A new dispute between the White House and the Washington Post over a published report boils down to the question: did President George W. Bush knowingly use information on weapons of mass destruction that had been officially debunked, or not?
That’s the issue at hand. But a bigger issue is the overriding one facing and steadily undermining this administration: seemingly each day there is new information that underscores what is either a major credibility problem, — or major competency one.
In this case, either the President knew (which the Post suggests) or he somehow didn’t know (which is what the White House now suggests). Here’s the story that has sparked a confrontation that is starting to be reminiscent of the confrontations between the White House and press over Watergate in the Nixon administration:
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.
The three-page field report and a 122-page final report three weeks later were stamped “secret” and shelved. Meanwhile, for nearly a year, administration and intelligence officials continued to publicly assert that the trailers were weapons factories.
The authors of the reports were nine U.S. and British civilian experts — scientists and engineers with extensive experience in all the technical fields involved in making bioweapons — who were dispatched to Baghdad by the Defense Intelligence Agency for an analysis of the trailers. Their actions and findings were described to a Washington Post reporter in interviews with six government officials and weapons experts who participated in the mission or had direct knowledge of it.
The story is long — and truly damning (read it all). The most damning part is found at the end:
In the end, the final report — 19 pages plus a 103-page appendix — remained unequivocal in declaring the trailers unsuitable for weapons production.
“It was very assertive,” said one weapons expert familiar with the report’s contents.
Then, their mission completed, the team members returned to their jobs and watched as their work appeared to vanish.
“I went home and fully expected that our findings would be publicly stated,” one member recalled. “It never happened. And I just had to live with it.”
The report sparked an angry reaction at the White House as Reuters reports:
The White House on Wednesday angrily denied a newspaper report that suggested President George W. Bush in 2003 declared the existence of biological weapons laboratories in Iraq while knowing it was not true.
On May 29, 2003, Bush hailed the capture of two trailers in Iraq as mobile biological laboratories and declared, “We have found the weapons of mass destruction.”
White House spokesman Scott McClellan called the account “reckless reporting” and said Bush made his statement based on the intelligence assessment of the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), an arm of the Pentagon.
Bush cited the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction as the prime justification for invading Iraq. No such weapons were found.
A U.S. intelligence official, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, confirmed the existence of the field report cited by the Post, but said it was a preliminary finding that had to be evaluated.
“You don’t change a report that has been coordinated in the (intelligence) community based on a field report,” the official said. “It’s a preliminary report. No matter how strongly the individual may feel about the subject matter.”
McClellan said the Post story was “nothing more than rehashing an old issue that was resolved long ago,” pointing out that an independent commission on Iraq had already determined the intelligence on alleged Iraqi biological weapons was wrong.
When an ABC reporter pressed McClellan on the subject at his morning briefing, McClellan upbraided the network for picking up on the report.
“This is reckless reporting and for you all to go on the air this morning and make such a charge is irresponsible, and I hope that ABC would apologize for it and make a correction on the air,” he said.
In reality, though, the issue here isn’t just about intelligence being wrong. It gets back to the issue that has dogged this administration repeatedly — credibility.
Bush’s speeches on weapons of mass destruction (as anyone can see by watching old videos of them) were quite explicit in stating their existence. Bush did NOT deliver speeches with any “hedge words.” He stated his case as a certain fact.
The questions become (a) if Bush was aware that there had been serious questions before his speeches over the biolabs being a real threat and (b) if he was, why his speeches didn’t at least mention that more investigation of them was going to be underway due to some questions raised about the degree of threat.
This will be one more issue where Democrats will shout “aha!” and loyal Republicans will immediately into defense lawyer/go-on-the-offensive mode. But the real significance is that this is one more news story in one more news cycle hitting home the message to many Americans that this administration at worst has a credibility problem and its words cannot be trusted or at best is competency challenged. Some will wonder: if this was out there why didn’t the President at least temper his comments? And some may conclude: because it wouldn’t have helped his agenda to mention it.
PREDICTION: The credibility issue is now a major narrative for the press. The White House better brace itself because there are likely to be more comparisons of speeches with what the government actually knew at the time speeches made by Bush and other administration officials were made.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.