Media Matters for America

On the December 2 edition of The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly featured comedian Jackie Mason as a guest to discuss the "war on Christmas." Mason said: "I'm telling you that the people who are making these complaints represent nobody but themselves. UCLA [sic] types, anti-religionists, secularists is what you talk about all the time. They're people who have a guilty conscience about anything they might do that's dirty or off-color or vulgar or obscene."

Mason was presumably referring to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and not the University of California-Los Angeles.

Mason continued: "You can't stop a rap singer from telling people to kill every Jew in the world, every gentile, every short person, every homosexual, everybody." Then he declared: "The Ku Klux Klan is allowed to march and they're allowed to holler 'Ku Klux Klan,' but God forbid you had a Christmas tree in front of it. They wouldn't be allowed. You can call the Ku Klux Klan, but if they said 'Merry Christmas,' they'd be wiped out."

O'Reilly responded, "[T]here has to be a power behind this. I think it's the George Soros crew."

Mason then said, "The ACLU are a bunch of sick people who fight for anything that's anti-American, anything that's dirty or vulgar, and they hate anything that's respectable or decent."

Mason is an advisory board member of Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation, which purports to offer "a Jewish response to anti-Christian bias in the news media, entertainment, government and the culture" and has expressed support for the fight against the "war on Christmas." The group's advisory board also includes David Horowitz, Republican activist Barbara Ledeen, radio hosts Michael Medved and Barry Farber, and columnists Jeff Jacoby and Mona Charen. Mason has co-written, with attorney and fellow Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation advisory board member Raoul Felder, articles for conservative outlets such as Jewish World Review, The American Spectator, and The Washington Times.

From the December 2 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor:

O'REILLY: But we had a poll this week: 90 percent of Americans, 90 percent celebrate Christmas. But somehow, somebody has intimidated the CEOs of Sears and Wal-Mart and a lot of these other places. Who are these people?

MASON: First of all, there's no constituency for it. If you -- I'm telling you that the people who are making these complaints represent nobody but themselves. UCLA [sic] types, anti-religionists, secularists is what you talk about all the time. They're people who have a guilty conscience about anything they might do that's dirty or off-color or vulgar or obscene. Is there something wrong with a country that pornography is so popular and if, God forbid, if you question the rights of -- to disseminate porn, right away it's freedom of speech? You're allowed to do all the pornography you want. You can't challenge it; it's freedom of speech. Rap singers tell you how to kill people day and right. You've been doing it on your show all the time.

O'REILLY: Right.

MASON: You can't stop a rap singer from telling people to kill every Jew in the world, every gentile, every short person, every homosexual, everybody. You know why? Because it's freedom of speech. But if you want to say something good, talk about love and brotherhood by recognizing Christ as the savior and everybody wants to enjoy the merriment, all this is not allowed. The Ku Klux Klan is allowed to march and they're allowed to holler "Ku Klux Klan," but God forbid you had a Christmas tree in front of it. They wouldn't be allowed. You can call the Ku Klux Klan, but if they said "Merry Christmas," they'd be wiped out.

O'REILLY: But there has -- there has to be a power behind this. I think it's the George Soros crew. You know?

MASON: These are sick people. See, there's -- somehow it's a popular thing. It's in now to be -- to hate religion. It's in now to be hip, to be a swinger because they're living a dirty, filthy, obscene, vulgar life, and they're guilt-ridden about it. So any connection with religion somehow feels like an interference to their lifestyle. So they want to eliminate religion; they shouldn't feel dirty.

O'REILLY: How do you read the ACLU?

MASON: The ACLU are a bunch of sick people who fight for anything that's anti-American, anything that's dirty or vulgar, and they hate anything that's respectable or decent.

For the second time in one week, Washington Post staff writer Jeffrey H. Birnbaum miscast the rising tide of ethics investigations and corruption scandals plaguing primarily Republican officials as a bipartisan problem. Birnbaum also glided over the House ethics committee's internal struggles in hiring a new staff director -- a process long-delayed by Committee Chairman Doc Hastings' (R-WA) attempt to elevate his own chief of staff to the position.

In a December 5 Post article headlined, "In a Season of Scandals, Ethics Panels Are on Sidelines," Birnbaum reported:

So far this year, at least seven lawmakers have been indicted, have pleaded guilty or are under investigation for improper conduct such as conspiracy, securities fraud and improper campaign donations. In the past two weeks alone, Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.) resigned from Congress and pleaded guilty to tax evasion and conspiracy, and public relations executive Michael Scanlon admitted his role in a conspiracy to try to bribe a congressman.

In addition, The Washington Post and other publications have reported that a host of lawmakers -- Republicans and Democrats, senators and members of the House -- are being examined by the Justice Department for their connections to [former lobbyist Jack] Abramoff, a lobbyist who, with his former partner Scanlon, billed Indian tribes $82 million in fees that may have been put to improper uses.

In addition to the scandals surrounding Cunningham, Scanlon, and Abramoff, Birnbaum noted the federal investigation of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN). Frist is currently under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Justice Department for selling stock he owned in HCA Inc., a hospital chain founded by his family, shortly before a weak earnings report caused the company's share price to plummet. Birnbaum also noted former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's (R-TX) links to Abramoff and the ethics committee reprimands DeLay received in late 2004; as well as the Justice Department investigation into Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) "for possible violations connected with a telecommunications deal he was trying to arrange in Nigeria."

Even though his own reporting bears out the fact that more congressional Republicans have been affected by the recent rise in corruption and ethics investigations, Birnbaum continued to frame the current rash of scandals as a bipartisan issue. As Media Matters for America previously noted, a November 29 Post article also by Birnbaum reported that "pollsters say that voters think less of both political parties the more prominent the issue of corruption in Washington becomes," and, "[n]o fewer than seven lawmakers, including a Democrat, have been indicted, have pleaded guilty or are under investigation for improper conduct."

In his December 5 article, Birnbaum also reported:

But the committee's five Republican and five Democratic members have not opened a new case or launched an investigation in the past 12 months. It took months to hire a new chief of staff, and he still is not in place. Nor has the panel hired a full complement of investigators.

"I would say by the early part of January, we will be fully organized -- or should be really close to that," said Rep. Alan B. Mollohan (W.Va.), the committee's ranking Democrat. By then, he added, the panel "will be in a position to fulfill all of our responsibilities."

Birnbaum did not note that the delay in hiring an ethics committee chief of staff arose out of Hastings' failed attempt to appoint Ed Cassidy, his own chief of staff, to the position despite Cassidy's lack of experience and committee rules requiring a "professional, nonpartisan staff." According to a February 3 New York Times article, Hastings was picked by House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) to replace Rep. Joel Hefley (R-CO) as chairman of the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct because Hefley "drew the ire of some fellow Republicans after a series of findings against Mr. DeLay."

Hastings suggested in April that Cassidy take over the position after the former staff director, John Vargo, was dismissed in February. According to House Rule XI, regarding the House ethics committee staff: "(A) the staff be assembled and retained as a professional, nonpartisan staff; (B) each member of the staff shall be professional and demonstrably qualified for the position for which he is hired; (C) the staff as a whole and each member of the staff shall perform all official duties in a nonpartisan manner." As New Republic senior editor Michael Crowley wrote in a June 27 article (subscription required): "Cassidy is hardly nonpartisan. In addition to being chief of staff to a House Republican, he was an aide to the National Republican Congressional Committee and a spokesman for [former President] George H.W. Bush's inaugural committee. Nor is he a lawyer--something Democrats say is intolerable, given the committee's legal sensitivities. '[The committee is] a little law firm down there,' says one House Democrat."

An April 13 Congressional Quarterly Today article reported that Mollohan was "invited to appoint his own chief of staff, Colleen McCarty, as the minority staff director who would share equal power with Cassidy." Mollohan and House Democrats nevertheless refused to consider Cassidy for the position.

According to an April 14 Roll Call article:

According to Democrats, Republicans want to alter the traditional bipartisan makeup of ethics committee staff so that each side has their own "staff director" or top aide on the panel. Under the current structure of ethics committee staff, there is only one staff director -- usually an expert in the field of the Congressional ethics requirements who reports to both sides. Traditionally, the staff director has been able to offer an objective, non-partisan reading of ethics cases to members of the committee.

A June 30 article in The Hill reported that Mollohan and Hastings reached an agreement on June 29 to hire a single staff director approved by a majority committee vote. National Journal's "CongressDaily" reported on November 4 that William V. O'Reilly, a partner at the Jones Day law firm in Washington, D.C., was approved by the committee to serve as "chief counsel/staff director."

A December 4 Associated Press article on Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's (R-TN) pattern of supporting legislation that benefits HCA Inc., the hospital company that his family founded, reported without challenge disputed assertions attributed to his "supporters." Further, the article completely omitted any mention of the ongoing Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Justice Department investigations into the sale of all of Frist's stock in the company earlier this year, shortly before a weak earnings report caused share prices to plummet.

The trend in Frist's legislative record came to light after the Nashville Tennessean newspaper conducted an analysis of his Senate votes since he took office in 1995. A December 4 Tennessean article reported that "an examination of Frist's voting record over his nearly 11 years in the Senate shows a pattern of supporting bills friendly to HCA and to hospitals in general. His votes typically have followed the Republican Party line."

The AP article reporting the Tennessean's analysis of Frist's voting record appeared on the wires at 9:58 p.m. on December 4 and was published verbatim in the December 5 edition of the Chattanooga Times Free Press. The story included a sentence taken directly from the original Tennessean article that read: "Frist's supporters note that he hasn't always voted for bills in HCA's interest and say he has followed all Senate ethics rules."

But the question of whether Frist "followed all Senate ethics rules" remains very much in dispute, despite his supporters' claims to the contrary. A September 24 Washington Post article reported:

Congressional critics questioned the reason Frist gave for selling the stock. Senate rules allow lawmakers to divest all of their shares in a company from a blind trust, but only if they assume new duties and find that their ownership presents the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Frist has held HCA shares in a blind trust since he came to the Senate in 1995. He was promoted to majority leader in 2002. Frist regularly deflected concerns about owning the shares while leading health care debates by saying he kept them in a blind trust.

"I don't know what new duties he would point to above and beyond becoming majority leader, and that was three years ago," said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, an ethics advocate.

Moreover, as the Tennessean went on to report, ethics watchdog groups argue that it is irrelevant whether Frist voted for legislation in "HCA's interest" all of the time or only part of the time:

There are some examples of Frist voting in a way that has not been in HCA's interest.

He voted with a majority of Republicans, and Democrats, to cut Medicare reimbursements for hospitals as part of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997.

Still, government watchdog groups say that Frist's ties to HCA pose a conflict of interest.

"Because he owned so much stock in HCA ... there is the appearance that any legislation that could help the company would have helped him financially," said Mike Surrusco, ethics director for Common Cause, a nonpartisan watchdog group, based in Washington, which has called on the Senate ethics committee to reconsider whether Frist should be prohibited from voting on bills that could affect the fortunes of his family.

Further, the AP article failed to note the principal reason for the media attention on Frist's relationship to HCA: his conspicuous sale of all of his and his immediate family's HCA stock holdings in June -- just before the stock price plummeted -- which the SEC and Justice Department are now investigating.

During a panel debate on the December 4 broadcast of NBC's syndicated The Chris Matthews Show about whether President Bush reads newspapers, New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller said the claim that he doesn't is "crazy." She made this assertion despite Bush's own statement in 2003 that he "rarely read[s] the stories" and relies instead on briefings by members of his staff.

Discussing Bush's appetite for information, host Chris Matthews wondered about the similarity between Bush and "guys who won't ask directions when they drive somewhere." BBC News host Katty Kay responded: "The telling moment for me in his presidency was when he came out and said ... 'I prefer to get my news and my information from objective sources, and those are the people around me,' rather than from anything external."

Kay's observation prompted Bumiller to reply, "Katty -- he reads the papers. Please, you know, I -- this is crazy. Whenever I say this, people don't believe me. He reads the newspapers. I am here to tell you he reads the newspapers."

When Matthews asked Bumiller to elaborate on her claim, she modified it by saying, "[H]e reads the papers like a very busy person reads the papers -- you read the headlines, you read the first three [para]graphs." Bumiller continued, "[H]is wife reads the papers -- that I can tell you."

Commentator and former New Republic editor Andrew Sullivan countered, "The only pages in the newspapers that he reads religiously are the sports pages." Matthews challenged Sullivan, asking, "How do you know that?" Sullivan replied, "I've actually been told that by a member of his own family." Matthews did not ask Bumiller to similarly back up her claim.

According to the Fox News transcript of an hour-long September 22, 2003, interview with the cable channel's Washington managing editor, Brit Hume, Bush said, "I glance at the headlines just to kind of [get] a flavor for what's moving. I rarely read the stories, and get briefed by people who are [sic] probably read the news themselves. But like Condoleezza [Rice], in her case, the national security adviser is getting her news directly from the participants on the world stage."

Bush continued, "I have great respect for the media. I mean, our society is a good, solid democracy because of a good, solid media. But I also understand that a lot of times there's opinions mixed in with news. ... I appreciate people's opinions, but I'm more interested in news. And the best way to get the news is from objective sources. And the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what's happening in the world."

In a September 25, 2003, editorial that referenced the Hume interview, The New York Times wrote, "Mr. Bush and his aides also seem to go to great lengths to underline the degree to which the president closes himself off from the news media. ... But it is worrisome when one of the most incurious men ever to occupy the White House takes pains to insist that he gets his information on what the world is saying only in predigested bits from his appointees."

From the December 4 broadcast of NBC's syndicated The Chris Matthews Show:

MATTHEWS: You know how guys won't ask directions when they drive somewhere? You know, "Don't tell me where to go I'll get there." Right? Is he like that?

KAY: The telling moment for me in his presidency was when he came out and said, "I feel that it's better --

MATTHEWS: Are you laughing about this, Elisabeth? Cause it's true of a lot of us but I meant him.

KAY: -- "that I get, I prefer to get my news and my information from objective sources, and those are the people around me," rather than from anything external.

BUMILLER: Katty -- he reads the papers. Please, you know, I -- this is crazy. Whenever I say this people don't believe me. He reads the newspapers. I am here to tell you he reads the newspapers.

MATTHEWS: He reads you?

BUMILLER: I can tell he reads the papers from the complaints that I get.

MATTHEWS: So can you tell his mood based upon his reaction to the things that you've written, other people have written?

BUMILLER: Well I mean, he reads the papers like a very busy person reads the papers -- you read the headlines, you read the first three [para]graphs. He reads the papers like a well-informed person, and I can tell you what he complains about and what his staff complains about and his -- or, his wife reads the papers -- that I can tell you.

MATTHEWS: So the lights are on, and somebody's home. That's your message.

BUMILLER: Yes.

MATTHEWS: Your message is --

KAY: Reading the papers is different from deciding, "I am going to look at all the information available and then make my conclusions." He seems to have a conclusion and then choose the facts which fit that conclusion.

SULLIVAN: The only pages in the newspapers that he reads religiously are the sports pages.

MATTHEWS: How do you know that?

SULLIVAN: I've actually been told that by a member of his own family.

On the December 2 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh asserted that Rep. John P. Murtha (D-PA) -- who on November 17 called for the redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq -- was "the biggest morale booster that the enemy has in Iraq." Limbaugh's comments came during a segment in which he was speaking about new economic data and his belief that the Democrats "have been wrong about most everything they have said for the last 15 or 20 years, and even beyond that."

Murtha is a retired Marine and a decorated Vietnam veteran. On November 17, Murtha announced a resolution (House Joint Resolution 73) that, if approved, would require the president to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq "at the earliest practicable date."

From the December 2 broadcast of The Rush Limbaugh Show:

LIMBAUGH: All right, these people were dead wrong then. They have been wrong about most everything they have said for the last 15 or 20 years, and even beyond that. They're wrong about Iraq. They are cut-and-run quitters in Iraq. They are defeatists. They are invested in it. This guy Murtha -- I've been thinking more and more about what he said about the Army being broken down and unable to deal with these car bombs and so forth. And it just infuriates me. It just -- it just infuriates me.

What are you looking at me this way for? It just -- it just infuriates me. He's up there going on and on and on about this, and he's -- he may as well be broadcasting this on -- on Aljazeera. They're gonna pick it up, talk about it. Our troops hear it. He's the biggest morale booster that -- that -- that the enemy has in Iraq.

So they were wrong on the economy. They were wrong on Iraq. They're wrong on taxes. They're wrong on national defense. They're wrong on the judiciary. They're wrong just about on everything. And yet, the media props 'em up. They prop themselves up, and it's amazing to watch.

In a December 4 article by reporter Eric Lipton, The New York Times ignored its own prior reporting by quoting, without challenge, the Bush administration's claim that President Bush "never tried to single out Louisiana for blame" in the poor government response to Hurricane Katrina. Just days after the hurricane hit, a September 5 Times article by Adam Nagourney and Anne E. Kornblut reported that the Bush administration "sought to move the blame for the slow response to Louisiana state officials, according to Republicans familiar with the White House plan."

Lipton's report, which assessed a series of recently released Louisiana state documents detailing Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco's (D) response to the hurricane, quoted from a number of the documents in reporting that Blanco's aides were "certain the White House was trying to blame their boss" for the poor response to the hurricane. But instead of noting what the Times had previously reported -- that the Bush administration consciously undertook to reassign blame in the catastrophe -- Lipton cited a blanket denial by Dana M. Perino,a White House spokeswoman:

Dana M. Perino, a White House spokeswoman, said Mr. Bush never tried to single out Louisiana for blame. But she added that all government agencies bore some fault.

"President Bush has been very clear that all levels of government could have done a better job," Ms. Perino said, "and we are focused on completing our lessons learned and making sure we understand what went wrong and that it never happens again."

Despite neglecting to set the record straight on the Bush administration's damage-control strategy to shift the blame for Katrina to state and local officials, Lipton reported Democrats' comments, shown in the documents, regarding the political ramifications of the response to the hurricane. Citing New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin's criticism of Bush for "merely flying over" the city and one state document's revelation that Democrats believed the White House would have "a full blown PR disaster/scandal on their hands," Lipton wrote that it is "clear that Democrats in Washington recognized that the federal response to the storm provided an opportunity to win some political points":

The struggle with Washington and questions of who was in charge - the state or federal government - emerge frequently in the correspondence. It is also clear that Democrats in Washington recognized that the federal response to the storm provided an opportunity to win some political points.

Aides to Senator Harry Reid [D-NV], the Democratic leader, called Mr. [Blanco communications director Bob] Mann to discuss strategy, a conversation that indirectly included Mike McCurry, the former press secretary to President Clinton, according to one e-mail message.

"By the weekend, the Bush administration will have a full blown PR disaster/scandal on their hands because of the late response to needs in New Orleans," Mr. Mann wrote on Sept. 1, the Thursday after the storm, attributing that observation to Mr. McCurry. The same day, Mayor C. Ray Nagin of New Orleans gave an emotional radio interview in which he criticized Mr. Bush for having merely flown over the city in Air Force One.

In an interview on the December 1 edition of MSNBC's Imus in the Morning, CBS Evening News anchor and Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer noted that while the reason given by the Bush administration for invading Iraq "proved to be wrong," he still gives the administration "the benefit of the doubt," adding, "I don't think they deliberately misled people."

From the December 1 edition of MSNBC's Imus in the Morning:

SCHIEFFER: But when you come right down to it, and, I mean, I always have to tell you where I'm coming from. I mean, in the very beginning, when they told me that Saddam Hussein had a nuclear weapon or was building one, I thought we had to go in and take it away from him. I thought there was no other choice for the president to make. But it turns out that was not correct. Whether -- I still give them the benefit of the doubt. I don't think they deliberately misled people. But the fact is, the reason they gave for going in proved to be wrong.

Though Schieffer appears to have made up his mind about the issue, there is mounting evidence that the Bush administration did, in fact, mislead the country by withholding and distorting prewar intelligence, as Media Matters for America has noted.

Schieffer himself has introduced recent CBS Evening News reports that addressed some of this evidence. In a November 18 CBS Evening News segment introduced by Schieffer, CBS News correspondent Bob Orr reported on a Pentagon investigation into whether former undersecretary of defense Douglas J. Feith "provided distorted intelligence":

SCHIEFFER: And now, as I understand it, Bob, there's another set of troubles emerging out at the Pentagon, some sort of a new investigation.

ORR: This again involves the intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war. The inspector general from the Department of Defense apparently is looking into the activities of a former undersecretary, Doug Feith. Specifically, he has questions as to whether or not Mr. Feith provided distorted intelligence and, on one point, questions whether or not Mr. Feith provided intelligence to the White House that never was run by the CIA.

Introducing a November 11 report by CBS News national security correspondent David Martin, Schieffer noted, "One specific claim that President Bush and other officials made in the run-up to the war was that Saddam Hussein had links to Al Qaeda." Martin reported that Bush's claim that Iraq had "provided Al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training" was based on information that intelligence officials warned was unreliable and that in making the case for a connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq, "top administration officials seem[ed] to go beyond what the CIA was telling them":

SCHIEFFER: One specific claim that President Bush and other officials made in the run-up to the war was that Saddam Hussein had links to Al Qaeda. Tonight, David Martin has gotten some significant information about that claim and how it came about.

BUSH: Iraq has also provided Al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training.

MARTIN: That warning repeated many times by the president and his top aides was based on a claim made by a captured Al Qaeda operative who has since admitted he was lying. But even at the time he made it, the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency sent out a notice cautioning, "It is more likely this individual is intentionally misleading the debriefers." The CIA noted he "was not in a position to know if any training had actually taken place." Yet administration officials continued to report it as fact.

COLIN POWELL [then-secretary of state, February 5, 2003, video clip]: I can trace the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these weapons to Al Qaeda.

MARTIN: That speech had been checked for accuracy by the CIA, whose then-director George Tenet sat behind Powell as he delivered it. Powell's former chief of staff blames incompetence for not weeding out that spurious claim. On top of what appears to be sloppy work by intelligence experts, there are other instances in which top administration officials seem to go beyond what the CIA was telling them.

BUSH [September 25, 2002, video clip]: You can't distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror.

MARTIN: But the CIA did distinguish between them. Saddam and bin Laden "were leery of close cooperation." The relationship "appears to more closely resemble that of two independent actors trying to exploit each other." The CIA warned its intelligence was "at times contradictory and derived from sources with varying degrees of reliability." The relationship was, to use the CIA's word, "murky," but the president painted it in black and white.

BUSH [October 7, 2002, video clip]: We know that Iraq and Al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade.

MARTIN: The Senate Intelligence Committee concluded there was little useful intelligence collected that helped determine Iraq's possible links to Al Qaeda, but you would never know that from listening to the president and his aides.

Schieffer has a history of accepting false or misleading Republican claims about prewar intelligence. On the November 6 broadcast of Face the Nation, Schieffer interviewed Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Pat Roberts (R-KS). As Media Matters has noted, during a discussion on the program of Senate Democrats' demand for an investigation into how policymakers used intelligence in the buildup to war, Roberts claimed that for the "Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq," which the committee released in 2004, "we interviewed over 250 analysts, and we specifically asked them, 'Was there any political manipulation or pressure?' Answer, 'No.' " Roberts then claimed that the March report of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction (i.e. the Robb-Silberman Commission) and the Butler report on British intelligence came to the "same conclusion." Whether Roberts was referring to the Bush administration's "manipulation" in the use of intelligence, as The New York Times interpreted his statement, or as part of the alleged "pressure" on analysts is unclear. If Roberts meant the former, his assertion is simply false -- none of the investigations addressed the issue of the administration's use or misuse of intelligence. If instead Roberts meant "manipulation" as interchangeable with "pressure" on analysts, his assertion was irrelevant to the issue on which Senate Democrats have demanded an investigation and was, therefore, highly misleading. At no point did Schieffer note that Roberts was either misrepresenting or simply avoiding the issue in question.

On the same broadcast, Schieffer failed to correct Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), who falsely claimed that the Senate Intelligence Committee's report "showed that there was no politics being played with this matter." Hatch added, "[T]here was no indication whatsoever in that 500-page report, unanimously approved, that there was any notice or knowledge that was improper."

Recent revelations in the CIA leak investigation indicate that Time magazine Washington correspondent Viveca Novak may have injected herself in the investigation by alerting a lawyer for White House senior adviser Karl Rove in mid-2004 that her colleague, Time White House correspondent Matthew Cooper, might be forced to disclose to a grand jury what Rove had told him about then-undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame. Novak reportedly warned Rove attorney Robert Luskin that Rove could face legal scrutiny over omitting mention of the conversation with Cooper in his own grand jury testimony, thereby providing Luskin with information that might prove crucial to Rove's defense in the case. Novak never disclosed her conversation with Luskin or her knowledge of Rove's conversation with Cooper to special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald or to Time readers, despite working on several articles about the case after her reported conversation with Luskin.

The revelation in a December 2 New York Times article regarding Novak's conversation is significant for at least two reasons. First, Novak, an experienced journalist working for a prestigious publication, disclosed to Rove's lawyer information that she did not give to her readers and that Cooper would zealously try to withhold for more than a year on the basis of the purportedly sacrosanct anonymity agreement between a reporter and a source. Second, Novak may have affirmatively helped Rove -- a source the magazine covers and will continue to cover -- beat a perjury rap, not by exonerating him through a story in the course of her job, but by providing his lawyer with information in a private conversation.

According to the Times, in the "summer or early fall of 2004," Novak informed Luskin that Rove "might face legal problems because of potential testimony from Mr. Cooper, her colleague." In that conversation, Novak and Luskin discussed the fact that Rove and Cooper had talked about Plame shortly before Plame's identity was revealed by syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak (no relation) in a July 14, 2003, column. Luskin and Viveca Novak are "friends," according to a November 29 Washington Post article.

As the Times noted, Fitzgerald is said to be investigating whether Rove intentionally misled FBI investigators and the grand jury when he initially omitted mention of his conversation with Cooper. According to the Times, Fitzgerald is also investigating whether it was only after learning that Cooper might be forced to testify about his conversation with Rove that Rove "altered his grand jury testimony" to include mention of that conversation. The Times reported that Rove's lawyers maintain that Rove merely forgot about his conversation with Cooper, and that Luskin's conversation with Novak prompted Rove to search for -- and discover -- an email indicating the conversation had, in fact, occurred. Reminded of the conversation with Cooper, Rove's lawyers say, Rove then went before the grand jury again, and this time, he reported having discussed Plame with Cooper.

But whether Rove is guilty of intentionally hiding his conversation with Cooper, Viveca Novak undoubtedly aided Rove's defense by telling his lawyer that inaccuracies in Rove's testimony would likely become apparent to Fitzgerald.

Novak apparently felt free to disclose to Rove's lawyer that Cooper might be compelled to testify before a grand jury about the conversation between Cooper and Rove, but she did not accord Time readers the same privilege.

At the time of Novak's conversation with Luskin in "summer or early fall of 2004," Cooper was refusing to testify before the grand jury, citing the importance of reporters maintaining promises of confidentiality to sources, in this case Rove. Cooper was subpoenaed in May 2004 but was held in contempt in August 2004 and refused to testify until July 2005.

Novak's alleged involvement in the case did not prevent her from continuing her reporting on it, though she wrote no reports on the key information she gave Luskin. In fact, Novak contributed to an article in the July 11, 2005, edition of Time, in which editor-at-large Bill Saporito wrote that when Luskin was pressed on whether Rove had discussed Plame with Cooper, Luskin "said Cooper called Rove during the week before [Robert] Novak's story appeared but declined to say what they discussed." The article was on Time editor-in-chief Norman Pearlstine's decision to comply with a subpoena to turn over Cooper's notes related to the story Cooper wrote days after Plame was outed.

From the July 11 article in Time:

After Time Inc. agreed to turn over the requested materials to Fitzgerald's office, speculation quickly surfaced over whose names would be identified. Much of that focused on Karl Rove, senior adviser to President George W. Bush. Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, said Cooper called Rove during the week before Novak's story appeared but declined to say what they discussed. Luskin said Rove "has never knowingly disclosed classified information." The lawyer said he has received repeated assurances from Fitzgerald's office that Rove is not a target in the case.

Two weeks later, after Cooper had testified and Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff had publicly revealed that Cooper had learned of Plame from Rove, Viveca Novak remained silent about her involvement in the case while contributing to an article about the investigation that appeared in the July 25 edition of Time. The article reported that it was not "a mystery any longer who had a hand in revealing where Wilson's wife worked to Time White House correspondent Matthew Cooper."

As recently as October 24, Novak co-wrote an article with Time White House correspondent Mike Allen, which reported that "Fitzgerald appears to be seriously weighing a perjury charge for Rove's failure to tell grand jurors that he talked to Time correspondent Matthew Cooper about Plame, according to a person close to Rove." Novak wrote more generally on the Plame case for Time as recently as November 18.

On the December 1 edition of Fox News' The Big Story with John Gibson, Rev. Jerry Falwell, founder and chairman of the Moral Majority Coalition, commented that Americans United for the Separation of Church and State executive director Rev. Barry W. Lynn "is about as reverend as an oak tree" and "that reverend name gives him respectability." Guest host David Asman repeated the phrase "about as reverend as an oak tree" and said, "I'd never heard that one, Reverend Jerry Falwell, but I'm going to repeat it at some point."

In fact, as Media Matters for America has noted, Lynn is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ.

Falwell's comments came during a discussion of the so-called "war on Christmas." During the discussion, Asman brought up a federal court case in which a judge barred the use of sectarian prayer to begin sessions of the Indiana State House of Representatives. On November 30, U.S. District Judge David Hamilton found the invocations to be of a proselytizing nature and, therefore, ruled that if the prayers were to continue, they "must be nonsectarian and must not be used to proselytize or advance any one faith or belief or to disparage any other faith or belief." He also ruled that those offering the prayer "should refrain from using Christ's name or title or any other denominational appeal."

When Asman noted that "a group of religious leaders signed the petition [protesting the prayers]" in the Indiana case, Falwell responded that "the greatest opponents we have to honoring Christ in this country are guys like Reverend Barry Lynn and others who -- he is about as reverend as an oak tree. I've asked him, where is the church you've ever preached in? Well, he likes -- that reverend name gives him respectability."

From the December 1 edition of Fox News' The Big Story with John Gibson:

ASMAN: Well, the law isn't always on your side, at least temporarily. We are going to be talking to [Fox senior judicial analyst] Judge [Andrew] Napolitano about this in just a minute, but Indiana ruling that you probably heard about, a judge there, federal judge, this -- agreed with the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] that the prayer that they begin the morning with in the statehouse should be eliminated because of references to Jesus or references to the savior. So sometimes the courts are not in your favor, at least the judges.

[...]

ASMAN: By the way, the interesting thing about the Indiana ruling is that Quakers and a group of religious leaders signed the petition. What do you think of that?

FALWELL: Oh, listen, some of the greatest opponents we have to honoring Christ in this country are guys like Reverend Barry Lynn and others who -- he is about as reverend as an oak tree. He's never pastored a church in his life. I've asked him, where is the church you've ever preached in? Well, he likes -- that reverend name gives him respectability.

But the fact is that there are liberals in the pulpits as well as in the politics. And the fact is, free speech is right. Little children should be able to sing "Silent Night" and "Rudolph [the Red-Nosed Reindeer]" in the same setting, and say their prayers over their meals without some bigot thinking that they're breaking the law.

ASMAN: About as reverend as an oak tree. I'd never heard that one, Reverend Jerry Falwell, but I'm going to repeat it at some point. If you don't mind, I'll steal that from you at some point and use it.

FALWELL: OK.

ASMAN: Reverend Jerry Falwell from Liberty University. Thanks very much.

In his November 30 speech at the U.S. Naval Academy, President Bush acknowledged that only one Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) battalion is capable of operating independently of the United States-led coalition. Nevertheless, on the December 1 broadcast of NBC's Today, Mary Matalin, a former assistant to Bush and counselor to Vice President Dick Cheney, falsely claimed that one-third of the roughly 120 Iraqi army and police battalions cited by Bush as fighting Iraqi insurgents are "working by themselves." Similarly, on the November 30 broadcast of ABC's Nightline, host Cynthia McFadden left unchallenged Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Peter Pace's false characterization of operations carried out by "[a]lmost 30 battalions" as "independent operations, so to speak."

Noting that "only one Iraqi battalion has achieved complete independence from the coalition," Bush explained in his November 30 speech that in order to achieve independence, Iraqi battalions must acquire the capacity to perform a number of tasks currently carried out by coalition forces. According to Bush, in addition to having the ability to engage the enemy, an independent unit "must also have the ability to provide its own support elements, including logistics, airlift, intelligence, and command and control through their ministries." He added, "Not every Iraqi unit has to meet this level of capability in order for the Iraqi security forces to take the lead in the fight against the enemy."

On Today, Matalin falsely claimed that one-third of Iraqi battalions are operating on their own:

KATIE COURIC (host): The president said there are 120 Iraqi army and police combat battalions operating in Iraq. That's roughly 96,000 troops. But why, if that is the case, is the violence not declining? Is the very presence of U.S. forces in Iraq fueling this insurgency?

MATALIN: Katie, the --you know, I don't know how many different ways to say to Democrats how much progress has been made in just a year. There are over 212,000 Iraqis trained. The two-thirds of those battalions are working side-by-side with the Americans. A third of them are working by themselves. In March there are 400-500 tips from locals. Now there are 4,700 tips. It's human intelligence on the ground. There's progress every day being made standing up the Iraqi armies and security forces, and there's progress being made every day on the political front. We're where about -- in two weeks from tomorrow -- about to have the first self-determined elections in that region. They have the first and only constitution in that region. The per capita income has doubled --

COURIC: Mm-hmm.

MATALIN: It's up 30 percent from where it was before the year. There's progress on every single front -- military, economic, political -- on the president's strategy. It takes time. In three years, they've made enormous progress. That is progress, those are facts. That's not emotion, that's not demagoguery. That is fact.

In fact, Bush claimed in his November 30 speech that of the roughly 120 Iraqi battalions "in the fight against the terrorists ... about 80 Iraqi battalions are fighting side by side with coalition forces, and about 40 others are taking the lead in the fight." Bush said that the 40 battalions "taking the lead" -- apparently the battalions Matalin cited -- receive "some coalition support."

In addition, Matalin's statement that there are "212,000 Iraqis trained" is misleading, because less than half of them are members of the 120 battalions that Bush said are "in the fight." While Bush did not say how many Iraqi troops were in those battalions, he did note that the battalions are "typically comprised of between 350 and 800 Iraqi forces." In other words, there are between 42,000 and 96,000 (Couric's estimate) Iraqi troops "in the fight."

Pace's Nightline assertion also conflicted with Bush's acknowledgement that only one Iraqi battalion is capable of operating independently of the coalition:

PACE: I think the American people can begin to look at the territory in Iraq and begin to understand how much of Iraq is actually being controlled by Iraqi forces. Today, there's one division that's controlling about 14,000 to 16,000 Iraqi troops, four brigades each of about 3,000 to 4,000. Almost 30 battalions, each of about 700, that are controlling their own territory, independent operations, so to speak. That number will continue to grow. And you can watch the map of Iraq, as the Iraqi police and the Iraqi armed forces take over more and more control of more and more territory.

Pace did not explain what he meant by "so to speak," and McFadden made no attempt to challenge his statement. But Bush noted in his speech that "over 30 Iraqi Army battalions have assumed primary control of their own areas of responsibility." An October 13 Pentagon report to Congress titled "Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq" explained:

At present, the Iraqi Army is in the lead for planning and executing counterinsurgency operations in one Iraqi province that is roughly the size of New Jersey. The ISF also have the lead for 87 square miles in Baghdad and over 450 square miles of battle space in the other Iraqi provinces. Coalition Forces continue to support and assist the ISF in these areas as they move towards the capability for independent operations.

A number of experts, including U.S. military officials, have outlined the extent to which the non-independent Iraqi battalions still require coalition support. On the November 30 edition of Fox News' Your World with Neil Cavuto, for instance, host Cavuto interviewed Col. Edward Cardon, an American commander in the training operation. Cavuto referred to "[t]his report ... that 40 battalions are ready to fend for themselves." Cardon corrected him, noting that "40 battalions are, I think, are ready to fight." Cardon explained: "Now, fend for themselves, the problem that we have had here is with -- the Ministry of Defense has not developed as fast as the fighting forces on the ground. And that's where we provide a lot of the assistance and logistics."

On December 1, USA Today reported that Lt. Col. Fred Wellman, Baghdad spokesman for the ISF training program, blamed the lack of independent battalions on the ISF's inability to support its troops:

Lt. Col. Fred Wellman, spokesman in Baghdad for the training program, says that's largely because the Iraqi military lacks what it needs to support its soldiers, no matter how well trained. Iraqi troops often operate in bleak living and working conditions, he says. They lack money to pay for telephone or Internet services. Paychecks are late. Sewage sometimes pools on their bases, a stark contrast to the smooth-running bases of their U.S. counterparts.

"Our mission now is building a bureaucracy," Wellman said. "You can't have a fighting unit survive on the field if they're not being fed or being paid. We have a long way to go with that."

And in a December 1 article (subscription required) in The Atlantic Monthly, James Fallows reported that "[t]he United States is not helping Iraq develop many" of the capabilities necessary to support combat operations and that the ISF will continue to rely on Americans to provide "air support, intelligence and communications networks, and other advanced systems":

When U.S. policy changed from counting every Iraqi in uniform to judging how many whole units were ready to function, a triage decision was made. The Iraqis would not be trained anytime soon for the whole range of military functions; they would start with the most basic combat and security duties. The idea, as a former high-ranking administration official put it, was "We're building a spearhead, not the whole spear."

The rest of the spear consists of the specialized, often technically advanced functions that multiply the combat units' strength. These are as simple as logistics -- getting food, fuel, ammunition, spare parts, where they are needed -- and as complex as battlefield surgical units, satellite-based spy services, and air support from helicopters and fighter planes.

The United States is not helping Iraq develop many of these other functions. Sharp as the Iraqi spearhead may become, on its own it will be relatively weak. The Iraqis know their own territory and culture, and they will be fighting an insurgency, not a heavily equipped land army. But if they can't count on the Americans to keep providing air support, intelligence and communications networks, and other advanced systems, they will never emerge as an effective force. So the United States will have to continue to provide all this.

Finally, a December 1 Wall Street Journal article (subscription required) questioned the extent to which Iraqi battalions were prepared even to take the lead in fighting the insurgency. The Journal noted that Bush had claimed in his speech that in contrast to the 2004 Fallajuh campaign, the recent assault on Tal Afar was "primarily led by Iraqi security forces -- 11 Iraqi battalions, backed by five coalition battalions providing support." However, the Journal reported:

But experts warned against extrapolating too heavily from the Tal Afar assault. They noted that Iraqi forces used in the attack were battle-hardened Kurdish fighters, not new recruits trained by Americans. Iraqi forces played an active role, but the experts said American commanders planned the overall assault and sent U.S. forces into areas where the insurgent presence was believed strongest. And the overall level of combat was far fiercer in Fallujah than in Tal Afar, which insurgents had largely deserted, they noted.

On the November 30 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume, Fox News correspondent Major Garrett presented a highly misleading depiction of the heated debate over whether the White House and Congress saw the same intelligence on the Iraqi threat prior to the war. Garrett downplayed the administration's handling of dissenting opinions and ignored entirely the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research's (INR) strong objections to the claim that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program. He also falsely reported that a bipartisan presidential commission had concluded that "in almost every instance" the Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) -- a daily intelligence report provided to the president but not to Congress -- had presented more alarming assessments on Iraq than the reports provided to lawmakers.

Moreover, Garrett misrepresented the scope of this ongoing debate by focusing solely on the issue of intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear capabilities. In fact, members of Congress who have challenged the claim that they saw the same intelligence as the White House have also cited their lack of access to intelligence regarding the purported ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

On the issue of whether the Bush administration hid dissenting views from lawmakers, Garrett cited only the Department of Energy's (DOE) objections to specific claims regarding Iraq's nuclear weapon capabilities. Garrett noted that DOE had expressed doubts about the administration's claim that Iraq had acquired aluminum tubes designed to enrich uranium and countered that DOE had nonetheless "agreed Iraq was pursuing nuclear weapons." He then aired a clip of Charles Duelfer, former head of the Iraq Survey Group, who stated, "[T]here was a large consensus in terms of the overall direction that the Saddam regime wanted to go, which was, it was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program."

But Garrett failed to inform his viewers why those challenging the "same intelligence" claim have cited the DOE dissent -- because it is known to have been omitted from numerous intelligence reports provided to Congress. An October 3, 2004, New York Times article reported that the CIA had delivered 15 assessments on the aluminum tubes to Congress between April 2001 and September 2002, but that "not one of them informed senior policy makers of the Energy Department's dissent." The article noted that "the dissenting views were repeatedly discussed in meetings and telephone calls" between Bush administration and intelligence officials. Garrett further downplayed the divisions in the intelligence community over Iraq's nuclear capabilities by failing to note that INR had voiced aggressive objections to the claim Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear programs -- a fact that contradicts Duelfer's depiction of a "large consensus."

On the issue of those intelligence reports available to the White House and not to Congress, Garrett reported that a bipartisan presidential commission concluded that the PDB "in almost every instance" presented more aggressive assessments than those provided to lawmakers. But the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, chaired by former Sen. Charles Robb (D-VA) and Reagan appointee Judge Laurence H. Silberman, received only a "limited cross-section" of the PDBs provided to President Bush on the Iraqi threat:

As part of its investigation, this Commission was provided access, on a limited basis, to a number of articles from the President's Daily Brief (PDB) relating to Iraq's WMD programs. Although we saw only a limited cross-section of this product, we can make several observations about the art form.

Further, of that "limited cross-section" to which it was granted access, the Robb-Silberman commission examined only PDB articles that "concerned Iraq's weapons programs" and not those PDBs pertaining to the purported ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda. A November 22 National Journal article reported that in a PDB dated September 21, 2001, the president was informed that the intelligence community had scant evidence connecting Saddam Hussein's regime to Al Qaeda. The White House has refused to turn this and numerous other relevant PDBs over to Congress, despite repeated requests by the Senate Intelligence Committee. This has led Sen. Edward D. Kennedy (D-MA) to propose legislation requiring the Bush administration to provide the Senate and House intelligence committees copies of the PDBs spanning a three-year period.

While Garrett addressed the claim that the White House and Congress saw different intelligence on Iraq's weapons capabilities, he ignored entirely the allegation that the Bush administration had access to far more information regarding the alleged Iraq-Al Qaeda connection -- a crucial facet of this ongoing debate. In his report, Garrett played a clip of Sen. Richard J. Durbin's (D-IL) comments at a November 14 press conference. But he overlooked the fact that Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), at the same press conference, had noted that the Bush administration had apparently suppressed the intelligence community's serious doubts about the existence of any substantial Iraq-Al Qaeda ties:

LEVIN: Listen to the Defense Intelligence Agency's assessment before the war on this issue. We just released this last week: "Saddam's regime is intensely secular and wary of Islamic revolutionary movements. Moreover, Baghdad is unlikely to provide assistance to a movement it cannot control." That's what the Defense Intelligence Agency was saying. So for this administration now to say that its statements before the war about the relationship between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein reflected the consensus in the intelligence community is just as misleading as statements that they have made in other regards relative to the whole weapons of mass destruction issue.

The vice president apparently will not hold a press conference on this issue. I don't know how he can get away with not answering questions. The president surely hasn't held many where he is asked to explain his statements relative to the relationship that he claimed existed between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, which persuaded the majority of the American people to believe something that wasn't true.

A November 16 Knight Ridder article further reported how the administration had ignored numerous "secret U.S. intelligence assessments" that undermined claims regarding the alleged relationship. The article also noted that the White House's use of alternative intelligence sources had fueled the administration's use of this claim in its case for war with Iraq:

As for prewar intelligence on Iraq, senior administration officials had access to other information and sources that weren't available to lawmakers.

[...]

Moreover, officials in the White House and the Pentagon received information directly from the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an exile group, circumventing U.S. intelligence agencies, which greatly distrusted the organization.

The INC's information came from Iraqi defectors who claimed that Iraq was hiding chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs, had mobile biological-warfare facilities and was training Islamic radicals in assassinations, bombings and hijackings.

The White House emphasized these claims in making its case for war, even though the defectors had shown fabrication or deception in lie-detector tests or had been rejected as unreliable by U.S. intelligence professionals.

All of the exiles' claims turned out to be bogus or remain unproven.

War hawks at the Pentagon also created a special unit that produced a prewar report - one not shared with Congress - that alleged that Iraq was in league with al-Qaida. A version of the report, briefed to Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and top White House officials, disparaged the CIA for finding there was no cooperation between Iraq and the terrorist group, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence disclosed.

After the report was leaked in November 2003 to a conservative magazine, the Pentagon disowned it.

In fact, a series of secret U.S. intelligence assessments discounted the administration's assertion that Saddam could give banned weapons to al-Qaida.

From the November 30 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume:

GARRETT: The accusation on protest signs and from some Democrats in Congress: the president lied about the Iraqi threat. The administration's response: Congress saw the same intelligence on weapons of mass destruction and backed the Iraq war. Democrats disagree.

DURBIN [video clip]: For the president to suggest that even as members of the Intelligence Committee, we have the same intelligence at our disposal as he did is just plain wrong.

GARRETT: In fact, the president did review intelligence reports Congress never saw. The CIA produced the president's daily brief or PDB. But they painted an even more dire picture of Iraq's potential threat. The bipartisan Robb-Silberman Report said the president's daily briefs on Iraq were, quote, "even more misleading," unquote, than the National Intelligence Estimate, or NIE, given to Congress. "These daily reports were, if anything, more alarmist and less nuanced than the NIE," the commission said, adding the reports', quote, "drumbeat of repetition, left an impression of many corroborating reports when in fact there were very few sources." The commission found no evidence of pressuring or coercing intelligence analysts, but it did conclude that the daily intelligence brief, quote, "seemed to be selling intelligence in order to keep its customers, or at least the first customer, interested." In other words, Congress received less aggressive assessments than the president, but they were still bleak.

DUELFER [video clip]: The bulk of them all agreed that there were existing stocks of biology, existing stocks of chemical, and for the most part they all agreed there was a nuclear program. The question was how they were going about it.

GARRETT: Duelfer's post-war survey found no biological or chemical weapons stockpiles, no nuclear weapons program. Despite this massive intelligence failure, Duelfer concludes no conspiracy was afoot.

DUELFER [video clip]: You can fault the intelligence community for many things, but for shaping its conclusions to fit the desires of the political leadership, I don't think that's right. I think that's wrong.

GARRETT: Critics accuse the administration of ignoring negative or conflicting reports. They often cite Iraq's 2001 purchase of aluminum tubes. The CIA and Pentagon concluded they were part of a renewed nuclear weapons program. The Department of Energy disagreed, saying the tubes were not well suited for a nuclear program, but probably destined for Iraqi artillery, which turned out to be the right call. Even so, the Energy Department, based on other evidence, agreed Iraq was pursuing nuclear weapons.

DUELFER [video clip]: There was a disagreement on some of the elements, but there was a large consensus in terms of the overall direction that the Saddam regime wanted to go, which was it was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.

GARRETT: Democrats have recently said their lack of access to these presidential daily briefs constitute a crucial missing link in their understanding of the Iraq threat. But as Duelfer and the bipartisan Robb-Silberman Commission have already concluded, in almost every instance, these daily reports would have made lawmakers more alarmed, not less.

In a segment on the December 1 editions of CNN's The Situation Room and Lou Dobbs Tonight, CNN national correspondent Bruce Morton misrepresented a report by the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) that Vice President Dick Cheney has regularly exempted his office from official travel disclosure requirements. Morton left viewers with the false impression that Cheney and his aides have refrained from taking part in junkets regularly paid for by private sources. To the contrary, Cheney's office has participated in hundreds of these events and appearances but has refused to accept reimbursement for the trips -- which would require disclosing the details of each -- and instead has left taxpayers with the tab.

A recent study by CPI found that industry groups had paid millions of dollars since 1999 to send White House officials on special-interest junkets around the world. In his report on the CPI findings, Morton detailed the types of trips taken by officials in both the Bush and Clinton administrations. Then he stated: "Vice President Cheney reported no such travel. All his staffers' trips were apparently paid for by the taxpayer."

But Morton's assertion that Cheney "reported no such travel" and took only taxpayer-funded trips left the false impression that the vice president and his staff took only trips that are typically covered by taxpayer dollars and not the type of trips taken by their colleagues and predecessors that are ordinarily paid for by private entities. In fact, CPI found that Cheney's office took the same type of trips typically paid for by outside sources -- including travel for speeches at think tanks, trade organizations, and academic institutions -- but labeled them "official travel." In many cases, the organizers or sponsors offered to reimburse Cheney's travel expenses, but his office refused to accept payment.

Morton followed his statement that Cheney "reported no such travel" with a clip of CPI senior writer Bob Williams, who said: "Basically what you have with Mr. Cheney's office is, there's no disclosure, there is no way of really knowing where they went." But while this clip addressed the fact that Cheney's trips were exempt from disclosure, it ignored the central finding in the CPI study: that by refusing reimbursement, Cheney and his staffers were both avoiding disclosure of trips that would otherwise have been disclosed and were sticking taxpayers with the tab for those trips that would otherwise have been reimbursed. Therefore, it did not correct Morton's misrepresentation of the study.

A November 16 CPI press release explained the implications of the Office of the Vice President's policy of unilaterally exempting itself from the travel disclosure rules followed by the executive branch:

It's not as if those in Cheney's office don't indulge in the type of junkets that are routinely funded by private sources. Instead of accepting reimbursement for such trips like other government travelers, it appears that his office labels them "official travel." As a result, however, the public is kept largely unaware of where he and his staff are traveling, with whom they are meeting with [sic] and how much it costs, even though tax dollars are covering the bill.

CPI also detailed the extent of Cheney's travel since he took office in 2001. The organization described the hundreds of trips as representing "untold millions in travel costs":

Cheney's office also appears to have stuck taxpayers with untold millions in travel costs rather than accepting trip sponsors' funds that the rules would require to be disclosed.

[...]

According to the White House Web site, Cheney made 275 speeches and appearances between 2001 and June 1, 2005, including 23 speeches to think tanks and trade organizations and 16 at colleges and universities. Before his term in office, the cost associated with travel, lodging and food for the vice president and his staff to attend such events was routinely reimbursed by the sponsor and reported to the Office of Government Ethics, which collects and distributes travel disclosure reports for the executive branch per disclosure rules. During the Clinton administration, former Vice President Al Gore's office disclosed more than $1 million in outside-funded travel from 1997 to 2000.

On the December 1 edition of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, MSNBC political analyst and former Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan argued in favor of "deception, misinformation, disinformation, deceit, [and] propaganda" in times of war, during a discussion about a November 30 New York Times report that the Pentagon has been paying Iraqi newspapers to run its own positive stories about the war and paying Iraqi journalists to write similar reports.

In a lengthy debate with Hardball host Matthews and MSNBC political analyst Ron Reagan, Buchanan said that "the Pentagon and our guys over there have got every right to have good news put into the media and get to the people of Iraq, even if it's got to be planted or bought."

When Matthews asked Buchanan if he minds being deceived, Buchanan replied, "During wartime, no ... I mean, there's things you have to do in wartime, we may not like it, but they're necessary in the long run."

Buchanan also rejected the notion that, in order to establish a working press in Iraq, the United States should "tie our hands and say, look, we want objective journalists who run by the Columbia School of Journalism standards and it's wrong simply to buy a couple of Baghdad journalists and say put this in your paper so we can get it out? "

Buchanan is a 1962 graduate of Columbia University's School of Journalism, founded in 1912 by Joseph Pulitzer, who maintained that "[o]ur republic and its press will rise and fall together."

The weblog Think Progress has detailed additional instances in which conservative commentators have similarly defended the Pentagon's program.

From the December 1 edition of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews:

MATTHEWS: Is this a tempest in a teapot, or is this bad news for us in the PR war over there? The battle for the hearts and minds of the Iraqis?

BUCHANAN: Well, what hurts in the PR war is that it was exposed. The battle for the hearts and minds of Iraqis is part of this war. And the Pentagon and our guys over there have got every right to have good news put into the media and get to the people of Iraq, even if it's got to be planted or bought. I mean, the idea that somehow Marines out there fighting, giving their lives are now guilty of seducing the Baghdad press corps --

MATTHEWS: No, they're not accused of being guilty; they're being accused of being to do it as a part of their duty.

BUCHANAN: There's nothing -- they ought to do it.

[...]

BUCHANAN: Ron, the blowup of this thing is the problem. By way of deception, thou shalt make war [reportedly the motto of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad]. For heaven sakes, you don't think [Gen. Dwight D.] Eisenhower was putting out phony stories to British journalists about [Gen. George] Patton coming for the Pas-de-Calais [instead of Normandy during World War II]? I mean, deception, misinformation, disinformation, deceit, propaganda -- these are all instruments of war. We sent out guys over there to fight and die, and you're telling me we can't put out stories that put a good light on what's being done there to try to bring the Iraqi people toward us? The crime here, Chris, if there is one, is the exposure of this thing and the damage done.

MATTHEWS: You mean it should have been kept secret.

BUCHANAN: If you had done that in World War II and exposed all the guys on our payroll --

MATTHEWS: OK, let me ask you this. These stories -- as you know, in newspapers today and blogging and everything, we know that anything that appears in print gets online. What happens in that starts coming back to the United States and we start believing it? Then we're being propagandized, we're propagandizing ourselves, aren't we? Is that OK?

BUCHANAN: Chris, I mean, there's worse things that happened than us being propagandized. We're at war.

MATTHEWS: I'm not saying it's the end of the world. I'm saying, is it the right thing to be doing?

BUCHANAN: It is. It's the necessary to do to try to win the hearts and minds. Everything you can. The problem here is it was exposed.

REAGAN: It is a foolish thing to do and don't -- I wouldn't be surprised if we find out that the Iraqi people are way ahead of us on this story. I wouldn't be surprised if we found out that most Iraqi people assumed that a lot of what's showing up in their papers, these good-news stories, are being ginned up by the Americans, and they're not buying them to begin with.

BUCHANAN: Ron, let me ask you something. If we can't put $10 million on the table and buy Aljazeera to give us good press, would you not do it today, if you were in this war?

REAGAN: No, I wouldn't.

BUCHANAN: You wouldn't do it?

REAGAN: No. We're supposed to be fighting for truth and liberty and freedom and justice. We're spending money over there in Iraq to train journalists to have an actual free press, and with the other hand we're undermining that very effort. This is a foolish thing to be doing.

BUCHANAN: Look -- you don't think we need a propaganda campaign to get out our message as best we can in a region of the world where we're hated, and what people believe and understand and come to know will decide whether we win or lose this war? We're to tie our hands and say, look, we want objective journalists who run by the Columbia School of Journalism standards, and it's wrong simply to buy a couple of Baghdad journalists and say, "Put this in your paper so we can get it out"?

REAGAN: If there's so much good news coming out of Iraq, why do we have to pay the Iraqi journalists to report it? They should be doing that on their own --

[crosstalk]

BUCHANAN: Because a lot of military say the American journalists are not reporting the good news. Our own people report that. Our troops over there are making these statements. For heaven sakes, we are -- maybe we shouldn't have gone to war, but if you go to war, you back up your troops with everything you can, and that includes propaganda.

MATTHEWS: You don't buy this whole notion of creating democracies, do you, Pat?

BUCHANAN: Listen, if you're going to put --

MATTHEWS: It's not like you don't like this little fly in the ointment. You don't like the notion.

BUCHANAN: Look, I think the United States in World War II probably bought an awful lot of newsmen. The end of it was democracy in Germany and Japan, but during wartime, you tie your hands?

[...]

BUCHANAN: Look, I assume that many of these reports told the truth about what's going on, that we are making progress. But during the Cold War, I am sure the Central Intelligence Agency, just like the Soviet Union, was over there in Europe and giving money to journalists when they had the confrontations in the late '40s over whether the communists were going to take power. And elections are ours where we were supporting parties, we were doing our level best. All of the tools of democracy to try to save democracy. It is not illegitimate. Chris, we are in a real world.

[...]

MATTHEWS: Do you mind being deceived?

BUCHANAN: Look, during wartime --

MATTHEWS: Do you mind being deceived?

BUCHANAN: During wartime, no. If the president of the United States in wartime says -- why do we military censorship? To save lives, Chris. I mean, there's things you have to do in wartime, we may not like it, but they're necessary in the long run.

[...]

BUCHANAN: Who's responsible for safeguarding the ethics of Baghdad journalists, for heaven sakes?

REAGAN: What do you know about Baghdad journalists? You just said that these people are risking their lives.

BUCHANAN: If a guy will buy a story for $200, give it to him, for heaven sakes.

A December 2 Washington Post article misleadingly suggested that a recent poll showed public support for Republicans' position on when to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq -- that is, only once specific conditions are met in the country. The Post contrasted the results of a November 21 RT Strategies poll* with those of an October 13 Pew Research Center poll, suggesting that the RT poll showed support for the Republican position, while the Pew poll showed opposition to it. In fact, the RT poll shows that the public is split on the issue, with the difference between those who support the Republican position and those who oppose it within the poll's margin of error.

From the December 2 Post article:

House Republican leaders, meanwhile, are touting a bipartisan poll in November by RT Strategies that found half of registered voters support a withdrawal of troops only when the nation's goals are met, compared with 15 percent who want an immediate withdrawal and 29 percent who want a specific, public timetable for withdrawal. But a Pew Research Center poll in October found that 52 percent favored a withdrawal timetable, while 43 percent opposed one. An additional 1 percent said that U.S. troops should get out now.

As written, the Post article emphasizes the plurality of voters in the RT poll who support the Republican position on when to withdraw U.S. troops -- a plurality that, in the Post's construction, appears significant: 50 percent to 29 percent to 15 percent. But the Post, like the RT Strategies poll, set up a false dispute: those who favor immediate withdrawal versus those who favor a timetable for withdrawal versus those who favor neither. In fact, no prominent political figure -- not House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), not Rep. John P. Murtha (D-PA) -- has said that the U.S. should "withdraw our troops immediately, regardless of the impact," the wording the poll used. Given the wording of the poll question, a more meaningful report of its results would have contrasted the combined support for a timetable and for immediate withdrawal with support for, as the Post put it, "a withdrawal of troops only when the nation's goals are met." Such a comparison finds that, according to the poll, 50 percent support a withdrawal "only when the nation's goals are met," while 44 percent support immediate withdrawal (15 percent) or a timetable for withdrawal (29 percent) -- a split that is within the poll's 3.1 percent margin of error. Moreover, among political independents, the results are even more closely split: 48 percent support the Republican position while 49 percent oppose it (17 percent support an immediate withdrawal and 32 percent support setting a timetable for withdrawal).

* The Post cited the poll's results for registered voters (available here.) The results shown in RT Strategies' press release and topline are for all respondents.

On the December 1 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly invited right-wing pundit Ann Coulter on the show to discuss "far-left smear websites." O'Reilly introduced the segment with a declaration that "we are closely watching far-left smear websites to make sure they are held accountable for damaging people," but he noted that "our policy is not to name the websites, because, well, they're beneath contempt."

He then claimed that "smear sites" "intimidate people with whom they disagree. ... They really want to just bludgeon anybody with whom they disagree." Coulter agreed but admitted that "one thing that perplexes me is why they want to keep me off only CNN." Media Matters for America has urged its supporters to ask CNN to stop featuring Coulter due to her history of false, misleading, and inflammatory statements.

After mentioning Media Matters President and CEO David Brock, Coulter attacked such websites, calling them "little Nazi block watchers," stating: "They tattle on their parents, turn them in to the Nazis."

She complained that several conservative pundits have security details when going to speak at college campuses and stated, "No liberal has to have security. Though I'd like to change that." She also claimed, "I think what mostly encourages violence is [liberals'] incapacity to formulate an argument." As Media Matters has documented, Coulter has said, "I think a baseball bat is the most effective way these days" to talk to liberals.

Finally, O'Reilly and Coulter resoundingly agreed:

O'REILLY: All right. Be careful, Ann. They're bad people.

COULTER: Thank you.

O'REILLY: They are bad people.

COULTER: They are bad people.

O'REILLY: And that's not an ideological statement. They are bad human beings, doing what they're doing.

From the December 1 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor:

O'REILLY: In the "Unresolved Problem" segment tonight, as we told you last week, we are closely watching the far-left smear websites to make sure they are held accountable for damaging people, something they do on a regular basis.

Now, our policy is to not name the websites, because, well, they're beneath contempt. They want that kind of publicity.

[...]

O'REILLY: Yeah, but on a policy basis, what they're trying to do on these far-left smear sites is intimidate people with whom they disagree, and then choke off their ability to get their message out. I mean, freedom of speech means nothing to these people. They really want to just bludgeon anybody with whom they disagree, or am I wrong?

COULTER: No, you're right, though. I mean, the one thing that perplexes me is why they want to keep me off only CNN. You know, why not Fox? Why not MSNBC?

O'REILLY: Well, they know that Fox isn't going to play their game.

COULTER: David Brock has something against MSNBC?

O'REILLY: Yeah, they know Fox isn't going to play their game.

COULTER: What about MSNBC?

O'REILLY: Nobody watches them, with all due respect. I mean, it's true. Nobody watches the network. It doesn't mean anything.

COULTER: Well, I think it's an excellent use for George Soros's money to keep republishing the things I say on CNN.

O'REILLY: OK, but to answer your question, CNN is perceived to be a left-wing outlet, and they don't like your voice on the left-wing outlet. But, you know, aren't liberals or far-left people supposed to be champions of freedom of speech? Isn't that what the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] is all about?

COULTER: No, of course not. They're Nazi block watchers. This is what they're good at.

O'REILLY: They're Nazi what?

COULTER: Block watchers, you know. They tattle on their parents, turn them in to the Nazis. They're little Nazi block watchers.

O'REILLY: See, this is why they don't want you on CNN there. You're calling them Nazis. They don't --

COULTER: Coincidentally, Sean Hannity doesn't want me on CNN either. I think he might be paying for this website.

O'REILLY: Why not? Why doesn't Hannity want you on CNN?

COULTER: Because he only wants me on his show.

O'REILLY: Oh, he wants full control of you. OK. Now, you're --

COULTER: Which he basically has.

[...]

O'REILLY: OK. So you believe that these people want to hurt you, and now you have to have security with you?

COULTER: It's not just me. It's David Horowitz. It's [MSNBC contributor and former Republican presidential candidate] Pat Buchanan. It's [Weekly Standard editor] Bill Kristol. If you go speak at a college campus, I promise you, if you don't have a security detail, they will physically attack you, because they are the party of ideas, and they're so intellectual their ideas just can't fit on a bumper sticker. You know, everything else they're always saying about themselves. But when it actually comes time to formulate a counterargument, all they can do is throw food.

O'REILLY: All right. But it gets to be frightening. And I -- look, in my own case, I have to have security, and obviously --

COULTER: Any conservative does.

O'REILLY: Yeah, but I think liberals, some -- well, I don't know. Look, there's no question --

COULTER: No liberal has to have security. Though I'd like to change that.

O'REILLY: Well, there's no -- let me just ask you this. Do you believe that these smear sites on the Internet are encouraging violence against you and others?

COULTER: They may be intended to. I think what mostly encourages violence is their incapacity to formulate an argument.

O'REILLY: All right. That's a different thing.

COULTER: And they do have the reaction of a 4-year-old.

O'REILLY: So you don't believe that they actually want to see you harmed, these left-wing smear sites?

COULTER: Oh, I do think they -- oh, the websites? Well, who knows? It's all kind of a mix. I think they want to keep me off CNN because -- I don't know why it's just CNN. Like I say, why not the Cooking Channel? I'm going to have to start my own petition to keep Ann Coulter off all stations.

O'REILLY: All right. Be careful, Ann. They're bad people.

COULTER: Thank you.

O'REILLY: They are bad people.

COULTER: They are bad people.

O'REILLY: And that's not an ideological statement. They are bad human beings, doing what they're doing.

On the November 30 edition of Christian Broadcasting Network's The 700 Club, host Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition of America, falsely claimed that Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State (AU), has said, "if a church is burning down, the local community could not send the fire engine to put the fire out because that would violate, quote, separation of church and state." Robertson's comments came during a segment with Fox News' John Gibson, in which they were discussing the so-called "war" on Christmas and a perceived anti-Christian bias toward acknowledging the holiday.

On numerous occasions over the past several years, Robertson has accused Lynn of claiming that the Constitution prohibits a locality from sending fire trucks to burning churches (see here and here). But in a November 2002 "Memo to Pat and Jerry" written in Church and State, AU's official publication, Lynn denied the charges:

Robertson, for example, continues to tell national television audiences that I believe that a public fire department can't go to a burning church without violating the separation of church and state. He apparently uses this "anecdote" to demonstrate my radical, wacky beliefs.

Trouble is (for him), I never said it and don't believe it. Journalists who have heard the claim and bothered to research the point fail to find evidence of me saying it. The reason is that fictional attributions don't show up in Internet news databases.

Even the religious organization, Focus on the Family, has noted that this claim is false. A 2000 article in the Focus on the Family's Citizen magazine stated:

It also should be said that despite Lynn's often-bombastic rhetoric, he's been on the receiving end of some pretty strong language himself, some of it unjustified. (One Christian conservative leader [presumably Robertson] has mistakenly suggested that Lynn would say a burning church shouldn't be able to call the fire department lest it violate the bounds of church-state separation.)

From the November 30 edition of Christian Broadcasting Network's The 700 Club:

ROBERTSON: Barry [Lynn] is -- Barry says that if a church is burning down, the local community could not send the fire engine to put the fire out because that would violate, quote, separation of church and state. He is fanatical.

In a December 1 column, Washington Times chief political correspondent Donald Lambro twisted data from an already flawed poll to suggest that "Americans want to finish what we've started [in Iraq] and want the Iraqi government to have every chance to show they can take over their own security." Lambro mischaracterized the findings of a November 21 RT Strategies poll, apparently conflating two questions and twisting its already questionable results. In addition, New York Times columnist David Brooks cited the same poll in his December 1 column (subscription required) without noting its flaws.

The poll Lambro cited reported that 70 percent of respondents believe that Democratic senators' criticism of President Bush's Iraq war policy hurts U.S. troop morale in Iraq, while 13 percent believe it helps morale. But Lambro apparently conflated two separate polling questions to falsely claim that "70 percent" of Americans think a rapid withdrawal of troops from Iraq would hurt troop morale:

We've all heard the polling questions that tell us a strong majority of Americans now think President Bush's decision to go into Iraq was mistaken. In light of the rising toll of U.S. casualties, that is an understandable view. But some polls ask a related question that suggests another view.

One poll last month by the bipartisan RT Strategies asked Americans if the immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces in Iraq would help or hurt troop morale. A stunning 70 percent said a precipitous withdrawal of U.S. forces would hurt morale over there while 14 percent said it would help.

This strongly suggests Americans want to finish what we've started and want the Iraqi government to have every chance to show they can take over their own security. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice thinks that will come "fairly soon."

In fact, the poll did not ask whether withdrawing troops from Iraq would hurt morale. The poll included a question addressing Democratic criticism of the president's Iraq policy, along with an unrelated question addressing whether the United States should withdraw its troops from Iraq. The first question asked, "Thinking about the war in Iraq, when Democratic Senators criticize the President's policy on the war in Iraq, do you believe it HELPS the morale of our troops in Iraq or HURTS the morale of our troops in Iraq?"; the second asked, "And thinking about the future of our policies in Iraq, do you believe the U.S. military should ... [w]ithdraw our troops immediately, regardless of the impact ... [w]ithdraw our troops as the Iraqi government and military meet specific goals and objectives ... [or s]et a fixed publicly available timetable for withdrawal."

Lambro's distortions notwithstanding, the data from the RT poll is itself suspect. Media Matters for America has previously noted that the poll did not allow for the possibility that criticism of Bush's Iraq policy has no effect on troop morale, nor did it address the fact that -- according to a November 4-7 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll -- 57 percent of Americans now believe the president misled the public when he made the case for war in Iraq. This perception could also have a substantial effect on troop morale, an issue the pollsters ignored.

In his December 1 New York Times column, Brooks also cited the results of the RT poll, using them to support his assertion that the American public disapproves of Democrats' performance:

The hammer of disapproval has fallen hardest on the Republicans, of course, but the public is just as eager to think the worst of the Democrats. Seventy percent of Americans say Democratic criticism of the war is hurting troop morale, according to a poll by RT Strategies. Most Americans cynically believe that Democrats are leveling their attacks on the war to gain partisan advantage, while only 30 percent believe that they are genuinely trying to help U.S. efforts.

In her December 1 nationally syndicated column, right-wing pundit Ann Coulter attacked Rep. John P. Murtha (D-PA), who recently offered a resolution calling for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, by questioning his military service. Murtha, a retired U.S. Marine colonel who served in Vietnam from 1966 to 1967, received the Bronze Star, two Purple Hearts, and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry. Coulter questioned Murtha's medals, writing that he "refuses to release his medical records showing he was entitled to his two Purple Hearts."

Coulter's slander of Murtha was reminiscent of tactics used by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (now the Swift Vets and POWs for Truth), who smeared Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), another decorated Vietnam veteran, during his 2004 presidential campaign. The group claimed that Kerry's five combat medals were undeserved despite extensive documentation to the contrary.

From Coulter's December 1 column, in which she objected to the praise* a number of Republican government officials bestowed upon Murtha:

What is this? Special Olympics for the Democrats? Can't Republicans disagree with a Democrat who demands that the U.S. surrender in the middle of a war without erecting monuments to him first? What would happen if a Democrat were to propose restoring Saddam Hussein to power? Is that Medal of Freedom territory?

I don't know what Republicans imagine they're getting out of all this love they keep throwing at Democrats. I've never heard a single liberal preface attacks on Oliver North with a recitation of North's magnificent service as a Marine. And unlike Murtha, who refuses to release his medical records showing he was entitled to his two Purple Hearts, we know what North did. (These Democrat military veterans are hardly shrinking violets when it comes to citing their medals, but they get awfully squeamish when pressed for details.)

A May 12, 2002, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article reported that "Marine Corps casualty records show that Murtha was injured in 'hostile' actions near Danang, Vietnam, on March 22, 1967 and May 7, 1967. In the first incident, his right cheek was lacerated, and in the second he was lacerated above his left eye. Neither injury required evacuation."

Coulter went on to compare Murtha to George Lincoln Rockwell, a World War II Navy pilot who founded the American Nazi Party:

Sen. Teddy Kennedy [D-MA] didn't issue a 20-minute soliloquy on what a wonderful man Judge Robert Bork was as a human being before attacking his judicial philosophy. Kennedy just laid into Bork like he was George Lincoln Rockwell.

Speaking of which, George Lincoln Rockwell, former head of the American Nazi Party, served in the military during World War II. Are we obligated to praise his war service before disputing his views?

*Republican praise of Murtha came after the White House attacked him for advocating troop withdrawal. In a November 17 statement, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said of Murtha: "[I]t is baffling that he is endorsing the policy positions of Michael Moore and the extreme liberal wing of the Democratic party. The eve of an historic democratic election in Iraq is not the time to surrender to the terrorists."

On the November 27 broadcast of Inside Washington, a program produced by Washington, D.C., TV station WJLA, syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer claimed that a bipartisan presidential commission concluded that "not a scintilla of evidence" existed showing that the Bush administration withheld intelligence from Congress that may have undermined the case for war in Iraq. Krauthammer also claimed that the commission's report concluded that any information received by the president, but not by Congress, "was far more indicting of Saddam and of the existence of weapons of mass destruction [WMD]." In fact, the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, chaired by former Sen. Charles Robb (D-VA) and Reagan appointee Judge Laurence H. Silberman, did not examine whether the administration withheld information from Congress.

Further, Krauthammer's claim that the Robb-Silberman report concluded that information available only to Bush presented a stronger case for the existence of WMDs in Iraq refers only to one section of the report dealing with the Presidential Daily Briefings (PDBs). But the PDBs were only one of several intelligence sources that the White House received, but Congress did not, as Media Matters for America has documented. Further, the Robb-Silberman Commission did not conduct a full investigation of the PDBs and reached no conclusions about what information they contained that was not provided to Congress. Rather, the report merely examined how a limited sample of the documents reflected flawed intelligence-gathering at the CIA. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) has called for the CIA to release to the Senate Intelligence Committee PDBs referring to Iraq and dating from when Bush took office through the start of the war. Kennedy wants the briefings for the second phase of the committee's investigation into whether the White House manipulated intelligence in the buildup to the war.

During a discussion about a November 20 Washington Post op-ed by former Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL) detailing conflicting intelligence in the lead-up to war, Krauthammer responded to National Public Radio legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg's assertion that information had been withheld from Congress by claiming that the Robb-Silberman report "concluded precisely the opposite -- that there was not a scintilla of evidence of that."

In fact, the Robb-Silberman report never examined the administration's use or provision of intelligence, so there was no "opposite" conclusion for it to reach. As The Washington Post noted in a November 12 article, upon releasing the report in March, Silberman said: "Our executive order did not direct us to deal with the use of intelligence by policymakers, and all of us were agreed that that was not part of our inquiry."

In challenging Totenberg's assertion, Krauthammer also claimed that the Robb-Silberman report concluded that "the information that the president received was far more indicting of Saddam and of the existence of weapons of mass destruction than the information that the Congress received, and Congress came to precisely the same conclusion."

The only section of the report that indicated any difference between intelligence received by the Bush administration and by Congress, however, was an indication that the PDBs and Senior Executive Intelligence Briefs (SEIBs) contained information not "markedly different" from that contained in the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) presented to Congress. The report described the PDBs and SEIBs as "more alarmist and less nuanced than the NIE," creating "an impression of many corroborating reports where in fact there were very few sources."

Krauthammer's assertion echoed a November 15 White House press release that sought to refute, by pointing to the same section of the Robb-Silberman report, a New York Times editorial published the same day; the editorial asserted: "Congress had nothing close to the president's access to intelligence."

Presumably because the commission was not tasked with investigating the Bush administration's use of intelligence, it did not consider the mounting evidence that the administration did in fact withhold and distort prewar intelligence. The report did not address sources that provided the administration with their own intelligence assessments, such as then-undersecretary of defense Douglas J. Feith's Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group, or a Defense Intelligence Agency report that questioned intelligence hyping Saddam Hussein's ties to Al Qaeda. On April 27, 2004, The New York Times reported plans by the Senate Intelligence Committee to investigate whether Feith's operation "exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq to justify the war" by circumventing the CIA and providing its own analysis of raw intelligence reports to lawmakers. And as the Los Angeles Times reported on November 7, though the Defense Intelligence Agency provided the White House and the CIA with a February 2002 report concluding that intelligence provided by a detained Al Qaeda operative was "intentionally misleading," members of the Bush administration nevertheless continued to cite information supplied by the detainee when presenting the case for a connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda. According to Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, the DIA report was not provided to members of Congress.

Moreover, while it is clearly false that the Robb-Silberman investigation settled the question of whether Congress saw the same intelligence as President Bush, even Krauthammer's more specific claim that the investigation found that the PDBs and SEIBs provided Bush with no more intelligence than Congress received is problematic.

The report discusses the PDBs only within the context of evaluating the ways in which they generally reflect flawed intelligence-gathering. As the commission indicated, it examined "a limited cross-section of this product." The report contains no definitive statement about all of the PDBs available to the president and their comparison with intelligence provided to Congress. A full analysis that would produce such a statement has not been performed.

Indeed, as recently as November 22, National Journal contributor Murray Waas reported that a newly discovered PDB from September 21, 2001, advised the president of "no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the [9-11] attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda." Waas reported that "according to highly placed government officials, little evidence has come to light [since the PDB given the president shortly after the attacks] to contradict the CIA's original conclusion that no collaborative relationship existed between Iraq and Al Qaeda." Waas cited congressional sources as saying that the existence of the PDB was not disclosed to the Senate Intelligence Committee until the summer of 2004.

As The Washington Post reported on November 19, Sen. Kennedy has called for an expansive release of PDBs by the CIA as part of the second phase of the Intelligence Committee's investigation into pre-war intelligence, which will address the question of whether members of the Bush administration misrepresented intelligence when making the case for war.

From the November 27 broadcast of WJLA's Inside Washington:

TOTENBERG: There is a difference between manipulating intelligence to back up your pre-conceived notion that there are weapons of mass destruction and ignoring all the countervailing indicia that come from the intelligence community, from lots of other places, and just cherry-picking the stuff you want. You don't have to actually believe that you're lying, but you are abdicating your responsibility as the president, the vice president, the top officials, when you do that because you are misrepresenting -- perhaps not deliberately -- what the real situation is.

GORDON PETERSON (host): Charles, did you read what Senator Bob Graham had to say about the intelligence this week?

KRAUTHAMMER: No.

PETERSON: He said that in fact the whole story had not been told by this administration -- that he had access to intelligence that a lot of people don't have access to.

KRAUTHAMMER: And did he tell us what that hidden information was?

TOTENBERG: He said -- he said --

KRAUTHAMMER: Isn't that exactly Joe McCarthy's technique?

TOTENBERG: No, he said very --

[crosstalk]

KRAUTHAMMER: Tell us what this secret information is.

TOTENBERG: He very specifically said that there was a lot of information that was left out of what was given to Congress, including the highest-ranking intelligence committee people. And that based on the information that they had, the assessments that they made were less -- were less valid.

KRAUTHAMMER: They were not --

[crosstalk]

JOHN HARWOOD (Wall Street Journal national political editor): And he was responding to --

KRAUTHAMMER: Bob Graham --

[crosstalk]

HARWOOD: -- hawk who all along has been against this war as a diversion against the war on terrorism.

KRAUTHAMMER: Bob Graham is also a Democrat, and the Silberman-Robb Commission, which is not Democratic or Republican, concluded precisely the opposite -- that there was not a scintilla of evidence of that, and that in fact the information that the president received was far more indicting of Saddam and of the existence of weapons of mass destruction than the information that the Congress received, and the Congress came to precisely the same conclusion.

During a November 30 discussion about politics and religion on Christian Broadcasting Network's The 700 Club, which featured Fox News' John Gibson, host Pat Robertson stated: "[I]f you haven't got a Democratic nominee who can be called 'Bubba' [an apparent reference to former President Bill Clinton], you're not going to get him in office. You're not going to get a New England liberal, no way! Black folks aren't going to vote for people like that."

In fact, exit polling data for the 2004 presidential election indicated that of the African Americans who voted, 88 percent cast their ballots for Democratic candidate Sen. John F. Kerry (D-MA).

From the November 30 edition of Christian Broadcasting Network's The 700 Club:

GIBSON: I have said it before, so I don't think I'm getting into any trouble for saying it today. I think one of the reasons Kerry lost is that Christian liberals felt that the hostility expressed by the Democratic Party toward Christians made them uncomfortable. African-Americans did not turn out to vote for Kerry as they were expected to. Christian liberals of the Eastern seaboard didn't turn out as they were expected to, and I've always said, look, if you got [Democratic National Committee chairman] Howard Dean going around complaining about right-wing evangelicals, other Christians are going to say, hmmm, this makes me a little uncomfortable to hear that kind of talk.

ROBERTSON: Well, I just think it's really -- if you haven't got a Democratic nominee who can be called "Bubba," you're not going to get him in office.

[laughter]

ROBERTSON: You're not going to get a New England liberal, no way!

GIBSON: Well --

ROBERTSON: Black folks aren't going to vote for people like that. They're just not going to do it!