The Times’ Tortured Explanation of Its Abu Ghraib Photo-Op Flop

     Reporter Hassan Fattah’s interview with Ali Shalal Quassi, who claimed to be the subject of an infamous Abu Ghraib photo, made the front page of the March 11 Times, complete with a picture of Quassi holding a photograph of “himself” -- that archetypal image of a hooded man standing on a box attached to wires.

     The headline trumpeted: "Symbol of Abu Ghraib Seeks to Spare Others His Nightmare."

     Fattah stated: “Mr. Qaissi, 43, was prisoner 151716 of Cellblock 1A. The picture of him standing hooded atop a cardboard box, attached to electrical wires with his arms stretched wide in an eerily prophetic pose, became the indelible symbol of the torture at Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad.”

     Just one problem: Qaissi wasn’t the man in the photograph.

     Fattah’s reporting for the Times often paints Muslims as victims -- even those who support acts of terror.

     This time, prodded by a detailed expression of doubt posted at Salon, the Times was obliged to run an embarrassing correction and a “clarifying article” by Kate Zernike (with additional reporting, ironically, by Fattah himself). The article, which ran on March 18, a week after the original story, was accompanied by an “Editor’s Note” blaming PBS and Vanity Fair.

     “A front-page article last Saturday profiled Ali Shalal Qaissi, identifying him as the hooded man forced to stand on a box, attached to wires, in a photograph from the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal of 2003 and 2004. He was shown holding such a photograph. As an article on Page A1 today makes clear, Mr. Qaissi was not that man.  The Times did not adequately research Mr. Qaissi's insistence that he was the man in the photograph. Mr. Qaissi's account had already been broadcast and printed by other outlets, including PBS and Vanity Fair, without challenge. Lawyers for former prisoners at Abu Ghraib vouched for him. Human rights workers seemed to support his account. The Pentagon, asked for verification, declined to confirm or deny it.”

     Here’s an excerpt from the clarifying article that ran on the front page the same day. Notice how the paper again tries to lighten its responsibility in the manner while purportedly coming clean.

     “Ali Shalal Qaissi, soon emerged as their chief representative, appearing in publications and on television in several countries to detail his suffering. His prominence made sense, because he claimed to be the man in the photograph that had become the international icon of the Abu Ghraib scandal: standing on a cardboard box, hooded, with wires attached to his outstretched arms. He had even emblazoned the silhouette of that image on business cards. The trouble was, the man in the photograph was not Mr. Qaissi.”

     Captain’s Quarters has more on the paper’s shoddy reporting: “In other words, the Times didn't bother to do its own research; it relied on the ‘independent’ reporting of PBS and Vanity Fair -- wait, I can't even write that with a straight face -- to identify Qaissi as the man in the photograph.”

     Tom Maguire digs out the Times’ old reporting that correctly identified the actual man on the box.

     “Abdou Hussain Saad Faleh testified that he was the prisoner in the photograph showing a man standing on a box, his arms outstretched and his body draped with a blanket.”

     Maguire gives the paper the benefit of the doubt: “Look, it is an understandable mistake -- the rest of us don't have a lot of confidence in the Times, either, so why should they?”

For the full “clarifying article,” click here.

Bush Ate the Surplus

     Carl Hulse’s Saturday “news analysis” is headlined “Politics Drives Senate’s Money Binge -- Republicans Approve Higher Spending With Eye on Elections.” Congressional reporter Hulse is critical of the feckless Republicans who increased the federal debt limit in front of the November elections.

     So far so good, until this paragraph, which suggests Bush’s tax cuts bear the brunt of the deficit blame and that Democrats would be fiscal saviors if only they had a voice in Congress.

     “Lawmakers, analysts and others said the Senate's reluctance to clamp down on spending was a natural result of an approach that fails to recognize a sharply changed reality. In some respects, the administration and Congress act as if the surplus that greeted President Bush when he checked into the White House is still in the bank, rather than recognizing that whatever windfall was available then was eaten up and more by tax cuts.

     “The reality is that the cuts, plus two wars, new domestic security needs, natural disasters and a big expansion of Medicare have left the government's account badly overdrawn with no prospect of getting it back in balance anytime soon.

     “The criticisms set out by many Democrats -- that no real progress can be made in setting the nation's finances right until Congress proves willing to revisit the tax cuts and that the nation is failing to invest sufficiently in addressing its economic and social ills -- do not receive much of a hearing in a Washington where Republicans are in charge.”

     Hulse almost sounds regretful.

     Hulse sets up liberal Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad as someone serious about the budget, in contrast to the Republicans currently in charge.

     “Serious fiscal worriers believe the only true fix can come from a bipartisan meeting of the minds that would put all federal programs on the table along with consideration of both spending cuts and tax increases.

     “‘I've concluded this job is so big it can only be done if the two parties work together,’ said Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota, the senior Democrat on the Budget Committee.

     “But Mr. Conrad acknowledged that nothing substantive could get done in the short term, with both parties girding for November. As the Senate deliberations show, frugality is not an election-year budget value.”

For more Hulse, click here.

Bush Gets No “Warm Bath” from Bumiller

     Elisabeth Bumiller strikes a familiar note in her Monday White House Letter, “Hardballs Replace Softballs, And Bush takes a Few Swings.”

     “At first it looked as if it was going to be another warm bath of a White House question-and-answer session with President Bush. There was a happy group of retirees arranged on a stage, a poster in red, white and blue that proclaimed ‘Strengthening Medicare’ and a peppy president with microphone in hand.

     “But at the Riderwood Village retirement community last week in the Washington suburb of Silver Spring, Md., something different happened: the president got hit with hardballs by the crowd of 80-somethings. Not only did the retirees, many of them Democrats and former government officials, ask sharp questions about the day's topic, the Medicare prescription drug program, they took on Mr. Bush on global warming and nuclear war.”

     Bumiller claims: “Mr. Bush typically sidesteps the hardest questions, but his answers often produce news. It is a big change from last year and, particularly, from the 2004 campaign, when the president appeared before rapt crowds who had gotten in with tickets from local Republican parties. The result was Bush love-ins across red-state America, derision from Democrats and critical news coverage about canned events. White House officials say they took the heat because the events produced good sound bites for the local news and pumped up political troops.”

     Among those reporters deriding the Bush campaign events with negative coverage was Bumiller herself, most notoriously in a story that starkly showed how different the Times treated Bush and Democratic John Kerry.

     While Bumiller was snide in her characterization of Bush (he "fields softballs from the faithful” that sometimes "aren't even questions at all”), reporter Jodi Wilgoren put a cozy, homey spin on similar events from the Kerry camp: “The low-key, invitation-only events, where perhaps 100 people sit around red-checked picnic tables, raising hands with questions rather than waving signs with slogans, mimic the town-hall style campaigning for the Iowa caucuses at which both Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards excelled.”

     On Monday, Bumiller writes: “People did pay attention that day in Philadelphia, when Mr. Bush said in response to the first question that about 30,000 Iraqis had been killed in the Iraq war since the beginning of the American-led invasion in 2003. It was the first time that Mr. Bush had publicly given an estimate of Iraqi deaths, and White House officials scrambled to explain where it had come from -- a Web site on Iraqi body counts, it turned out, and not an internal government accounting.”

     If Bumiller is trying to suggest Bush was wrong to rely on the web site, she should discuss it with her colleagues at the Times, who’ve cited the same left-wing site as a trusted authority, and intelligence reporter David Sanger, who does so today in his slanted front-page story marking the third anniversary of the Iraq war.

For more Bumiller, click here.