Editor's Note: This is a loose Part II to the prior post: The Padilla Verdict, MSM-Style.
Of course, a longer segment covering the Padilla verdict doesn't necessarily mean that glaring omissions wouldn't occur. (24-hour news networks prove this point daily.)
In speaking to Associated Press journalist Curt Anderson, PBS NewsHour anchor Jim Lehrer offered a primer on how to appear to be a serious journalist without asking almost any substantive questions or follow-ups, on how to dance around the unseemly nature of a subject but give the appearance you're providing depth and breadth.
First of all, after hearing PBS fund-raisers prattle on about how it's part of Jim Lehrer and NewsHour's credo to show more than one side of every story, Lehrer then brings on Anderson for, well, the only side of this story.
JIM LEHRER: What exactly was it that Jose Padilla was convicted of doing today?
CURT ANDERSON: He was essentially convicted of presenting himself, volunteering to become an al-Qaida trainee at a camp in Afghanistan. The main piece of evidence against him was a form that he filled out back in 2000 to join the al-Farouq camp, which was one of the biggest and supposedly best in Afghanistan.
Beyond that, there was very little other evidence against him. Most of it was the form which had his fingerprints on it, and that seemed to be enough to convince the jury that he had provided himself as material support to the al-Qaida terrorist group.
To say "that seemed to be enough to convince the jury that he had
provided himself as material support to the al-Qaida terrorist group"
is not true. The prosecution played the jury a videotape of Osama bin
Laden (Anderson himself alludes to it later in this segment) that certainly influenced the outcome of the trial as much or more so than a piece of paper the government alone said Padilla signed
and left fingerprints on.
But Lehrer misses this completely, as if he wasn't aware this video
of Bin Laden was presented to the jury. It's fine to bring on an
"expert," but shouldn't Lehrer do some basic homework of his own before
interviewing a guest on such a serious topic? It's the least he owes his audience when there's no one else but him to question Anderson's account.
He does follow up on this (though again lets every pertinent nuance go unanswered):
JIM LEHRER: Was there any evidence that he actually went to the camp and trained and got ready to be a "terrorist," end quote?
CURT ANDERSON: They stopped short of presenting that evidence directly regarding Padilla himself, but prosecutors brought other people -- notably a number of the Lackawanna Six group up in upstate New York -- to testify that he had gone to that same camp at a different time and had learned to use explosives and AK-47 and trained in a various ways like that. He was seen as a stand-in for Padilla, since they did not want to -- the prosecutors did not want to go that far in this case regarding Padilla himself.
JIM LEHRER: And the reason they didn't want to -- why would they not want to go any further? Was there a legal reason or what?
CURT ANDERSON: Yes. They were barred, primarily because Padilla, as many people know, was held as an enemy combatant for three-and-a-half years. He was interrogated extensively during all that time. And supposedly, if you believe the government, admitted to most of this information, the things he did and plots that he supposedly took part in.
None of that can be used in federal court because he was never read his rights, he never had a lawyer present to advise him, as we normally would have in our system, in federal civilian courts, so the case stopped short of actually his attendance at the camp.
While Lehrer is doing his impersonation of Fred Astaire, dancing up to the truth before adroitly leaping away, making it all look so easy, so natural, Anderson seems to think there's no bias in presenting every government claim about Padilla that was inadmissible in court but omitting the fact that the defendant was never charged on any of those claims during the three-and-a-half years he was held in solitary confinement and tortured.
Moreover, neither Lehrer nor Anderson brings up anything related to his torture, nor even the word torture during the entire segment. Nor do Lehrer or Anderson mention how extraordinary it was for a U.S. citizen to be stripped of his constitutional rights to begin with. As presented, nothing the government did in the Padilla case was unconstitutional. It's not even a failed strategy. According to Anderson, the government simply did A and then they did B, and in doing B, they had to narrow their options because of some actions previously taken in A. And Lehrer is mainly along for the ride, as if he's taking in the words of a tour guide.
The dark sinews of this story, in essence the same hard truths that NBC's Pete Williams scrubbed from his jaunty summary, have gone missing here, too.
The following exchange between Lehrer and Anderson, worthy of Fox News, underscores the absolute absurdity of this coverage:
JIM LEHRER: And was there ever any evidence put forth in public about that dirty bomb incident?
CURT ANDERSON: In public, yes. Back before Padilla was brought to Miami, in 2004, the Justice Department had a kind of an unusual press conference to detail what they said were Padilla's admissions to at least exploring the dirty bomb plot with people such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged plotter of 9/11 attacks.
And they did that because, at the time, they were in the midst of a battle over whether the president had the authority to continue detaining Padilla, a U.S. citizen, as an enemy combatant. And the Supreme Court was getting ready to possibly take the case up when the administration shifted gears and decided to charge him criminally, take him out of the military system, and send him here.
JIM LEHRER: Now, just for the record, a dirty bomb is a little small nuclear device, right?
Just to be clear, after Anderson describes what most Americans already know because once the announcement was made during that "kind of an unusual press conference" the mainstream media focused 24/7 on the dirty bomb, Lehrer lunges away from Anderson's prior statements to ask:
JIM LEHRER: Now, tell us about Jose Padilla. Where did he come from? He's 36 years old, but where did he come from? How did he get from where he started to where he is now?
First, Lehrer's question at the beginning of the previous exchange is ridiculous and, quite frankly, dangerous: "And was there ever any evidence put forth in public about that dirty bomb incident?" What value does "evidence put forth in public" have in a democracy where everyone is supposed to be innocent until proven guilty beyond a shadow of doubt? But Anderson takes Lehrer's lead and runs with it without question.
Again, why is it that Lehrer and Anderson - and this is ubiquitous in mainstream coverage of the Padilla verdict - keep trotting out unproven government claims, which amount to hearsay, but fail to touch upon anything related to Padilla's cruel and inhumane mistreatment by the same government that's making these claims? Why is it that Lehrer and Anderson can further perpetuate the oxymoronic "evidence put forth in public" but completely disregard the serious legal repercussions the Padilla case presents for every American citizen.
The government can arrest citizens indefinitely with no charge, torture them until they are unfit to stand trial (as Padilla was deemed in a psychological evaluation), then scratch up flimsy evidence and switch them into the legal system to avoid oversight.
But none of that is important to Lehrer and Anderson. Difficult as it may seem in a case riddled with legal dysfunction and dire implications for the rule of law, they fail to examine any of the blatantly illegal and seriously questionable acts undertaken by the Bush
administration. Instead, for some reason, their focus is on exhausting any
additional details, no
matter how sketchy, that aid the government's gloss of justice served against Padilla.
CURT ANDERSON: He was born in Brooklyn. He's of Puerto Rican descent. He moved with his family to Chicago as a youngster, grew up there, got involved with street gangs, had a long rap sheet in Chicago, including a conviction as a juvenile of a murder, where he was present, not the one who actually committed the murder.
His mother moved he and other family members to south Florida. He got into more trouble and converted to Islam while in prison here in Florida. So he comes out of prison, and he starts going to the mosque, and that's where he meets a man named Adam Hassoun. Adam Hassoun was also convicted today of the same charges. And Hassoun was the leader of this cell to support Islamic extremism.
And that's kind of his journey. He got in with Hassoun, got convinced to become a Mujahedeen fighter, went over to Egypt in 1998, traveled from there to Afghanistan, and then wound up in O'Hare airport with the FBI on him.
Oh, Padilla was also a bad student (fortunately Lehrer makes clear a GED is an exam one takes to get a high school diploma), had a string of crappy fast-food jobs and longed for a more fulfilling path (who knew working the drive-thru window could lead to a life of terrorism?):
JIM LEHRER: What is known, if anything, about his family, about his education, occupation, some of the basics?
CURT ANDERSON: Yes, well, he got a GED, didn't do very well in school. It took him a while to get that.
JIM LEHRER: That's a GED, he took an exam to get a high school diploma, right?
CURT ANDERSON: Correct, yes. And he mostly worked in fast food, say, Taco Bell, things like that [note to Anderson: when a journalist is supposed to be dealing with facts and not opinion, statements like "say, Taco Bell, things like that" should be avoided]. He worked as a busboy at a Hilton Hotel and setting up for conferences and things like that [see previous note]. He seemed to be sort of a person who was continually looking for kind of what his path was going to be ["seemed to be sort of....for kind of what" - why does it sound like you seem to be sort of kind of making this up?].
I mentioned the gang membership. [Yeah, we got that.] You had various stretches of jail time. [Yup, mentioned that too.] So this was just the latest thing, it seemed like for him [or so it seemed, yes].
His mother is still living just north of Miami in Broward County. She was at the trial today. She said she's just looking forward to his chance to appeal. She thinks that he was essentially railroaded, which, you know, you would expect her to say.
You would expect a mother to say that, Curt. But in this case there are many reasons to believe that what she's alleging might have occurred. It's your job and Mr. Lehrer's job to explore those reasons. That is part of this story.
The part you both left out.
Et Tu, PBS NewsHour?
Posted by: MediaBloodhound | August 20, 2007 at 03:59 AM
Another victim of Bush's drive to turn America into a third world country. Thanks for the analysis, it's spot on.
Posted by: Devil Inside | August 22, 2007 at 12:00 AM
I had sent a comment to PBS/Jim Lehr when Mr.Cheyney was on and I mean on, no questions by Mr. Lehr, he just let Cheyney say his peace and by being on PBS you would have thought it was credible(unless you have 1/2 a brain) BUT ALAS PBS HAS BEEN GONE THE WAY OF ALL MEDIA
Posted by: phyllis doyle | August 26, 2007 at 10:34 AM