Critics of the Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times story about the Pentagon’s secret use of military analysts on television news programs to promote the Bush administration’s war policy are now finding themselves on the defensive since their central argument in their crusade against David Barstow’s reporting has been discredited by the Pentagon.
A Pentagon inspector general’s report that had exonerated the Pentagon’s retired military analyst program has been formally withdrawn by the Pentagon Inspector General. Since its release at the end of the Bush administration, the IG report, which some members of Congress labeled a “whitewash,” has been held up by former officers and officials involved in the scandal as evidence that the Times’ reporting was flawed.
Just one day before the Pentagon rescinded their report, Keith Urbahn, a spokesperson for former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, pointed to the IG report as evidence of the Times’ subpar reporting telling U.S. News’ gossip columnist Paul Bedard, “Between the New York Times and the Pentagon’s inspector general office, it’s pretty clear which is a more credible and non-partisan source.” Former ABC Producer and Rumsfeld Pentagon Assistant Secretary Dorrance Smith said “Does the Pulitzer give prizes for works of fiction? Perhaps they just got the wrong category.”
When reached again by columnist Bedard after the Pentagon IG report was withdrawn, Urbahn responded: “Since the New York Times got a Pulitzer for its discredited reporting, perhaps the administration deserves Olympic gold for its latest backflip. Typical for the Obama administration, this is a ‘change’ we can’t believe in.” Smith told Bedard that he did not want to speak to the media further about this subject.
Steve Capus, the president of NBC News, a network which hired Barry McCaffrey as well as other ex-generals for on-the-air analysis and did not reveal their conflicts of interest outlined in the New York Times story, wrote in a letter to Clark Hoyt, the public editor of the New York Times, that the IG report ”undercuts the premise” the New York Times story.
General McCaffrey, a central figure in the Pentagon scandal who remains an active NBC news consultant, used the now discredited IG report to defend his conflicts of interest outlined in the Barstow story. McCaffrey and other former officers were found to have praised or endorsed contractors’ equipment during their appearances without revealing they were on the payroll of the companies that sold the Pentagon the equipment. NBC news defended McCaffrey by saying as a consultant he was not subject to the same ethics standards as their regular news employees.
The IG report “does dispute Barstow’s entire story,” McCaffrey declared in a press release shortly after the Pentagon IG report was released last January.
Meanwhile, with the exception of The Daily Show and The Rachel Maddow Show, the television network blackout of this story continues. The non-profit National Security News Service gave Barstow the original idea to undertake the story. The effort from idea to print took almost three years as the Pentagon forced the New York Times to fight for every document related to the scandal. After Barstow’s first story ran in April 2008, the Pentagon placed additional information on their website that they had not previously provided to Barstow.
NSNS Editor Joseph Trento said, ”The Bush Pentagon flooded the media with the same documents Barstow had fought for in the hopes that competing media would weaken the effect of Barstow’s November 2008 follow up by trying to make it non-exclusive. That effort failed.”
Trento added, “This entire episode has been a huge embarrassment to the network news divisions who failed the American public by helping the Bush Administration sell their war policy in the most dishonest way possible. Congress needs to examine the entire Pentagon propaganda machine and drag in under oath the network news executives who went along with this travesty.”
