The Tangled Webs We’ve Weaved

One of the central figures in the “Page Six” gossip scandal (if you can call it that), billionaire Ron Burkle, today turned to the op-ed pages of The Wall Street Journal to relay some of the lessons he’s learned. Somewhat surprisingly, one of his main targets is the press. Burkle writes:

With the rise of blogs, reality TV, camera phones and other types of instant media, one can see a day when anyone, anywhere could become the subject of salacious journalism. And as gossip journalism spreads, so do the shoddy standards that accompany it. I'm not talking about bribes or extortion. One hopes that's a rare practice. But consider what the New York Times reported about the way business is done at Page Six: "Keeping a list of reliable sources, of course, means having a list of people who need to be protected somewhat. Those who cooperate -- called 'friends of the column,' according to people who work with and at Page Six -- are rewarded; those who fight back are punished."

This appears to be standard operating procedure at Page Six. I was asked repeatedly to pass on secrets about my friends to gain protection against negative stories about myself. I refused to play this game, so I was punished. But this source game is not only played on Page Six. It is also played for high stakes on Wall Street and in Washington. We've all read how well-known and respected journalists have readily protected top-ranked officials leaking classified information. It makes one wonder: Where does the political reporter end and the political operative begin?

Indeed, Burkle’s final question is one being asked a lot these days, with both sides of the argument about the war in Iraq finding plenty of instances to latch onto. But is it possible that the “rules” of the game, at least in Washington, might be changing? Could it be that we’re entering an age where anonymous leaks will become synonymous with pure gossip -- bits and pieces of half-truths that are not to be trusted? Unfortunately, in a typical Washington display of pure hypocrisy, the answer is most probably no.

The manner in which the press has breathlessly pursued revelations of President Bush’s apparent personal approval to leak classified information would tend to suggest a collective recognition that leaks are, indeed, wrong on some level. And it would seem to follow, then, that perhaps news organizations would re-consider their reliance on them.

[Quick Aside: I know, I know, there is plenty to report on this story, not the least of which is the appearance of a president caught in an outright lie after having previously claimed no knowledge of leaks surrounding the very subject he seems to have leaked about. I realize he has said leaks won't be tolerated in his administration. Yes, I know the president can declassify information which means it's not really a leak, yada yada. There are enough arguments, semantic and otherwise, involved here to fill the rest of the month. Those issues are being hashed out elsewhere, but stick with me here.]

Forget about the specifics for just a second and consider this from a different angle. If the fact that the president, the vice president and his chief of staff leaked select information, even disputed information, in a manner designed to further their own views and agenda is indeed such a terrible thing to have done, does that not follow for every single leak we find in the newspapers on almost a daily basis? Isn’t that what leakers so often do, cherry-pick select bits and pieces of intelligence or facts in a way that will cast their own agendas favorably or to make their opponents look bad?

Granted, there are those rare instances where a real whistleblower may be seeking to alert the press and public of some terrible injustice happening within the government, but more often than not, it’s shaded spin coming out of one power player or another. Everyone knows how this game is played. Howard Kurtz, The Washington Post media writer, yesterday pointed out the curious timing of stories in The New Yorker and The Post about the administration’s consideration of using nuclear weapons to halt Iran’s own nuclear program. Kurtz theorized:

I see two possibilities:

a) The White House wants this out because it's very effective saber-rattling aimed at getting Tehran to the bargaining table.

b) Military or administration sources who believe Bush might actually bomb Iran want to torpedo the program through leaks.

There are numerous recent examples of select information leaked or spun in a manner seemingly designed to influence the media coverage, and thus, public opinion. Just this morning, The Washington Post’s story about what was supposedly known about those mobile biological labs in Iraq gives us a pretty good example. Here’s how the story leads:

On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."

The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true.

A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq -- not made public until now -- had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.

As several conservative bloggers have pointed out, that view was hardly “unanimous” within the intelligence community at large as the story itself notes:

Intelligence analysts involved in high-level discussions about the trailers noted that the technical team was among several groups that analyzed the suspected mobile labs throughout the spring and summer of 2003. Two teams of military experts who viewed the trailers soon after their discovery concluded that the facilities were weapons labs, a finding that strongly influenced views of intelligence officials in Washington, the analysts said. "It was hotly debated, and there were experts making arguments on both sides," said one former senior official who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.

As with the Iranian nuclear-option story, it’s worth wondering how this story came to light now and why. And you could ask the same question about many stories, big and small, important and rather insignificant. So, if this leaking business is such a crime, in the public arena if not the legal one, when the president has done it, how then can it be accepted from any other source?

Back to Ron Burkle, who wrote, “we've all read how well-known and respected journalists have readily protected top-ranked officials leaking classified information.” Indeed, Bush’s authorization to leak certain bits of information came to light not as part of some proud and honorable disclosure on the part of someone receiving the leaks, but though a publicly accessible legal process. A process that saw the actual recipient of the leak spend months in jail for refusing to identify the source from whom she received it.

The old rules of the game seem to demand that anyone leaking information must be protected at all costs if journalists are to continue to enjoy access to high-ranking government officials -- who will in turn keeping feeding them leaks. But once the leaker is identified, the person becomes fair game, held up to the light of public scrutiny and is scolded for daring to provide the media slanted information.

Does it not strike anyone else as more than just a little hypocritical that many of the talking heads and commentators flogging the president for cherry-picking information to leak seem to have no such qualms about taking other leaked stories seriously? Or pass on such information themselves? Does it really seem so outrageous to think that maybe the press would learn something from this, that most leaked information is probably cherry-picked or slanted in some way? If giving classified information to the press is such a sin, then what does that say about media outlets that trumpet leaked, classified information on their front pages or broadcasts?

Finally, we may have reached a point where everyone can agree that leaks are no longer a tool used to inform the public of important information but instead largely represent attempts to manipulate public opinion. Perhaps we can stipulate that if it is wrong for the president to do what he did, it is equally wrong for some general at the Pentagon or analyst at the CIA to do it. But who am I trying to kid, the president’s just suffering the consequences of having been found out and news organizations are making him pay. The leaking of selected facts will continue to dominate front pages. After all, how would the press find any facts at all if they weren’t handed to them?