In its new "torture" piece, the New York Times again violates its policy on granting anonymity to sources. The reporters Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane cite "over a dozen" anonymous sources from the Bush administration. Let's take a look at where the message really came from.
In many news stories of this type, the identity of the primary source is pretty obvious from the text, and, in fact, is usually mentioned by name (though not identified as the source) early in the piece. Further, most anonymous stories are not the product of hard-nosed reporting, but are brought to the reporters, planted by the source(s) in order to "carry somebody's water" ie there is a purpose; both the content and the timing of the piece are clues to the identity of the primary source. In other words, whose ox has been gored; who has an ax to grind, etc.... qui bono?
It is clear to me that the principal contributor and probable instigator of this piece was Condi Rice.
By way of background on Ms. Rice's public relations tactics, followers of the career of Ms. Rice may recall the planted "are you running for president?" question:
In 2003, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice helped push America into war with Iraq. She disregarded at least two CIA memos and a personal phone call from CIA Director George Tenet stating that the evidence behind Iraq’s uranium acquisition was weak. She infamously said, "[W]e don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
In an interview with C-SPAN’s Washington Journal today, Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler, author of Confidante: Condoleezza Rice and the Creation of the Bush Legacy, revealed that after President Bush promoted her to Secretary of State, Rice mounted a "public relations" campaign to distance herself from the pre-war fiasco.
As part of this PR campaign, she directed an aide to "plant a question" asking if she would run for President, in order to help "negate American memories of her very direct role" in invading Iraq[emphasis added].
Despite fuzzy stories to the contrary, Rice was by no means a widely-loved figure on the Stanford campus even before her departure in 2000 to join the Bush administration as the president's National Security Advisor ie the person who was hired to prevent things like terrorists hijacking airliners and flying them into buildings (oops!). Instead, she wrote speeches about how we should deploy the Star Wars missile defense system against Russia. While she fiddled, al-Qaeda destroyed the twin towers. She was later further promoted beyond her level of competence to Secretary of State, where she introduced military forces into our embassies abroad, presided over the colossal collapse of US reputation abroad, North Korea's nuclear weapon capability, palling around with dictators, warmongering with Iran, horrendous violence in the Levant, and increases in terrorism around the world.
Upon her return to Stanford after eight years as handmaiden to the worst president in history, many of her friends had either moved on or had changed their minds about Condi. A strong and overt current of hostility was clearly expressed. There was apprehension at the highest levels of the University (yes, that's what I mean)about her return "home" to Stanford in March, when she took up her position as tenured professor of political science, but was actually paid through (and security furnished) by the rather fortified rightwing Hoover Institution on campus. Shortly after her return to Stanford the first of three humiliating stories was published: The Associated Press reported that Rice had approved the torture policy.
Then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice verbally OK'd the CIA's request to subject alleged al-Qaida terrorist Abu Zubaydah to waterboarding in July 2002, a decision memorialized a few days later in a secret memo that the Obama administration declassified last week.
Rice's role was detailed in a narrative released Wednesday by the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The next damaging publication came when she invited herself to dinner at a student dorm, arriving in a caravan of SUVs and security guys, taking the back way in, avoiding a student protest on the front lawn. She was caught on a video giving an insufferably arrogant and mendacious "lecture" to an inquiring student, and the clip published on YouTube. For good measure, Rice, on the tape also admits, essentially, to a war crime and also implicates Bush. The headline in the next day's Stanford Daily read, "Rice Defends Torture." And of course, at the end of the week she was humiliated by a 4th grader on the same topic.
The intro to the new New York Times story speaks volumes about "changing the narrative":
Most news accounts of the C.I.A. program have focused on how it was approved and operated. This is the story of its unraveling,[emphasis added]
Read the parts in the new Times story about Condi’s role and it is easy to see that she is concerned about the recent stories and video and is trying to cast herself as the heroine.
a White House showdown the next year between Ms. Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney; and Ms. Rice’s refusal in 2007 to endorse the executive order with which Mr. Bush sought to revive the C.I.A. program.
Still, Mr. Cheney and top C.I.A. officials fought to revive the program....
and
After a tense meeting in the White House’s grand Roosevelt Room in summer 2006, Mr. Cheney lost the argument to Ms. Rice.
Yeah, and maybe she shot Liberty Valance and maybe she discovered radium.
If you look at the info, almost all of it could have come from Rice. The timing, the content, the slant, the motivation all point to her as a principal source. I can imagine that the 12 or so other former members of the Bush administration used by Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane were simply "any comments on Rice’s story?" sources.
This is a largely planted/rationalizing piece and it should have been clearly identified as such. Now the Times once again becomes a stenographer for the Bush administration. In her next public appearance you can be absolutely certain that Rice will trot out, in true Dick Cheney fashion, the "fact" that "the New York Times has written about how I fought and defeated [the Dark Force] Cheney on the issue of torture."
Condi Rice is not above this sort of thing. Recall she planted the story about "not thinking about running for president." (as if....) Not saying it's illegal. But it is cowardly. Condoleezza Rice is afraid to face the facts, she's afraid to face Stanford community in an open forum, and she's afraid she'll face a court. The NY Times shouldn't give her anonymity.
Email Clark Hoyt of the Times(public@nytimes.com) and ask him if "over a dozen" sets a new record for anonymous sources.
UPDATE: emptywheel points out that Porter Goss is also treated rather heroically in the piece, though there is at least one fly in that ointment. Cheney apparently declined to disclose his location recollections, but I think we can anticipate a veritable shotgun blast in the next few days.
UPDATE II: Condi gives an interview with the literary editor (?) of The New Republic, discussing the anonymous article in the Times, as if she hadn't been the principal source of it. This is a well-used Bushie trick, perfected by Cheney and Rice in their justification for the Iraq War: the ploy works like this: leak classified or dubious information anonymously to a major and credible outlet, preferably the New York Times (alternatively ABC News), then be "available" to talk shows (preferably Meet the Press/Tim Russert), where they would discuss this "latest development" that "they read in the New York Times."