not more, to lose than did Debat if his questionable work and ABC’s unethical methods met with a full-court press. Debat, back off the radar as he was prior to 9/11, would probably hunker down in another think-tank and, as he’s already done, find work as well as other receptive media outlets searching for a partisan “expert” to quote. But ABC News, if it failed to place all the blame on Debat (as it appears to be trying to do), would suffer a serious blow to its already flagging credibility. 

A Post-9/11 Star Is Born

Is Debat, a self-proclaimed terrorism "expert,” merely a creation of 9/11? And (putting aside his resume's fictions) how did ABC News come to rely on someone so lacking even in his alleged prior terrorism analysis expertise?

A Nexis search (courtesy of Philadelphia Daily News journalist and Attytood blogger Will Bunch) turns up only one citation with Debat’s name prior to 9/11. Yet, suddenly, starting on October 4, 2001, he’s being quoted by ABC News as a “former French defense official,” who’s among “French investigators” and “French officials” that captured a “notebook full of secret codes” through which the 9/11 hijackers “may have communicated over the Internet.” Said Debat in his first ABC News article, "This code book is [sic] major breakthrough in the investigation.” On November 28 that same year, Debat’s quoted again for another sensational ABC News story on a “suspected hijack associate” arrested in Germany.

And on and on it goes until September 5, 2002, when Debat, having been quoted and used as a source for multiple post-9/11-related stories for the rest of 2001 and much of 2002, finally officially earns the title “ABC News consultant” in addition to “former French Defense Ministry official” in a story about how Zacharias Moussaoui, the infamous “20 hijacker” - according to “French intelligence authorities,” which in this case appears to be, well, Debat – was actually “part of a second wave of suicide hijackings planned for early 2002 in Europe and the United States.” From there, Debat’s presence in Ross’ investigative units’ stories grew as he eventually began writing and presenting some of them as well, rounding out the curious role of analyst, source and reporter, that would carry him through the next five years.   

To Remove, Or Not To Remove

What differentiates the few stories ABC News has removed from its website in which Debat played a role from the over 45 remaining stories to which Debat contributed?

As Brian Ross said, Debat's lying about his Ph.D. credentials “called into question, of course, everything he had done.” What’s more, of those nearly 50 stories still remaining on ABC News’ website (at last check), Debat is variously the sole or contributing journalist to a report, an author of news analysis, an attributed source, an anonymous source, or a simultaneous mix of two or more of these roles in the same story. (If only Peter Sellers were alive to play Alexis Debat.)

Debat’s confirmed deceptions, coupled with revelations of his deep neocon ties, would, indeed, seem to call into question everything he's done and said as an investigative reporter, a source, and an analyst. Thus, it would be naive or intellectually dishonest to not think the handful of stories scrubbed from ABC News' website are but the tip of the iceberg here for Debat's gamesmanship. (And forgive me if I’m a bit skeptical that ABC removed them solely on the basis they didn't meet its rigid journalistic standards.)

Moreover, in the cases where Debat is giving an opinion in the role of terrorism analyst, it’s not merely a question of ABC News corroborating evidence. As a think-tank neocon posing as a nonpartisan terrorism expert, his inherent conflict of interest must also be taken into account. Such dressed-up propaganda, which accumulatively can determine whether there is peace or war between nations, has no place in any respectable news organization.

Stay Tuned, Folks...

Again, just some of the many questions that need to be addressed. New ones will, of course, arise as more is revealed. In the coming days, it's vital for those of us following and covering this scandal to not lose sight of ABC News' culpability in creating and sanctioning the environment for Debat's deceptions to flourish. ABC News' problem is systemic, institutional, and won't be solved by Debat's departure and his public rebuke. Failing to hold ABC News accountable will only serve to foster future Alexis Debats. He should be held to account, too. But this man was no lone wolf.

That scenario would be more fantastic than any story, resume or interview fabricated by Alexis Debat.

UPDATE: Excellent follow-up by Rozen on Debat's claim to have received "a large chunk of money" from the Pentagon for a study on radical Islam.

UPDATE II: Rozen tells me that the AP report stating Debat was an intern for five months at the French Defense Ministry is not accurate. According to Rozen's sources, Debat had an 8-10 month desk job there and was a contractor but had a salary, office, etc. Though she does confirm that Brian Ross' longtime producer Rhonda Schwartz appears to have embellished Debat's position in ascribing the word "officer" to his title at the Defense Ministry - a word that by its very meaning denotes a position of authority. The Defense Ministry made it clear that Debat "was never part of the Ministry," so that he was an "officer" of any sort seems highly unlikely. Rather, it appears Schwartz purposely chose this word because, considering Debat's flimsy experience (aside from his fabrications), it's a description that, of course, benefits ABC News.

UPDATE III: Well, it's certainly not the only thing the AP got wrong in that report. I forgot to mention this doozy of an error (emphasis mine):

Alexis Debat, who was fired by the TV network last year, quit a Washington think tank on Wednesday after being accused of faking an interview with Barack Obama.

Actually, Debat was fired (or forced to resign) just this past June. How did the AP manage to be off by roughly three-quarters of a year on one of the most basic details of this story? You got me.

Meanwhile, this woefully sloppy error (which, over a week later, apparently hasn't been caught by anyone at the AP), precedes this (emphasis mine):

The AP quoted Debat in stories in 2001 and 2004.

He was quoted in 2001, identified as a former French Defense Ministry analyst, a former French Defense Ministry official and as a U.S. desk officer for the Defense Ministry until 2000.

In one story, he said the United States and France had increased their intelligence-sharing.

He was the main source for another story in which he said police had found a notebook with codes that could help decipher messages within Osama bin Laden's terrorist network.

He was identified as a terrorism consultant in a 2004 story about CIA Director George Tenet's resignation. He was quoted as saying Tenet had a reputation as a yes-man for President Bush.

The AP has launched a review of the stories in which he provided information.

Let's hope the AP's review is more carefully and professionally executed than this story it filed on Debat.

UPDATE IV: Don't miss the latest - ABC News spokesman unwittingly reveals more.

Op-Ed Column: Tom Friedman Inc. Desperate to Retain Brand Equity

Editor’s Note: Last year, I finally brought myself to write about my 9/11 experience. A rare personal post. I welcome you to read it if you haven’t. It was extremely difficult to write but helped me come to terms with that day (as much as one can). Today, on this anniversary of 9/11, I’m responding to Tom Friedman’s latest op-ed because his arguments within it continue to promote a worldview that helped create the environment for the senseless invasion of Iraq after 9/11, have been leveraged to sustain this war ever since, and could easily be applied as justification for invading other countries unprovoked in the future.

(updated below)

It should surprise no one that the day before Gen. David Petraeus was set to testify before Congress on the “surge” in Iraq, Tom Friedman published the op-ed “What’s Missing in Baghdad” in The New York Times.

Friedman, a well-deserved punching bag for the alternative media since the lead-up to the war in Iraq, is back with his “the world is flat” logic. At this point, one might understandably take that eponymous title of Friedman’s book and conclude he does indeed believe the world is flat. Or (as suggested here before), since Tom Friedman Inc. is built on this worldview, it behooves Mr. Friedman to remain steadfast to his brand's theories, which inform his products and keeps him a household name, i.e., his books viable, his presence on TV in demand, his speaking engagements lucrative or high profile.

Consequently, expecting honesty from Tom Friedman on our misadventure in Iraq is like asking Jim Perdue (the chicken giant’s current chairman and spokesman who took over for his legendary father) if his chickens - pumped full of hormones and administered antibiotics to counter diseases, which in part stem from those hormone injections - are healthy to eat.

Here’s how Friedman opens his column: “One of the most troubling lessons of the Iraq invasion is just how empty the Arab dictatorships are.”

Where to begin? For the sake of our sanity and blood pressure, let’s stick to the necessary narrow focus of Friedman’s article. Let’s not, for example, go down other roads that Friedman’s arrogant, reductive, historically myopic and intellectually dishonest premise begs in response, such as: What current and past dictatorships weren’t “empty”? Or, what do you even mean by “empty” – slow to take to invasion, occupation and an imposed “democracy” that almost solely benefits the corporate elite of the occupiers and their puppets in the newly formed occupied country’s government? Moreover, hasn’t every aspect of this administration’s purported desire to “spread democracy” been exposed as patently empty, a rotten-to-the-core fraud, the coarsest of propaganda, underscored by this White House’s systematic efforts to dismantle the most basic democratic principles of our own constitution? 

No, please, let’s not go there.

Such inquiries might distract us from what is most glaringly offensive about Friedman’s opening line.

That he believes, or is simply promoting, this idea – the emptiness of Arab dictatorships is one of the “most troubling lessons of the Iraq invasion” - is not only chilling in both its inhumanity and disregard for the rule of domestic and international law (does he forget we illegally invaded a sovereign nation under false pretenses?), but also, contextually, all the more stunning in its willful obliviousness to what is undeniably one of the worst - if not the worst - American foreign policy decisions in our nation’s history.

Yet this characteristically disingenuous Friedman narrative serves as the perfect moral blank check for the Bush administration, a timely tonic that encourages us to continue to shove “democracy” down the Iraqis’ throats at the barrel of a gun while it simultaneously provides a rhetorical exit strategy if that just refuses to take: if only those Iraqis really wanted democracy, our illegal, unprovoked invasion of their country – which now accounts for nearly 4,000 deaths of American servicemen and women and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis – would be a success.

It’s their fault. Not ours. We’re Moses and the Iraqis are simply rejecting the Promised Land. The ingrates. Barbarians. Savages helpless to their own impulses. If only they would embrace the peaceful example with which we’ve so humanely provided them through “shock and awe” and unleashing the Pandora’s box that every honest and knowledgeable person predicted (even Dick Cheney himself). And with such competence and attentiveness to their most basic needs - security, clean water, electricity - how could they doubt our intentions and our ability to help them forge a genuinely democratic state? From human rights abuses at Abu Ghraib, still ongoing at Guantanamo Bay, to secret prisons abroad, to the sustained dismantling of democracy here at home in the guise of defending The Homeland, what would give Iraqis the idea the U.S. government wasn’t serious about liberty and justice?

From his introductory sentence to his closing, Friedman spins the kind of achingly fraudulent pronouncements on which Tom Friedman, Inc. depends if it’s to retain its market share, this time using the Kurds to prove how the rest of Iraq is responsible for its failure to democratize. It’s riddled with contextually deficient deductions that demand ignoring a central fact: we knew Iraq would be a cauldron of warring factions left in the wake of a power vacuum if Saddam was toppled, yet we went in, anyway (and, again, did so illegally, falsifying intelligence to justify the illegal invasion):

The United States played a critical role in Kurdistan. In 1998, we helped to resolve the Kurdish civil war — the power struggle between two rival clans — which created the possibility of a stable, power-sharing election in 2005. And by removing Saddam, we triggered a flood of foreign investment here.

But that is all we did. Today, there are almost no U.S. soldiers or diplomats in Kurdistan. Yet politics here is flourishing, as is the economy, because the Kurds want it that way. Down south, we’ve spent billions trying to democratize the Sunni and Shiite zones and have little to show for it.

Of course, we did considerably more than trigger “a flood of foreign investment” in Kurdistan; we unleashed the hell on earth that is the rest of Iraq. We “have little to show for” spending “billions trying to democratize the Sunni and Shiite zones” because our government had no regard, nor apparently does Friedman, for what history and credible foreign policy and intelligence experts, not to mention millions of everyday Americans and citizens worldwide, could plainly see would happen. 

Next, Friedman the Sage dispenses some lessons, the first two of which so mind-numbingly obvious, condescending and tone deaf it’s as if his goal is to break the Guinness World Record for cognitive dissonance:

1) Until the power struggle between Sunnis and Shiites is resolved, you can’t establish any stable politics in southern Iraq. 2) When people want to move down a progressive path, there is no stopping them. When they don’t, there is no helping them.

What part of “you break it, you bought it” did Friedman not understand?

He then goes on to quote liberally from “my friend Michael Mandelbaum, a foreign affairs expert at Johns Hopkins University,” who wrote “a timely new book, ‘Democracy’s Good Name: The Rise and Risks of the World’s Most Popular Form of Government.’” What a surprise: Friedman’s worldview aligns with his buddy’s, whom he decides to quote liberally for this column. In fact, he says of Mandelbaum’s book, “It is highly relevant to America’s democracy project in Iraq and beyond.”

Leave it to Friedman to call naked American imperialism, its unprovoked invasion of Iraq, a “democracy project.” And with the administration constantly threatening to attack Iran, how telling and, potentially, unwittingly ominous that he includes the words “and beyond.” 

Predictably, Mandelbaum promotes the same Iraqis Don’t Want Democracy justification, whereby he ignores the U.S. government’s central role in the rampant death and destruction that continues to engulf the country.

Mr. Mandelbaum argues that democracy is made up of two elements: liberty and popular sovereignty. “Liberty involves what governments do” — the rule of law, the protection of people from abuses of state power and the regulations by which government institutions operate, he explains. Popular sovereignty involves how the people determine who governs them — through free elections.

What Baghdad exemplifies, Mr. Mandelbaum says, is what happens when you have elections without liberty. You end up with a tyranny of the majority, or what Fareed Zakaria has labeled “illiberal democracy.”

But this kind of argument, though nominally more complex than Friedman’s breathless militaristic McWorldview ("The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist"), is really more of the same – as applied here, a theory that omits catastrophic causality of the U.S. invasion of Iraq by reframing imperial plundering as altruistic democracy promotion.

If you kick over a bee’s nest, whose fault is it that you got stung, or that the bees won’t orderly return to their nest? The bees? Or yours? Though you may not want a bee’s nest on your property, unless you are a rash imbecile, have a penchant for extreme pain or have a potential death wish, you wouldn’t just walk up to it and kick it with all your might. First, you would consider the most sensible approach for dealing with the situation.

Mandelbaum’s theory, like Friedman’s, discards both a priori and a posteriori knowledge pertaining to Iraq as a whole. Whatever positive or negative consequences follow a tragically ill-considered act - and, inarguably, what’s happened because of the U.S. invasion of Iraq has been almost universally and horrifically negative - the act itself cannot be ignored. It’s intellectually dishonest to cherry-pick the one part of Iraq where the U.S. invasion might have helped (though, because of the Iraq War, the Turkish government has been threatening to invade Kurdistan, something Mandelbaum and Friedman conveniently leave out of their rosy example of the invasion’s success).

Of course, “more than anything else, what Baghdad exemplifies” is what happens when, through invasion and occupation, you try to ram a false democracy, run by a puppet government obedient to American oil interests, down the throats of a proud people with an especially fractious history, whose country has known nothing but monarchical, colonial and despotic rule throughout its history.

But how’s this for even more reductive reasoning, completely detached from reality?

What the Kurdistan-Baghdad contrast also illustrates, notes Mr. Mandelbaum, is that “we can help create the conditions for democracy to take root, but people have to develop the skills and values that make it work themselves.”

It’s ludicrous for Mandelbaum and Friedman to suggest we helped “create the conditions for democracy to take root” for anyone in Iraq, with the possible exception of the Kurds, who might be the invasion’s only benefactors (and even that will be short-lived if Turkey decides to invade). From profligate corruption, incompetence and cronyism, to failing to provide primary necessities of security, water and electricity, to sending unmistakable signs to the Iraqis and the rest of the world that it planned on being an occupying force (most probably permanently), examples abound of the Bush administration’s failure to create such conditions.

Quite the opposite is, and has long been, painfully clear.

From the outset, what did U.S. forces secure after the “shock and awe” phase of the invasion? The hospitals? The borders? The munitions caches? The national museums? The schools? The billions of U.S. dollars in cold cash purportedly earmarked to aid the Iraqi people?

No. The oil.

Tearing down Saddam’s statue for a staged television moment was another priority, which, once revealed, only confirmed the notion that the invaders cared more about profits and propaganda than democracy and Iraqi lives. 

As former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld famously said at the time of the looting of precious national and historical artifacts from the cradle of civilization, “Stuff happens,” adding, "It's untidy. And freedom's untidy. And free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes."

How’s that for winning hearts and minds, for showing respect to the Iraqi culture and people, for inspiring the conditions for democracy to take root? The root, of course, was poisoned before we went in. This whole "democracy project" a disgraceful and deadly sham.

Friedman winds down his column with more absurd and patronizing oversimplifications:

One way a country develops the software of liberty, Mr. Mandelbaum says, is by nurturing a free market. Kurdistan has one. The economy in the rest of Iraq remains a mess. “A market economy,” he argues, “gives people a stake in peace, as well as a constructive way of dealing with people who are strangers. Free markets teach the basic democratic practices of compromise and trust.”

First, I’m not sure if Mandelbaum or Friedman owns the stillborn metaphor “the software of liberty.” Since I don’t have Mandelbaum’s book in front of me, there’s no quotes around these words, and the term smacks of Friedman’s penchant for haughty, banal and dehumanizing globalization catchphrases, my bet’s on Friedman. Either way, the overall idea sounds as if it was wholly lifted from one of Friedman’s own books (hey, at least he was upfront about his friendship with Mandelbaum).

Of course, what would a classic Thomas Friedman article be without another hopeful plea to give our misadventure in Iraq more time to work? And what better timing, when so many in the mainstream media are once again lining up behind this president and his top general to attempt to sway public sentiment back in this direction?

Democracy can fail because of religious intolerance, the curse of oil, a legacy of colonialism and military dictatorship, or an aversion to Western values — the wellspring of democracy. The Middle East, notes Mr. Mandelbaum, is the one region afflicted by all of these maladies. That doesn’t mean democratization is impossible here, as the Kurds demonstrate. But it does mean it’s really hard.

You see, "surge" fans, it's not that democratization is “impossible." It's just hard work.

But the second-to-last line of this op-ed struck me as particularly, well, insane:

Above all, Iraq teaches us that democracy is possible only when people want both pillars of it — liberty and self-government — and build both themselves.

"Above all”? That’s the key takeaway Friedman’s gleaned from our tragic folly in Iraq? It’s not only insulting to our intelligence (we knew this before the invasion, not as a consequence) but also to the Iraqi people, who’ve suffered horrific loss of life as a result of such blinkered, hegemonic arrogance.

Blindly shilling his McWorldview is the edifice on which Tom Friedman Inc. rests. Take that away, and Friedman, the wizard behind this rhetorical Oz, is little more than a clunky writer and an even worse journalist - an incurious elitist and imperial apologist who, at heart, has proven through his work that he cares about the principles of democracy about as much as does George W. Bush.

UPDATE: Must-see TV: Friedman the Humanitarian from a 2003 appearance on Charlie Rose. (h/t Crooks and Liars)

Op-Ed Column: CBS Evening News, Now More "Newsy"!

When will network news executives and their anchors (and the mainstream media that occasionally reports on the state of network news) speak honestly and accurately about why they continue to lose their audience?

In yesterday's Reuters article "CBS Sticking with Couric's Ailing Newscast," reporter Paul J. Gough perpetuates the mythology that network news has only two paths: either modernize (new set, new format, new type of anchor, etc.) or cling rigidly to a traditional format (no couches, no interview segments, no shots of anchor's stockinged legs, etc.).

In other words, to apply lipstick to the pig or not to apply lipstick to the pig? That is their question. Only that isn't the question. And it's certainly not the answer.

In reality, every network news executive would do well to grab a marker and write in big bold letters across the walls of their respective war rooms: It's the Quality of the News, Stupid.

Beneath that, they should add the subhead: Quality Reporting Demands Accuracy, Honesty, Context and a Willingness to Report the Hard Truths.

Nevertheless, here's Gough from his Reuter's article:

Couric's stint at "CBS Evening News" started with promise, a new approach to the traditional newscast that the network hoped would bring in and keep the millions of viewers who have turned away from the evening newscasts. But it has turned into a $15 million-a-year disappointment so far for CBS, which has found itself remaining in third place even with the former morning star in the anchor chair.

But CBS isn't throwing up its hands. The makeover of "CBS Evening News" has been spiked and executive producer Rome Hartman reassigned in favor of veteran Rick Kaplan, who has made the newscast much more harder-edged and newsy [emphasis mine]. That has been a constant theme since Kaplan took over in March, one that easily was in evidence to dedicated viewers long before Couric and Kaplan left for Iraq last week.

Without the least bit of irony, Gough commends Couric's broadcast for being more "newsy." Yet what Gough, Kaplan and the mainstream media at large fail to recognize - or refuse to admit - is that being newsy is precisely what's killing them.

We want news.    

There are plenty of newsy programs clogging the airwaves. But newsy ain't news. Newsy doesn't cut it anymore. And if network executives don't embrace this reality, they will continue to hemorrhage viewers (note I didn't say consumers) who are appalled and fed up with newsy. Viewers who want to know, especially during a time of war (defying conventional Beltway wisdom), that their journalists are beholden to the facts rather than to an administration's narrative.

Newsy is what led, and continues to lead, so many people to consider The Daily Show - a satirical news half-hour on a full-fledged comedy network - more newsworthy than our "serious" national news programs.

Newsy and Stephen Colbert's "truthiness" are joined at the hip.

Newsy is the funhouse-mirror reality of far too much mainstream reportage that we in alternative news circles spend the bulk of our time wading through - dispelling inaccuracies, prevarications and lies; providing necessary omitted information and context; and exposing sloppiness, stenography and outright propaganda.

Viewers will increasingly find what they're looking for. If network news executives continue to dwell in this tone-deaf realm, they will also continue to forfeit their credibility as viable news sources and drive millions of more viewers to tune them out permanently.

From the same Reuters article, this might give you an example of how out of touch network news executives remain:

"I look at us right now being in the top of the second inning at the latest," CBS News president Sean McManus said in an interview last week. "This is a long, long process, and I'm extremely pleased at the quality of our show. I put our show up against any national newscast [emphasis mine]. I'm very proud of it."

Someone should tell McManus it's not 1985, or 1995. Or 2005, for that matter.

The time for network news to buck decades of deficient reporting is long overdue. Maybe his rosy assessment helps keep his stockholders at bay for the moment. But the cognitive dissonance here is deafening: McManus acts as if other national newscasts are presenting us with anything even resembling quality. He also fails to recognize (or concede) that his competition is not merely other national newscasts but the explosion and popularity of alternative news sources.

Apparently, Katie Couric's recent reports from Iraq are evidence of her more newsy approach.

Speaking with Bob Schieffer on CBS' Face the Nation this past Sunday, Couric, in the course of mainly relaying Gen. David Petraeus' talking points on the "surge," said, "And so, you do see signs of life that seem to be normal. Of course, that's what the U.S. military wants me to see, so you have to keep that in mind as well."

An extremely rare admission (whether intended as such or not) into the reality behind the predominance of our mainstream Iraq War coverage. Had Couric then reported on some things the U.S. military didn't want her to see (obviously nothing that would compromise our troops' safety), it would've been news. As is? Newsy.

In Couric's report filed Tuesday for CBS Evening News, she tells Petraeus, "Some people might be watching this and saying this is a nice dog and pony show. Yeah, there are some areas of calm, but if you look at the country as a whole, it's still a nightmare." Predictably, Petraeus responds, "If you look at the country as a whole, there is an unacceptable level of violence. But that level of violence, the number of ethno-sectarian deaths, you name it, the number of incidents [Sunni-Shia] has been reduced dramatically. That's not to say there are not places where it is very, very tough. The question is which way is it headed, and I think it's headed up."

Yet Couric doesn't challenge Petraeus' claims, which the Government Accountability Office (GAO) report refutes. And keep in mind the GAO report came out prior to Couric's airing of her stroll with Petraeus. Nor does Couric mention the Associated Press report, also available before her broadcast, which found, "Civilian deaths [in Iraq] rose in August to their second-highest monthly level this year" and, as the Los Angeles Times reported, "the second month in a row that civilian deaths have risen."   

So, in effect, the "nice dog and pony show" comment serves a dual purpose: it shields Couric and CBS from such criticisms while bolstering the credibility of Petraeus', well, dog and pony show. This calls to mind the magician's assistant, who, in assuring the audience it's not being had, first splays open the box in which she will soon be sawed in half before being made whole again.

This kind of reporting continued Wednesday as No. 2 U.S. Commander in Iraq General Raymond Odierno led Couric through his leg of The Surge Is Working tour.

But prior to airing her stroll with Petraeus on Tuesday, Couric showed what was up her sleeve (if not Petraeus') when she spoke with local CBS News anchors to promote her big interview:

COURIC: He [Petraeus] took me to Fallujah, which is in Anbar Province in western Iraq. And this is considered a real role model of something working right in Iraq. We hear so much about things going bad, but real progress has been made there in terms of security and stability. I mean, obviously, infrastructure problems abound, but Sunnis and U.S. forces are working together. They banded together because they had a common enemy: al Qaeda. And now many more people have joined the Iraqi security forces. The spike in police has really been significant since last year. And the number of violent incidents, really, in Anbar Province, which is one-third of Iraq, in the west, have gone down dramatically as well. So General Petraeus took me on a tour of Fallujah and we had a long conversation about a lot of things about Iraq in general. And he gave me a bit of a preview of what he'll talk about next week with the president and on Capitol Hill.

Hmm, I wonder what he'll say.

When asked if she was seeing an improvement in the living conditions of the Iraqi people, Couric, before describing one family's struggle for electricity and water, said:

"Not really. I think everyone I talk to agrees that restoring basic services is really an imperative step in bringing stability and some kind of sense of society to Iraq.

Holy Freedom Fries flashback! That just might be the journalistic understatement of the year. Didn't we hear how "restoring basic services is really an imperative step in bringing stability and some kind of sense of society to Iraq" back in, oh, 2003? Couric's not only drinking the Bush administration's Kool-Aid, she's apparently entered a time warp as well.

Now that's newsy.