NYT Regrets Flawed Pre-war Iraq Coverage

"We have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been," said a message from the editors, entitled "The Times and Iraq" published Wednesday.

The lengthy mea culpa said information that seemed controversial in the prelude to the U.S.-led invasion and questionable now, had been "insufficiently qualified" or allowed to stand unchallenged.

"Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge," said the American mass-circulation.

The Times published a number of articles backing claims that Iraq possessed WMDs – none of which has been found more than one year after the U.S.-led occupation of the oil-rich country.

The articles in question were written by different reporters and about varied subjects, but the Times said most shared a common feature by depending in part on information from Iraqi defectors or exiles bent on regime change.

The credibility of these sources has since been called into question, the newspaper acknowledged, citing the example of the current Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmed Chalabi, who had been named as a source in Times’s articles stretching back to 1991.

On October 26 and November 8, 2001, for example, Page 1 articles cited Iraqi defectors who described a secret Iraqi camp where "Islamic terrorists" were trained and biological weapons produced.

These accounts have never been independently verified.

The editors criticized themselves, saying they were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper when they should have been challenging reporters.

While articles based on dire claims about Iraq tended to get displayed prominently, follow-up stories that called the originals into question were all too often "buried," the Times said.

Buried

But the American paper also poured blame on the U.S. intelligence for the reports in the run-up to the Iraq invasion.

"Complicating matters for journalists, the accounts of these exiles were often eagerly confirmed by United States officials convinced of the need to intervene in Iraq," it underlined.

"Administration officials now acknowledge that they sometimes fell for misinformation from these exile sources. So did many news organizations — in particular this one," read the Times mea culpa.

On September 8, 2002, the lead article of the paper was headlined "U.S. Says Hussein Intensified Quest for A-Bomb Parts."

That report concerned the aluminum tubes that the administration advertised insistently as components for the manufacture of nuclear weapons fuel.

The Times said "that claim came not from defectors but from the best American intelligence sources available at the time.

"Still, it should have been presented more cautiously. There were hints that the usefulness of the tubes in making nuclear fuel was not a sure thing, but the hints were buried deep, 1,700 words into a 3,600-word article".

Five days later, Times reporters learned that the tubes were in fact a subject of debate among intelligence agencies.

"The misgivings appeared deep in an article on Page A13, under a headline that gave no inkling that we were revising our earlier view (‘White House Lists Iraq Steps to Build Banned Weapons’).

"The Times gave voice to skeptics of the tubes on Jan. 9, when the key piece of evidence was challenged by the International Atomic Energy Agency. That challenge was reported on Page A10; it might well have belonged on Page A1."

While refraining from naming any individual reporters, the Times specifically cited the names and dates of five articles written between October, 2001 and April, 2003, several of which were accorded front-page status.

All the questionable stories cited by the Times occurred during the reign of former executive editor Howell Raines, who was forced to resign in June last year, in the wake of the plagiarism scandal surrounding reporter Jayson Blair.

The Blair fiasco resulted in the appointment of a Times’ ombudsman, Dan Okrent, who said Tuesday that he was "looking into" the paper’s WMD coverage and planned to publish his findings Sunday.

"We consider the story of Iraq’s weapons, and of the pattern of misinformation, to be unfinished business," the American mass-circulation said.

"And we fully intend to continue aggressive reporting aimed at setting the record straight," it concluded.

Too Late

Though she was not mentioned by name, three of the five dubious articles cited by the Times were written by reporter Judith Miller.

Miller’s articles on WMDs had been criticized by others in the media, notably Jack Shafer, the editor-at-large for the respected Internet journal, Slate Magazine.

Shafer was quoted by Agence France-Presse (AFP) as saying the Times’ mea culpa had come too late.

"It’s absurd that during a year in which the media busied themselves coring the defectors’ stories, the Times has continued to ignore the elephant in the room," he said.