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Times Watch for
February 17, 2004
"Mounting War Casualties"
Put Spotlight on Bush's Guard Record
David Barstow reports on Bush's full release of his National Guard records Sunday for "In Haze of Guard Records, a Bit of Clarity." Yet Barstow's story keeps thinks murky, making a shaky link between Bush's Guard record and mounting U.S. casualties in Iraq: "Until this month, the Republican defense of Mr. Bush's military record, sticking to the bare essentials, had successfully neutralized a succession of newspaper articles that raised questions about Mr. Bush's service. But now, with Iraq casualties mounting, with angry Democrats coalescing behind a decorated Vietnam veteran and with credibility questions dogging Mr. Bush, the broad-brush defense has been abandoned….On the question of whether he was ever AWOL, that charge appears to be exaggerated based on the balance of evidence available to date."
Instead of "exaggerated," a better choice of words might be "false," given Bush was honorably discharged from the Guard.
For the rest of Barstow on Bush's records, click here.
• AWOL | David Barstow | George W. Bush | Iraq War | National Guard
Democratic Whistleblowers, Republican Villains
Neil Lewis' Monday story, "Partisan Denunciations Fly Over Secret Strategy Memos," is an update on an ongoing investigation into Republican staffers who apparently obtained confidential Democratic strategy memos from a Senate computer.
Lewis maintains a tone of indignation over the Republicans' behavior: "Democrats and Republicans in the Senate have been matching each other with nasty accusations for well over two years in the debate over the treatment of Bush administration judicial candidates. But the Democrats have now confidently gathered in a herd on the moral high ground over disclosures that some Republican staff aides had improperly obtained confidential strategy memorandums from a Senate computer. The Senate sergeant-at-arms, who is nearing the end of an investigation into the tampering, told senators last week that the Republican staff members' activities went on much longer and were far more extensive than previously believed….Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts compared the situation to Watergate. Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York invoked the depredations of Hitler and Stalin."
In the sixth paragraph, Lewis obliquely addresses the actual content of the memos, only to denigrate their importance: "More important, [Republicans] argued, the documents themselves show a pattern of perfidy on the part of the Democrats in that they consulted and collaborated with outside liberal groups to oppose President Bush's judicial nominees, who were criticized in harsh terms. But by Thursday, that appeared to some Republican senators a wan comeback."
(National Review's Byron York deals with the actual content of the memos, showing Democrats "working in close consultation with groups like People for the American Way, the Alliance for Justice, NARAL, and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in an effort to defeat President Bush's judicial nominees.")
The Times hasn't always been so judgmental when it comes to improperly obtained information that could potentially embarrass (conservative) political figures. A 1,500-word story on the front page of the January 10, 1997, Times featured excerpts from an illegally taped cellular phone conversation between then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich and other House leaders, a tape later revealed to have been obtained by the Times from liberal Rep. Jim McDermott of Washington State. Back then, it was the content that mattered, not how it was obtained.
In a story from January 16, 1997, reporter Lewis wrote on an inquiry into how the Gingrich conversation (taped by Florida couple John and Alice Martin) was intercepted, noting "Legal experts said today that the Martins had almost certainly violated the
wiretapping law."
But his story kept indignation over Democratic tactics in reserve, saying "[criminal defense lawyer Lawrence] Barcella said the Congressman to whom the Martins say they gave the tape was in a more enviable position legally: the law states that someone who disseminates the contents of a conversation is liable only if aware that the conversation was illegally obtained." (The couple that made the tape, John and Alice Martin, eventually pled guilty to breaking federal wiretapping law and paid a fine of $500 each.) By contrast, in his Monday story, Lewis keeps the focus on alleged Republican perfidy.
Lewis continues: "Faced with a difficult-to-defend situation, many Republicans simply withdrew from the field of battle, quietly slipping out of the room. Senators Jon Kyl of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina joined [Sen. Orrin] Hatch in agreeing that what had happened was terribly wrong….The most unrepentant of Republicans was Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, a member of the Republican leadership."
Writing on media coverage of the memo controversy, Slate's media critic Jack Shafer January 23 noted a double standard: "I can't help but think there's a journalistic double standard operating here in which partisan leaks to conservative journals and journalists (the Novak-Plame incident, for another example) are treated as capital crimes, but partisan leaks that wound Republicans are regarded as the highest form of truth telling."
For the rest of Lewis on the Demo memo controversy, click here.
• Democrats | Neil Lewis | Memos | Senate
In Tuesday's piece from a Bush visit to Tampa, David Sanger helpfully reminds readers of the deficit and pins it on Bush's tax cuts: "…the workers who attended [a rally at a manufacturing plant] seemed impressed by Mr. Bush's call for making permanent the child tax credit, the reduction in inheritance taxes and other elements of the two tax-cut bills he has signed. Mr. Bush said nothing of the long-term cost of making those cuts permanent. Neither the White House nor many in Congress want to dwell on additions to a deficit projected to hit $500 billion this year. But the workers here seemed unconcerned about deficit numbers."
For the rest of Sanger's piece on Bush's Florida trip, click here.
• George W. Bush | Campaign 2004 | Deficits | David Sanger | Tax Cuts
E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org