Media

By Margaret Kimberley, The Black Commentator

Deep Throat was the anonymous source who helped Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein break the Watergate story. For the past 30 years the identity and in some cases the very existence of Deep Throat has been called into question until Mark Felt recently revealed himself to be the mystery man.

There have been many opportunities for eager reporters to bring down the current White House occupant, but no one in the corporate media seems to want the job. At the end of 2000 Greg Palast, an American reporter working for the British press, revealed that Florida Governor Jeb Bush had removed thousands of eligible voters, most of them black, from the voter registration rolls, thereby stealing the state for his brother George W.

Next best thing to actual journalism!

Watch the Video!

Published on Thursday, October 28, 2004 by GNN.tv
Two Years Before 9/11, Candidate Bush was Already Talking Privately About Attacking Iraq, According to His Former Ghost Writer
by Russ Baker

HOUSTON -- Two years before the September 11 attacks, presidential candidate George W. Bush was already talking privately about the political benefits of attacking Iraq, according to his former ghost writer, who held many conversations with then-Texas Governor Bush in preparation for a planned autobiography.

"He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999," said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. "It was on his mind. He said to me: 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he said, 'My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.' He said, 'If I have a chance to invade�.if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency." Herskowitz said that Bush expressed frustration at a lifetime as an underachiever in the shadow of an accomplished father. In aggressive military action, he saw the opportunity to emerge from his father's shadow. The moment, Herskowitz said, came in the wake of the September 11 attacks. "Suddenly, he's at 91 percent in the polls, and he'd barely crawled out of the bunker."

His public assertions on Iraq were at odds with what he was told in private

John Ware
Saturday March 26, 2005
The Guardian

I was recently speaking to a former senior civil servant about the prime minister's relationship with the truth. "Has he got one?" he asked. He was deadly serious.

Because of the way Tony Blair made the case for war with Iraq, quite a lot of people have begun to think the relationship is tenuous. The suggestion that he found in the attorney general a lawyer who fortuitously told him that what he wanted to do was legal adds to the perception. Blair himself denies anyone was deceived.

Charles Goyette (www.charlesgoyette.com), the radio host who was fired by ClearChannel for reporting facts about Iraq in the buildup to the war, today interviewed Noam Chomsky about the Bush Administration's militarism and David Swanson about www.AfterDowningStreet.org.

Here's Chomsky:
http://www.charlesgoyette.com/archive/media/2005-06-08-Charles-02.mp3

Here's Swanson:
http://www

'USA Today' Defends Lack of Coverage for Downing Street Memo
Edior and Publisher
By E&P Staff
Published: June 08, 2005 1:05 PM ET

NEW YORK In a report on President Bush's joint press conference late yesterday afternoon with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, USA Today for the first time mentioned the so-called Downing Street Memo, first reported in London's Sunday Times on May 1, and explained why the Gannett flagship had not previously covered the memo story.

The Downing Street Memo is reported to be minutes of a July 2002 meeting among Blair and some of his top intelligence and national-security aides. One of the aides reportedly told Blair at the meeting that the Bush administration has already decided to go to war with Iraq and was looking for justification. "Intelligence and facts were being fixed" to make war appear inevitable, the memo reportedly stated. Its veracity has not been contested by No. 10 Downing Street.

Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Jonathan Riskind
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

WASHINGTON � Addressing what has been a simmering issue for some Democrats and liberal activists, President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair yesterday dismissed a British government memo that asserts the Bush administration essentially cooked the facts to justify the Iraq war.

"Somebody said we had made up our mind to use military force," Bush said at a White House news conference.

"There�s nothing farther from the truth. Both of us didn�t want to use our military. It was our last option."

Seldom-Discussed Elephant Moves Into Public's View
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post
Wednesday, June 8, 2005; A14

Yesterday's East Room meeting of President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair was worth a cool $1,000 to Steve Holland, Reuters' chief White House correspondent, if he cares to collect it.

Earlier in the day, Democrats.com, a group of left-wing activists, sent out an e-mail offering a "reward" to anyone who could get an answer from Bush about whether a recently leaked British government memo from 2002 was correct in saying the Bush administration had "fixed" the intelligence about Iraq's weapons to justify war.

World Opinion Roundup: Blair and The Downing Street Memo
Jefferson Morley
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 7, 2005; 1:00 PM

In his weekly discussion, washingtonpost.com staff writer Jefferson Morley conducts a freewheeling tour of the best of Internet news sites from Afghanistan to Beijing to Mexico City to Paris to Zimbabwe.
Jefferson Morley was online Tuesday, June 7, at 1 p.m. ET to discuss the Downing Street Memo and Prime Minister Tony Blair 's visit to the White House.

Read today's World Opinion Roundup: The Downing Street Memo Story Won't Die.

By Salon.com

Tony Blair is in Washington today to talk with George W. Bush about aid for Africa, but it might be an opportune moment for the White House press corps to talk about something else: The 2002 Downing Street memo which shows that Blair was told that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed" to support Bush's plan to depose Saddam Hussein through military force.

Bush held a press conference last week, but no one in the White House press corps bothered to ask him about the memo then. Reporters will probably get another chance to ask today, this time with Blair sitting right there in the room, too. They can even get paid for asking. Democrats.com has posted a $1,000 reward for any reporter who gets Bush to give a "yes or no" answer to the question, "In July 2002, did you and your administration 'fix' the intelligence and facts about non-existent Iraqi WMD's and ties to terrorism -- which were disputed by U.S. intelligence officials -- to sell your decision to invade Iraq to Congress, the American people, and the world -- as quoted in the Downing Street Minutes?" Hell, they'll get a hundred bucks if they just ask the question without getting an answer.

By Mark Memmott, USA TODAY

A simmering controversy over whether American media have ignored a secret British memo about how President Bush built his case for war with Iraq bubbled over into the White House on Tuesday.

At a late afternoon news conference, Reuters correspondent Steve Holland asked Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair about a memo that's been widely written about and discussed in Europe but less so in the USA.

It was the most attention paid by the media in the USA so far to the "Downing Street memo," first reported on May 1 by The Sunday Times of London. The memo is said by some of the president's sharpest critics, such as Democratic Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, to be strong evidence that Bush decided to go to war and then looked for evidence to support his decision.

Joint statements follow criticism by Iraq war foes
By Farah Stockman, Globe Staff | June 8, 2005

WASHINGTON -- President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain for the first time yesterday jointly addressed a question that has persisted for the past month: What was the truth about a leaked 2002 memo written by a British official suggesting that the United States had ''fixed" intelligence to justify an impending invasion of Iraq?

Both leaders denied that the July 23 memo, written as a description of a meeting between Britain's top intelligence official and members of the Bush administration, accurately reflected events.

Two leaders deny that intelligence was manipulated to justify war on Iraq
By JULIE MASON, Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - President Bush denied on Tuesday the substance of a 2002 memo in which a top British intelligence official claimed the administration manipulated facts and intelligence to justify the war in Iraq.
In a brief appearance with British Prime Minister Tony Blair at the White House, Bush said "there's nothing farther from the truth."

"We worked hard to see if we could figure out how to do this peacefully," Bush said. "Nobody wants to commit military into combat. It's the last option."

(Published Tuesday, June 7, 2005 10:58:27 AM CDT)
Gazette Extra
By Mike DuPre', Gazette Staff

CLINTON-The Iraq War is a mess that's only getting messier, Sen. Russ Feingold said before and during a listening session Monday.

"The mantra for Fox News is that we only hear the bad news," Feingold, a Democrat, said of the media outlet thought by many observers to be right wing.

"I was over there (in February), and we don't hear enough bad news," Feingold said before the session.

He traveled with four other senators, including Republican John McCain and Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton. The other four voted in support of the Iraq War, while Feingold opposed it.

Jefferson Morley of the Washington Post discussed the Downing Street Minutes as part of the Post's Live Online feature.

Morley is one of the reporters at the Post taking this issue the most seriously. See his article here

Byron Williams writes a twice weekly column for the Oakland Tribune and other media outlets. Below are columns he's written on the Downing Street Memo on May 12, 20, 23, June 1, 3, and 7. Six pieces, exactly six more than we've seen on, say, ABC News.

Bush attempts to tarnish FDR's foreign policy image
May 12, 2005
Byron Williams

IF President Bush would attempt to systematically dismantle Franklin D. Roosevelt's prize domestic policy in Social Security, logic would suggest that any criticism of the former president's foreign policy is almost a given.

While in Europe commemorating the 60th anniversary of V-E Day, the president publicly embraced one of the long-held historical positions of far-right conservatism � that the Yalta Agreement was the betrayal of freedom and Roosevelt is the culprit.

HUME: When we come back with our panel, the memo that the left says the U.S. media won't talk about it. Well, we'll talk about it, next.

HUME: We're back with our panel.

It is regarded on the anti-war left as proof positive that President Bush intended from the start to go to war in Iraq and rigged American intelligence to support the case. It is called the Downing Street Memo, and it is such a focal point now that it even has its own Web site, www.downingstreetmemo.com.

Mort, what is the Downing Street Memo?

KONDRACKE: Well, the Downing Street Memo was an account of a secret...

By Robert Parry

The clues are falling into place, pointing to the incontrovertible judgment that George W. Bush willfully misled the United States into invading Iraq, in part, by eliminating the possibility of the peaceful solution that he pretended to want.

Many of the clues have been apparent for three years � and some were reported in outlets such as our own Consortiumnews.com in real time � but only recently have new revelations clarified this obvious reality for the slow-witted mainstream U.S. news media.

The latest piece of the puzzle was reported by Charles J. Hanley of the Associated Press in an article on June 4 describing how Bush�s Undersecretary of State John Bolton orchestrated the ouster of global arms control official Jose Bustani in early 2002 because Bustani�s Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons [OPCW] was making progress toward getting arms inspectors back into Iraq.

By Media Matters for America

On the June 5 edition of NBC's Meet the Press, moderator Tim Russert questioned but failed to correct Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman's claim that the "findings" of the Downing Street Memo, a secret British intelligence memo suggesting that the Bush administration manipulated intelligence to support its case for war in Iraq, "have been totally discredited by everyone who's looked at it," including the 9-11 Commission and the Senate.

In fact, neither the 9-11 Commission nor the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence addressed the Bush administration's use of pre-war intelligence.

Bush officials mum despite calls for answers on Brit report
By Josh Richman, STAFF WRITER, San Mateo County Times

It's been more than a month since The Times of London published a secret British government memo from mid-2002 describing the Bush administration's resolve to invade Iraq whether it posed a threat or not.
It's been about a month since 89 House Democrats � including six from the Bay Area � asked the president to explain himself in light of this memo.

And it's been almost three weeks since the White House press secretary said that isn't going to happen.

By Sean Gonsalves - Cape Cod Times

06.07.05 - Last week's big news story provides us with an alluring phrase to muse over.

As you probably already know, "Deep Throat" was the key anonymous source for Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who broke the "Watergate" story that led to the downfall of President Nixon.

Woodward and Bernstein borrowed the phrase from the title of a popular porno flick of the 1970s, featuring Linda Lovelace.

The film brought in over a half billion dollars and, according to Lovelace's autobiography, she never saw a penny of that money. Even worse, in her autobiography Out of Bondage, she said the movie was actually a film of her rape because, she claimed, her husband at that time forced her to do the movie at gunpoint, according to the Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins (Third Edition).

Byron Williams - byronspeaks.com

06.07.05 - I was sitting at my local coffee hangout the day after it was revealed that 91-year-old W. Mark Felt, who was second-in-command at the FBI in the early 1970s, was the confidential source named "Deep Throat" that led to Watergate becoming a household name.

The individual sitting adjacent to me suggested that we need another Deep Throat today so that the world might know of possible shenanigans within the present White House administration.

I wondered privately: "Is that really necessary or possible?"

By The Record, NorthJersey.com

ALTHOUGH it shook Britain on the eve of Prime Minister Tony Blair's reelection last month, the "Downing Street memo" hasn't received much attention in this country.

It should.

The memo summarized the minutes of a July 2002 meeting of Mr. Blair's inner circle, including his defense secretary, foreign secretary and head of intelligence, to discuss U.S. plans for invading Iraq - assuming that British forces would take part.

The memo reveals this about the coming war:

Eight months before the invasion began, President Bush had already made up his mind to wage war on Iraq, even though he told the American people it would be a last resort.

By Arianna Huffington

As expected, the latest edition of Meet the Press, featuring RNC chair Ken Mehlman, was another classic example of why host Tim Russert is fast becoming journalism�s answer to the �E-ZPass,� those electronic tags that allow drivers to go through toll booths without having to stop.

On the show today, Mehlman was allowed to distort, twist, manipulate, obfuscate and "disassemble" his way through every stop on the disinformation highway.

The key to the E-ZPass method, as HuffPost reader Paul Harry points out, is no follow-ups -- or lame follow-ups quickly abandoned. And Mehlman is a master at dealing with those. His technique? Just repeat or slightly rephrase his talking point, and trust that Russert will give up, wave him on, and proceed to the next prepared question.

By Institute for Public Accuracy

Two days before Tony Blair's scheduled Tuesday meeting with President Bush in Washington, the chairman of the Republican National Committee faced questioning on NBC's "Meet the Press" about the festering Downing Street Memo scandal.

Tim Russert said: "This was a memo, July 23, 2002, from the head of British intelligence to Prime Minister Blair; in effect, notes taken from a briefing that was given to Prime Minister Blair after the head of British intelligence came back from a trip to Washington. It says this: '[The head of British Intelligence] reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.'"

The BBC has produced a documentary that US television news producers might want to learn from. Although aired weeks before the Sunday Times broke the story of the Downing Street Minutes, this program discussed those minutes without naming them.

BBC documentary "Iraq, Tony and the truth?" broadcast on BBC on March 20, 2005.

BBC page:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/4332485.stm

Transcript:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/programmes/panorama/transcripts/iraqtonyandthetruth.txt

Bush officials mum despite calls for answers on Brit report
The Argus, CA, By Josh Richman, STAFF WRITER

It's been more than a month since The Times of London published a secret British government memo from mid-2002 describing the Bush administration's resolve to invade Iraq whether it posed a threat or not.
It's been about a month since 89 House Democrats � including six from the Bay Area � asked the president to explain himself in light of this memo.

And it's been almost three weeks since the White House press secretary said that isn't going to happen.

The Columbian (Vancouver, Washington), June 3, 2005 Friday
By GREGG HERRINGTON Columbian staff writer

Maybe it's presumptuous to attempt to describe where America's collective head is on any given day, other than those awful 9/11-type moments of national coming together. But I'm going to try anyway:

We're behaving the same way about Iraq that we act individually when faced with an unpleasant situation and ignore it in hopes it'll go away.

We're like a nervous father who doesn't risk alienating a teenage son by confronting him about his poor choice of friends, late hours and slipping grades. We're the wife who doesn't confront her husband about his increased drinking.

Duluth News-Tribune (Minnesota), June 5, 2005 Sunday
SECTION: EDIT
Ethics issues by EVE BROWNING

In a document known as the Downing Street Memo, released by the London Times in early May, evidence is given the George W. Bush and Tony Blair spoke frankly about cooking the intelligence reports on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, to make them appear to justify a war effort.

Ah, Watergate! Those were the good old days! Last week the identity of "Deep Throat" was revealed at last. Former FBI official W. Mark Felt stepped forward at the age of 91 to admit he provided inside information to the media concerning the misdeeds of the Nixon administration.

By Molly Ivins

San Gabriel Valley Tribune (San Gabriel Valley, CA)
June 6, 2005 Monday, SECTION: OPINION

AS a longtime fan of both George Bushes' eccentric grasp of English, I naturally enjoyed this gem from W.: "See, in my line of work, you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.'

[Bush in Greece, N.Y., May 24, once more explaining his Social Security plan to a town hall meeting of perfectly average citizens, except they had all been pre- screened to allow only those who agree with him into the hall.]