just a small clarification II

Today New York Times op-ed columnist William Safire takes on the media—including his own paper—over last week's reporting of the 9/11 Commission's interim report.

With something resembling a wet noodle, that is.

“Panel Finds No Qaeda-Iraq Tie” went the Times headline. “Al Qaeda-Hussein Link Is Dismissed” front-paged The Washington Post. The A.P. led with the thrilling words “Bluntly contradicting the Bush Administration, the commission… .” This understandably caused my editorial-page colleagues to draw the conclusion that “there was never any evidence of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda… .”

All wrong. The basis for the hoo-ha was not a judgment of the panel of commissioners appointed to investigate the 9/11 attacks. As reporters noted below the headlines, it was an interim report of the commission's runaway staff, headed by the ex-N.S.C. aide Philip Zelikow. After Vice President Dick Cheney's outraged objection, the staff's sweeping conclusion was soon disavowed by both commission chairman Tom Kean and vice chairman Lee Hamilton.

“Were there contacts between Al Qaeda and Iraq?” Kean asked himself. “Yes … no question.” Hamilton joined in: “The vice president is saying, I think, that there were connections … we don't disagree with that” — just “no credible evidence” of Iraqi cooperation in the 9/11 attack. […]

But the staff had twisted the two strands together to cast doubt on both the Qaeda-Iraq ties and the specific attacks of 9/11: “There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda also occurred after bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship.” Zelikow & Co. dismissed the reports, citing the denials of Qaeda agents and what they decided was “no credible evidence” of cooperation on 9/11.

That paragraph — extending doubt on 9/11 to all previous contacts — put the story on front pages. Here was a release on the official commission's letterhead not merely failing to find Saddam's hand in 9/11, which Bush does not claim. The news was in the apparent contradiction of what the president repeatedly asserted as a powerful reason for war: that Iraq had long been dangerously in cahoots with terrorists.

Cheney's ire was misdirected. Don't blame the media for jumping on the politically charged Zelikow report. Blame the commission's leaders for ducking responsibility for its interim findings. Kean and Hamilton have allowed themselves to be jerked around by a manipulative staff.

[emphasis added]

So: the Administration was in the right, after all, but the media was an unwitting victim?

Is Safire serious, or is this some kind of deep irony that only those within the Establishment intelligentsia can detect?

To be fair, the rest of his column is worth the read. The link above should work for the non-registered at least for the next few days.