On Hardball the other day, Chris Matthews had Newsweek's Michael Isikoff and Congressman Moran as his guests to discuss Tom Ridge's recent suggestion that the ubiquitous terror alerts of a few years back had been manipulated for political purposes. Both Isikoff and Matthews suggested this was pretty obvious and tried to give the impression that they and many in the MSM had said so at the time. Are we seeing professional journalists attempt to rewrite history in their own interest and the interest of their profession? Selections from the transcript below the fold
The transcript of the show is available at lexisnexis.com, but for some reason I cannot make a link work.
Here are some choice bits:
"MR. ISIKOFF: Well, look, the question he's raising there -- "Was this about politics or security?" -- was a question that everybody in the media and many people in government and politics were raising every time we went through the terror alerts during that period...because of the highly politicized atmosphere, because of the track record the Bush administration had demonstrated, particularly in the run-up to the war in Iraq, there were widespread suspicions as to whether or not these constant terror threat alerts were indeed genuine or whether they were influenced by politics."
"MR. MATTHEWS: Well, sometimes I love it when things are what they look like."
One person who did suggest this at the time was Howard Dean. Matthews' reaction? To effectively call him a "conspiracy theorist", though he did not actually use the term (transcript here):
"Matthews: But what you're saying here, Governor, is that there's a political brain somewhere in the administrator which directs people like Tom Ridge and people like Ashcroft to exploit whatever info they have got to try to make it easier on the president for reelection, that someone is directing this timing?"
"Matthews: Yes, but all you have to go on is the old 'who benefits' rule. Like some people would say Lyndon Johnson had something to do with killing Kennedy, because he got to be president then. That's (INAUDIBLE) thinking. Whenever there's a beneficiary, that person must have been the motivator."
By the way, I suspect the "inaudible" word here was "paranoid", "conspiratorial" or something similar. To be fair, what Dean was doing was alleging covert manipulation of apparently spontaneous events for hidden purposes: it was indeed a conspiracy theory, as Rachel Maddow acknowledged in titling her piece on the Ridge allegations "Conspiracy Theory Proved". But Matthews is not simply pointing this out in a neutral fashion; he is clearly trying to dismiss the idea.
As for Isikoff, I haven't found anything by him addressing the issue. Anyone else have info?
To my knowledge, the allegation these people are now treating as obvious was made at the time by Keith Olbermann, Howard Dean, The Nation magazine, and, with some hesitancy, Josh Marshall. And many bloggers and DFH's. Anyone else? Most of the MSM ignored or ridiculed the idea, as I recall.
Let's put together a record of who dared to suggest at the time what Ridge is saying, and those who ridiculed or dismissed them.