You wouldn’t know it from reading the front pages of the New York Times or the Washington Post, but questions about the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda linger. The Times did its best on Thursday last week to spin conclusions presented by the 911 Commission as consistent with what will be in the Commission’s final report. As often happens at the Times, news that is ignored by the journalistic staff is broken by William Safire or David Brooks writing from the editorial page. A case in point is Safire’s editorial today, which correctly characterized the nature of the findings presented last week. Safire wrote, “The basis for the hoo-ha was not a judgment of the panel of commissioners appointed to investigate the 9/11 attacks… it was an interim report of the commission's runaway staff… the staff's sweeping conclusion was soon disavowed by both commission chairman Tom Kean and vice chairman Lee Hamilton.”
Meanwhile, the Washington Times reported this morning on new information about ties between Iraq and al Qaeda. Former Navy Secretary John Lehman, speaking on NBC's Meet the Press yesterday, said that evidence suggests an officer of Saddam Hussien's Fedayeen militia was a "very prominent member of al Qaeda." That Lehman conceded that the evidence for this link requires substantiation does not make the story less than newsworthy. Is the Times ignoring a story because it is contrary to the reality the Times seeks to create?
Finally, what of cryptic suggestions by Vladimir Putin last week that Russian intelligence services received information that after 911 and before the liberation of Iraq, Saddam Hussien was planning terrorist strikes against the United States. This would seem to be worthy of investigation, but the Times and the Post are silent. Demosphia last week wrote an interesting take on the Putin story.