In 1917, with World War I raging, Sen. Hiram W. Johnson of California observed: “The first casualty when war comes is truth.” In 1975, a book by British journalist Phillip Knightley titled “The First Casualty” advanced that theme by examining wartime reporting by correspondents from the Crimean War in the 1850s through Vietnam in the 1960s and ’70s. Knightley’s book, his publisher noted, “suggests that our attitudes to history are molded by what we read in wartime and that what we read too often bears little resemblance to reality.”
Knightley’s volume was quite popular, and it is likely that other journalists or historians soon will probe at length into whether truth was a casualty of this year’s U.S.-and-British-led war against Iraq. Only this time, the focus needs to be at home rather than abroad, and on the government as well as the press.
Were flawed or exaggerated intelligence estimates of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, of the immediacy of the threat posed to this country by Iraq, and of the links between Iraq and the events of 9/11 used to help propel the United States into war? However popular and beneficial it may be to have removed Saddam Hussein from power, the question of whether the administration took the country to war on questionable premises is central to U.S. credibility and government.
A fair number of readers are agitated about these questions, but finding authoritative answers won’t be easy. Congress, which might be expected to produce a public record of investigative hearings and accountability, has not done much so far. Many newspapers and newsmagazines are struggling to get at these questions. But it is a murky, sensitive and highly classified field of inquiry, and one that is vulnerable to being politicized. It is an area in which some of the people who know some of the things and are willing to talk to reporters are unwilling to speak on the record. Although reporters may trust these sources and may have checked their information with other sources, quoting people anonymously still erodes the confidence of some readers and gives administration spokesmen an edge in the battle for making a case and molding attitudes.
The Post has run several stories recently that challenged administration claims. On June 5, the headline on a story by staff writers Walter Pincus and Dana Priest said, “Some Iraq Analysts Felt Pressure From Cheney Visits.” It was based on “senior intelligence officials.” Two days later, another story by the same reporters was headlined “Bush Certainty on Iraq Arms Went Beyond Analysts’ Views.” This was based on a Defense Intelligence Agency document whose existence, The Post reported, had been first disclosed by U.S. News and World Report. The Post put both of these stories on the front page, but at the bottom.
In contrast, two other stories — on May 31 and June 9 — ran at the top of the front page, and they carried almost identical two-column headlines: “Tenet Defends Iraq Intelligence,” a reference to the CIA chief rebutting allegations of pressure, and “Officials Defend Iraq Intelligence,” a reference to statements by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice insisting that the threat was not inflated.
Last Thursday, another Pincus story based on anonymous sources reported that the CIA did not pass along to the White House, before President Bush’s State of the Union address in January, the detailed results of an investigation confirming that a claim that Iraq had tried to buy uranium in Niger was based on fabricated evidence. This story ran at the top left of the front page, but with one of those narrow, one-column headlines in which it is hard to convey complex material. This one was ambiguous: “CIA Did Not Share Doubt on Iraq Data.”
In a May 4 column, I suggested that news organizations could benefit from looking back at their performance before the war on several topics, including weapons of mass destruction. Some readers, pointing to the absence thus far of clear postwar evidence of the weapons’ existence, feel that reporting was inadequate. Whether the press was aggressive enough before the war, or did as well as could be expected where the administration holds the cards, what is happening now is of great importance.
News organizations must go all-out to get answers, to guard against being used, to test their information with multiple sources and to get as much on the record as they can. And readers must be more willing not to automatically reject stories that use unnamed sources. This is a tough story to report, and information needs to get out any way it can. The administration can command attention anytime it wants. Weapons of mass destruction may yet be found (hopefully not in the hands of terrorists), or credibility may be the next casualty.
