So, not a single comment on Kurtz's smearing of Jill Carroll?

Put yourselves in Jill Carroll's shoes. There but for the grace of God you go. She had to make a propaganda video at the headquarters of the Islamist Party, which is linked to the insurgency, before she had had contact with anyone else. Instead of pointing out this fact and praising her amazing poise and guts, Kurtz questioned her loyalty and her sanity (taking his cues, as usual, from the extremist right-wing blogs who hate all reality-based media).

Once she was free, Jill Carroll issued a statement making clear for the feeble-brained like Kurtz what was obvious to everybody else. But, instead of apologizing, Kurtz says that written words don't count (how do you like that one, Post reporters?) Instead of recovering quietly with her family from the trauma, Kurtz insists that Carroll needs to put up a public show of loyalty. He insists that she should be doing a counter-propaganda video. Maybe he also wants to write the cue cards for Jill Carroll to read?

Kurtz's worldview seems to have more in common with that of the kidnappers than with that of decent people.

Just put yourselves in her shoes. Kurtz never will -- as a 'media reporter' he'll never leave the safety of his desk, and his moral compass is completely debased anyway. If you can't find sympathy for your colleague Jill Carroll and if, after what she's been through in the service of your profession, you cannot find the courage to raise your voice in outrage against Kurtz, you are just as worthy of contempt as he is.

Just like lipstick on a pig. It's STILL a PIG. Brady still there? Pity.

I wish Deborah Howell would use the new search feature to locate those "copies of lists sent to tribes by Abramoff with his personal directions on which members were to receive what amounts" she claims The Post has.

It keeps getting stinkier and stinkier in here. Maybe it's Stoicism that keeps management from answering their customers, but I don't think so.

Note to WaPo.com: It's not getting better and it's not going away (sounds like a skin condition). Make with some interaction. It'll do you good.

It would also be nice if Fred Hiatt used the new search engine to search for a clue!

I've been searching for Jim Brady's response to comments made earlier on this blog. I still can't find them.

The search function is not the main thing that needs to be fixed at the Washington Post.com. Perhaps Jim Brady could have his programmers create a way for him to answer some of the legitimate criticism made by commenters on this blog in regards to his hiring of Domenech.

Mr. Brady, we await your answers.

That's a good idea Beth. I'm sure they'll get around to doing that after they finish up their work on implementing network tools to "trace route" and "whois" query people who leave comments here.

Brady not banished yet? Shame.

I just tried the new search function. Interestingly enough it worked the first time I tried it.

I searched "evidence that abramoff directed clients to give to democrats".

Result? "No Results Found". Just as I suspected.

If Brady and Howell could be prodded to use this new tool, the quality of reporting couold improve immediately.

(On a less sarcastic note, it is mildly irritating that if you mouse over the buttons just above the search box, the drop-down menus prevent you from clicking into the search area.)

I see someone beat me to the joke. That's what I get for not reading all the previous comments.

Philip - Oh, hell let em trace all the ips. So what? They won't know what to do with em. They are clueless. Brady still there. Pity.

Much better search functions! Thank you. They were quite poor before, and I had to resort to using some other search engine. Nice work!

No matter how good your search engines get, they won't be able to find any evidence of editorial integrity on the part of Jim Brady.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain...

I just read that the WaPo let 16 year old homeschooled Ben Domenech write an article in 1998 in the print edition. If you guys are still hiring, my 13 year old neice who hates illegal immigration and thinks the world is 6,000 years old is available and will work for cheap.

Arch Stanton -- I thought you were joking. Surely, that would be too ridiculously over the top. But, just in case, I went and did a LexisNexis search. Result is below.

Unbelievable. This raises so many questions about the Post -- editorial integrity, cronyism, etc. -- that I don't even know where to begin.

Copyright 1998 The Washington Post
The Washington Post

April 19, 1998, Sunday, Final Edition

SECTION: OUTLOOK; Pg. C02

LENGTH: 1225 words

HEADLINE: Dobson's Choice; Why the Conservative Outsider's Agenda Worries GOP Leaders

BYLINE: Benjamin Domenech

BODY:
There is an emerging force within the Republican Party, a man who, as he attempts to alter the party's entire focus, has managed to escape the attention of many inside the Beltway. His strength is drawn from social conservative activists. His cause is abortion. And his words these days -- about unkept promises -- are making Republican leaders in Congress extremely nervous.

The man is James Dobson.

(...)

Benjamin Domenech is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in the American Conservative and Human Events.

We have found the leaker:

http://getalifes.blogspot.com/

My little way of sticking it to the man.

I propose that more Washington Post editors spend time outside the US. Then you'd see what a joke the world thing the Post has become. Really, your Ombudsman is writing columns about obits while you have yet to really explain your "journalism" when it comes to why the US is fighting in Iraq.

Shame, Washington Post, you can do better.

better than most search engines. nice that the technology is improving. whoever designed that did a good job of thinking like a searcher.

now if only someone would work on the content. . . (thank god for achenbach and weingarten)

Hmmmm, lets see,op-ed"a good leak",then the story"Concerted effort" to discredit.Have you all gone nuts?Can't recall the last time I've seen a paper shoot itself in the foot like that,,,oh yeah,"Red America" anyone?

I see that the "opinion" section of the Washington Post has issued another hit piece on Joe Wilson. In doing so, the writer failed to read the front page of the Washington Post, and outright fabricated a number of assertions.

I know, I know, post-dot-com and paper-post are different companies, a nifty little loophole in which each entity escapes responsibility to their readers for publishing truthful assertions. And, as we know, it is useless to contact the ombudsman because she "ombuds" for the staff and not for the readers.

But really, y'all, I can come to no other conclusion, based upon the editorial "A Good Leak" that the writer of tis hit piece is on the take.

Since when is it a "good leak" to publicly disclose the identity of an undercover CIA agent?

Will, at last, one of your White House reporters ask Scott McClellan how it "serves the public interest" to publicly disclose the name of an undercover CIA agent?

Until you show me a plausible answer, I consider the Washington Post a willing partner in the coverup of a federal crime.

The stunning intellectual dishonesty of "A Good Leak" boggles the mind. In the mind of the writer it would appear that Wilson's only task in Niger was to find out if Iraq had tried to buy uranium as the administration claimed. I guess he was just supposed to come back without asking if Iraq had succeeded.

But I guess Joe Wilson thought that, if American lives were going to be at stake, he should ask the appropriate follow-up question. Did Iraq succeed?

So he asked his contacts and he reported back that not only had Iraq tried to buy uranium (confirming the president's claim), but that they had failed to do so (in which opinion he was supported by reports from both General Carleton Fulford and Ambassadore Owens-Kirkpatrick). Thus undermining the president's case for war. Which is exactly what Joe Wilson said that his trip had done.

My guess is that Woodward wrote this piece of crap editorial.

Or this is a college prank where one of your interns (probably from Liberty University) bet another that he could sneak an editorial screed from the National Review or the Washington Times onto your editorial page. In fact this looks remarkably similar to a recent troll posting at a left-wing website.

Or this is the revenge of Ben Domenech. And it worked because, man, do you look like fools today. And that is going to become ever more apparent as this president moves toward his date with impeachment.

And I am not even going to comment on what kind of a lunatic (can you spell morally tone deaf?) would equate selective leaking of politically advantageous albeit debunked intelligence to the bureaucratic process of declassification in the interests of the public's right to know.

Perhaps your editorial writer should spend today reading your news pages.

Deborah Kachel

PS- And Jim Brady STILL needs to be fired for his egregious editorial errors in judgement.

I was happy to read about the further decline of the WaPo this morning. It highlights the fact that the people with the megaphone (editorialists) are neither particularly wise nor smart, just wordsmiths toying with verbs and the truth. No better than loud but eloquent drunken fools. Why are they given the megaphone ? Why should we care about their opinion when they can't be bothered to read the reporting of their own newspaper ?

Now, now children. "A Good Leak" is one that Bob Woodward can put in his book and the WP can use to sell a war. "A Truthful Leak" is another matter entirely. We don't do that at the editorial board.

"A Good Leak," major props to Deborah Kachel above for this great line: "Perhaps your editorial writer should spend today reading your news pages."

The "Good Leak" - did everything but call it an 'immaculate declassification.'

What on earth was up with that "editorial" today? Wow! It couldn't have been any better if Dick Cheney had written it - of course he probably did!

They don't call the WaPo and especially Bob Woodward the White House stenographer for nothing, do they?

Truly remarkable the way you guys managed to twist the facts and the truth like a pretzel - you should be so proud!

Time for me to make a correction (watch how easy this is Jim Brady).

The Post reported on 7-10-04 that Wilson had reported back from Niger that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium. There was a later correction (seen in the original article at the link below) which I did not see at the time of publication, in which the article is amended to say that Wilson's report referenced an attempt by IRAN not Iraq.

SOOOOOO -- if the administration (and the Post editorial writers) are going to try to assert yet again that Wilson's trip supported the administration's case for war because he confirmed that Iraq tried to buy uranium, they are going to need to do it in defiance of the facts and their own reporting of the facts.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39834-2004Jul9.html

Deborah Kachel

Dear WaPo,

Thanks for supporting the downfall of our democracy. It's now officially ok to lie to the American public in order to get them to support your failing policies.

I am beginning to see how easy it was for Adolf Hitler to come to power. How sad it is to see a once great newspaper fall to the level of Nazi propaganda.

What Mad 1:48 pm said. WaPo should be ashamed!

Should I just assume that today's astonishingly dishonest editorial is simply the editorial board's loosening up its lying muscles for an upcoming policy of support for GWB goin' nukular in Iran?

Your pro leak, pro Administration editorial today is the most execrable offering you have served up. Yes, the President has declassification authority. No, he does not have the right to lie to the American people and the rest of the world in order to conduct an illegal war. This is shameful and your support of it is doubly shameful. The outing of Valerie Plame damaged our national security and was a vengeful act to quash any honest criticism. What next, Wapo, will you sell his nuclear strike against Iran? The Wapo has become a propagandist rag.

the next Post Editorial will be "The Good Nukes" about how the Respected and Beloved Leader had to obliterate Iran in order to save it...

Congratulations, Fonzie. You cleared the shark with a couple feet to spare. (Have someone on the news side explain this to you.)

Sorry, Fonzie. Forgot to type in my name.

Your editorial "A Good Leak" is replete with misinformation. You know better. Why do you insist on being a mouthpiece for George Bush? It is disgusting and appalling. You are doing a diservice to this country by printing this kind of trash. Your mother would be ashamed of you.

A Washington Post Editor Caught Brazenly Lying: When is this going to stop?

by eriposte

The Washington Post has a deeply fraudulent editorial defending Bush's involvement in the NIE leak. It's not just that they get the facts wrong, but by a fair accounting this editorial involves deliberate lying that also specifically excludes contradictory information, much like what George Bush did - and the editor who wrote this is clearly guilty of journalistic malpractice. I don't have time to go through every detail, so I'll just mention a couple of things. (All emphasis in quoted portions is mine). [Other bloggers have posted some rebuttals as well].

The WP editor who wrote this piece of garbage says:

PRESIDENT BUSH was right to approve the declassification of parts of a National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq three years ago in order to make clear why he had believed that Saddam Hussein was seeking nuclear weapons.

Clearly, the editor hasn't read his own paper and should be fired. After all, I pointed out the moment Fitzgerald's filing became public that Libby, and by extension Cheney and Bush, were deliberately misrepresenting the portion of the NIE that Libby leaked:

What we've learnt today is that Libby, Cheney and Bush appear to have been trying to mislead reporters by claiming that what was really in the BODY of the NIE (and which was rebutted in the ANNEX and which was NOT part of the NIE's key judgments), was somehow part of the key judgments.

If Libby had actually passed on the key judgments of the NIE to Miller, Miller would have discovered that it had NO mention of the uranium claim. So, it appears that Libby, Bush and Cheney tried to deliberately misrepresent the NIE to reporters by claiming that the uranium claim was part of the NIE's key judgments (even though it was not) and then tried to leak the contents from the body of the NIE (minus the annex) to make it appear as if the NIE made a strong case against Joseph Wilson's claims.

Barton Gellman and Dafna Linzer reported this in the WP subsequently:

At Cheney's instruction, Libby testified, he told Miller that the uranium story was a "key judgment" of the intelligence estimate, a term of art indicating there was consensus on a question of central importance.

In fact, the alleged effort to buy uranium was not among the estimate's key judgments, which were identified by a headline and bold type and set out in bullet form in the first five pages of the 96-page document.

Obviously, if the the WP editor who wrote this piece of garbage is in favor of Libby's and Bush's action, then the only reason to support that action would be to inherently support crookedness and dishonesty. After all, the editor could have asked why Bush did not authorize leaking the part of the NIE that claimed that the uranium claim was "highly dubious". The fact that the editor did not ask that shows that the person was simply a partisan and dishonest hack who is unfit to be editor of a premier newspaper.

In fact Gellman and Linzer themselves reported that:

Unknown to the reporters, the uranium claim lay deeper inside the estimate, where it said a fresh supply of uranium ore would "shorten the time Baghdad needs to produce nuclear weapons." But it also said U.S. intelligence did not know the status of Iraq's procurement efforts, "cannot confirm" any success and had "inconclusive" evidence about Iraq's domestic uranium operations.

Iraq's alleged uranium shopping had been strongly disputed in the intelligence community from the start. In a closed Senate hearing in late September 2002, shortly before the October NIE was completed, then-director of central intelligence George J. Tenet and his top weapons analyst, Robert Walpole, expressed strong doubts about the uranium story, which had recently been unveiled publicly by the British government. The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, likewise, called the claim "highly dubious." For those reasons, the uranium story was relegated to a brief inside passage in the October estimate.

The WP editor who wrote this piece of garbage also says:

The material that Mr. Bush ordered declassified established, as have several subsequent investigations, that Mr. Wilson was the one guilty of twisting the truth. In fact, his report supported the conclusion that Iraq had sought uranium.

Obviously, what Bush ordered declassified did not prove that the uranium claim was credible. If it was that credible and really established the validity of the claim, then why did the White House withdraw it? Moreover, this editor with a partisan vendetta against Joseph Wilson, a vendetta that clearly wants to sidestep the real facts associated with Wilson's trip as opposed to fake GOP talking points, wants readers to remain ignorant about George Tenet's statement from 7/11/03:

Because [the Wilson] report, in our view, did not resolve whether Iraq was or was not seeking uranium from abroad, it was given a normal and wide distribution...

In other words, according to then-DCI George Tenet's own spin, the Wilson report did not "support the conclusion that Iraq had sought uranium." Tenet also pointed out in the same statement that:

... Also in the fall of 2002, our British colleagues told us they were planning to publish an unclassified dossier that mentioned reports of Iraqi attempts to obtain uranium in Africa. Because we viewed the reporting on such acquisition attempts to be inconclusive, we expressed reservations about its inclusion...

In September and October 2002 before Senate Committees, senior intelligence officials in response to questions told members of Congress that we differed with the British dossier on the reliability of the uranium reporting.

In October, the Intelligence Community (IC) produced a classified, 90 page National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq's WMD programs. There is a lengthy section in which most agencies of the Intelligence Community judged that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Let me emphasize, the NIE's Key Judgments cited six reasons for this assessment; the African uranium issue was not one of them.

But in the interest of completeness, the report contained three paragraphs that discuss Iraq's significant 550-metric ton uranium stockpile and how it could be diverted while under IAEA safeguard. These paragraphs also cited reports that Iraq began "vigorously trying to procure" more uranium from Niger and two other African countries......Much later in the NIE text, in presenting an alternate view on another matter, the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research included a sentence that states: "Finally, the claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa are, in INR's assessment, highly dubious."

An unclassified CIA White Paper in October made no mention of the issue, again because it was not fundamental to the judgment that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, and because we had questions about some of the reporting. For the same reasons, the subject was not included in many public speeches, Congressional testimony and the Secretary of State's United Nations presentation in early 2003.

One thing becomes clear about the WP editor who wrote this piece of garbage. This editor is obviously fine with the dishonest and fraudulent policy that was used on pre-war intelligence. A policy that involved deliberately suppressing accurate intelligence from the public - by classifying it - in order to allow the White House to misrepresent the facts in public by "cherry-picking" and declassifying the unreliable "raw data" or "intel" that met their approval. Readers can contact the WP and tell the Post if they believe this person deserves the post of editor.

Contact information:

Main Phone:

202.334.6000
800.627.1150

Letters to the Editor:

Letters to the Editor
The Washington Post
1150 15 St. NW
Washington, DC 20071

and by e-mail at:
letters@washpost.com

Joe Wilson Responds to Washington Post Editorial
by SusanG
Sun Apr 09, 2006 at 08:48:28 AM PDT

The world awakened this morning to a puzzle of ridiculousness: a Washington Post op/ed that can only be described as a hit piece on Joseph Wilson's "absurdly over-examined visit" (the editorial's words, certainly not mine) to Niger, in which the editorial staff claims there was no effort at the White House to discredit Mr. Wilson ... while its news pages headlined an investigative piece on the front page entitled "A `Concerted Effort' to Discredit Bush Critic."

The ironic juxtaposition of the two articles was not lost on Mr. Wilson, who in a private communication to me this morning (sorry, no link) made the following statement:

Sunday's Washington Post lead editorial once again misrepresents the facts as the paper's own reporting in the Barton/Linzer article in the same edition makes clear. While I respect the separation of news and editorial function it might be helpful to the Post's readers if the editorial board would at least read the news before offering its judgments. One of the reasons my trip to Niger has been overanalyzed, as the Post editorial says, is because people like those who wrote the editorial continue to misconstrue the facts and the conclusions."

Indeed. Let's follow the absurdity, shall we (all emphasis mine)? The editorial states:

Mr. Wilson subsequently claimed that the White House set out to punish him for his supposed whistle-blowing by deliberately blowing the cover of his wife, Valerie Plame, who he said was an undercover CIA operative. This prompted the investigation by Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald. After more than 2 1/2 years of investigation, Mr. Fitzgerald has reported no evidence to support Mr. Wilson's charge.
...
The material that Mr. Bush ordered declassified established, as have several subsequent investigations, that Mr. Wilson was the one guilty of twisting the truth. In fact, his report supported the conclusion that Iraq had sought uranium.

Then on Page 1, we find the news report:

A 'Concerted Effort' to Discredit Bush Critic

Prosecutor Describes Cheney, Libby as Key Voices Pitching Iraq-Niger Story

By Barton Gellman and Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, April 9, 2006; A01

As he drew back the curtain this week on the evidence against Vice President Cheney's former top aide, Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald for the first time described a "concerted action" by "multiple people in the White House" -- using classified information -- to "discredit, punish or seek revenge against" a critic of President Bush's war in Iraq.

Bluntly and repeatedly, Fitzgerald placed Cheney at the center of that campaign. Citing grand jury testimony from the vice president's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Fitzgerald fingered Cheney as the first to voice a line of attack that at least three White House officials would soon deploy against former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.

Cheney, in a conversation with Libby in early July 2003, was said to describe Wilson's CIA-sponsored trip to Niger the previous year -- in which the envoy found no support for charges that Iraq tried to buy uranium there -- as "a junket set up by Mr. Wilson's wife," CIA case officer Valerie Plame.

Here we have a two-fer in terms of self-debunking: (1) There was indeed total validation of Mr. Wilson's charges of persecution, despite what the editorial says; and (2) The news story confirms that there was "no support for charges that Iraq tried to buy uranium there" - in direct contradiction to the editorial's claim that Wilson's report supported the purchase effort.

Seriously, it should be apparent to anyone following the Washington Post that ever since Bob Woodward made clear that protecting his Bushie sources and his books profit margins were more important than informing readers, the Post has been a dying newspaper. Let's have some "regime change" at the top of the Post - get a good start with Len Downie and Fred Hiatt - or readers will have to assume the newspaper is simply a thinly disguised propaganda arm of an administration that took us to war under false pretenses and is undermining our entire democracy.

I truly do not understand today's paper.

Do I believe the facts reported on your news pages, or listen to the opinion reported on your editorial page? One would think the two sets of pages would not contradict each other, and if they do, that the editorial page would address the discrepancy.

Instead we have the news page saying there was "A 'Concerted Effort' to Discredit Bush Critic" while your editorial page says "Mr. Wilson subsequently claimed that the White House set out to punish him ... After more than 2 1/2 years of investigation, Mr. Fitzgerald has reported no evidence to support Mr. Wilson's charge."

And we have your news page saying "the envoy found no support for charges that Iraq tried to buy uranium there" and your editorial page saying "his report supported the conclusion that Iraq had sought uranium".

Who do I believe? How can I trust both the accuracy in your reporting as well as the honesty of your editorials?

What conclusion should I draw from the fact that your news article details the authors' names while your editorial is unsigned?

Editorial pages are for opinion. But legitimate opinion journalism is constrained by facts, as nearly as we can know as we put pen to paper. And by that measure, the Washington Post's editorial page has has skidded outside the boundaries of journalistic legitimacy on any number of issues by most glaringly on our involvement in the Middle East. Today's editorial on the Bush-Cheney-Libby leak of classified portions of the Iraq National Intelligence Estimate is a case in point.

One might simply say that presidents play hardball; and they play politics. And President Bush or his untethered vice president played hardball against a prominent critic by releasing information the law allowed them to release. And get over it. Politics, like life, isn't fair. And if you swipe at the president, expect to get hit back.

You may not agree with that. But it's an opinion. And it contains an uncomfortably large element of fact.

But the authors of this editorial don't appear to read the news pages of their own paper or their best competitors. The clock has simply run out on any attempt to claim the president and his key advisors weren't acting in bad faith with their constant advocacy of an alleged traffic in uranium between Iraq and Niger. It's over.

As consistent reporting both from within the executive branch and the intelligence agencies has shown, the only reason this canard ever caught any life outside the vice president's office was not because of its credibility but rather its irrelevancy. By the time Libby came to leak more information about it months after the war, it had been still further discredited within the administration.

The Post also sticks to the up-is-down claim that Wilson's trip to Niger supported rather than undermined the Niger-uranium claim. That is a viewpoint that can only be maintained if you are willfully ignorant of the backstory to the Niger canard. Wilson's report didn't add a lot to what most in the intelligence community already thought about the pretended Niger story. But that was because it tended to confirm the reasons why most in the intelligence community didn't find the story credible in the first place.

For whatever reason, the Post has chosen to throw in its lot with the flurry of mendacious rhetoric and the white-washed investigations, all of which amount to a grand pen and paper and word game truss barely holding together the body of official lies that is still barely governing the capital.

They've made their deal with power. They should justify it on those grounds rather than choosing to mislead their readers.
-- Josh Marshall

I'm shure you'll dismiss all these comments as the "left wing attack dogs",but these are your readers that you are disregarding.these are people that care,people that vote,those that see your B/S for what it is.
One request,start printing the paper on softer stock,I may run low on T/P.

It's so enlightening when the editorial page makes it completely obvious that they do not even read their own front page news.

Let's see - an ombudsman who refuses to issue corrections and disdains the readers, an editor whose goal is the White House's pleasure rather than good journalism, hiring a racist plagiarist ... now this.

Heckuva job WaPo!

Is "The Good Leak" some code for an offer to Judy Miller to come and work for the Post on WMD coverage before Iran?

Could you publish the name of the writer(s) who wrote your "A Good Leak" editorial?

Just because it's editorial commentary does not mean the "editor" is allowed to lie. You are just sending your tarnished reputation further down the toilet bowl.

All who have read your editorial today are shaking their heads in disbelief. The crap that was written there - in direct opposition to the facts printed on the news pages of your own paper - just defies comprehension!

You are very stupid to print this kind of tripe when the only purpose it serves is to shine a spotlight on your true agenda and lack of ethics.

Since when is it a "good leak" to publicly disclose the identity of an undercover CIA agent?

A 'Concerted Effort' to Discredit Bush Critic

Prosecutor Describes Cheney, Libby as Key Voices Pitching Iraq-Niger Story

By Barton Gellman and Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, April 9, 2006; A01

As he drew back the curtain this week on the evidence against Vice President Cheney's former top aide, Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald for the first time described a "concerted action" by "multiple people in the White House" -- using classified information -- to "discredit, punish or seek revenge against" a critic of President Bush's war in Iraq.

Bluntly and repeatedly, Fitzgerald placed Cheney at the center of that campaign. Citing grand jury testimony from the vice president's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Fitzgerald fingered Cheney as the first to voice a line of attack that at least three White House officials would soon deploy against former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.

Cheney, in a conversation with Libby in early July 2003, was said to describe Wilson's CIA-sponsored trip to Niger the previous year -- in which the envoy found no support for charges that Iraq tried to buy uranium there -- as "a junket set up by Mr. Wilson's wife," CIA case officer Valerie Plame.

I say this less in anger (which, candidly, was my first reaction) or sorrow (my second reaction, given how in the past 10 years this great newspaper has made series after series of destructive decisions) than out of concern. Were you a teenager, your willful wrongheadedness would be the kind of thing the assistant principal for discipline would examine, then call the school counselor, saying "We have to get this boy some help." Something has gotten terribly distorted in your emotions, verging on the sociopathic and psychotic. Your friends avoid you, your teachers wring their hands in their impotent despair, your parents weep.

Fred should use the search engine to find out the real facts before he repeats Karl Roves talking points. How many faxes does Rover send you daily? Ya think he will still be able to fax ya when he gets locked up for being a traitor?

I'd like to point out just how insane it makes your paper look to have the editorial page make claims that refuted in the very same paper ON THE SAME DAY!

It's really gobsmackingly surreal and I'm sure quite depressing to the staff that Fred Hiatt doesn't even read their paper anymore.

For anyone who wants a comprehensive, insightful analysis into the mistake that "A Good Leak," was, I invite you to read Jane Hamsher's, "Does Fred Hiatt even read the Washington Post?"
http://www.firedoglake.com/2006/04/09/does-fred-hiatt-even-read-the-washington-post/

Fred Hiatt obviously doesn't read the facts written in his own newspaper.

Mr. Hiatt's editorial today ignores facts to support an opinion, a troubling development on the editorial page of largest paper in our nation's capitol. Along with Judith Miller's half-truths and "inside access" escapades, it certainly appears that the upper echelon of our leading newspapers is quite troubled, indeed.

It's time for new blood at the Post - a new set of leaders who won't trade access for spin, as it appears Mr. Hiatt is trying to do with his apologetic misstatement of the facts in his editorial.

When will the Post's principals demand that Mr. Hiatt resign? Will it take thousands of cancelled subscriptions as people migrate to honest reportage on the web?

In my lifetime, I've seen this once might newspaper led by the likes of J R Wiggins and Ben Bradlee descend into a rag led by the likes of Janet Cooke, Sue Schmidt and now Hiatt.

Whom the Gods Destroy they first assign Sally Quinn

Some of the other commenters make good points. The Post should really fix that ridiculous, biased article by Gellman and Linzer on the front page today.

I assume the Washington Post Editorial board will be having a send-off party soon for their sons and daughters who have volunteered for active duty in Iraq.

http://goarmy.com has all the recruiting info for Fred Hiatt's 3 children

I'm concerned about Mr. Hiatt's mental health. Please encourage him to see a doctor.

Hiatt? You got to be kiddin me? You poor folks. I pity you. Brady stll there? Obviously. Too bad.

Plame: Does your editorial staff ever think about reading the front page from time to time, you know, just to keep up?

Also Kurtz's treatment of Jill Carroll is just shameful. After being held hostage for so long, she deserves some time to regain her equilibrium and sanity. Kurtz needs to pick on someone his own size, which is to say small-minded.

I tend to have a positive appreciation for the Washington Post editorial today about Bush's NIE leak. The fact that the discourse is being forced up the ladder from hack reporters, to partisan columnists, and now anonymous editorials means that there probably aren't too many more cards to fall in this charade. As ranks close the attacks will undoubtedly become more vitriolic and concentrated by dint of there being fewer people willing to weigh in on the administration's side of this. Their gene pool of logic and reason is shrinking by the day (Hello Arlen Specter!). Bush/Cheney/etc. are calling in all the favors they have this week so look for some good fireworks as they flail and flop around, looking for a handhold.

The pathetic Hiatt editorial today and its freakish juxtaposition with actual reporting that refutes the editorial's claims is just another example of the depths that the WaPo has fallen.

You are not entitled to your own facts-as Josh says above, this ship has sailed. The Niger uranium claims are completely bogus and no number of blast faxes from Ken Mehlman or Karl Rove will change that. It wasn't just that the intelligence was flawed-this administration knowingly used bad intel to bolster its weak case for war. The very weak claims that the selected leaks were to somehow "balance" Wilson's claims are pure baloney. He was right then and he is right now. To now suggest that selected and politically-motivated leaking is OK by the President is a slap in the face to our democracy and any principle of fairness or good governance. Shame on you for defending this administration's allergy to the truth.

I hope those cocktail weenies in Georgetown are worth it, Fred. You have severely damaged the credibility of the WaPo as it inexorably slides toward irrelevance.

A steady diet of Kool-Aid and cocktails weenies is not good for reporters, editors or America's health ...

Come on, Fred, tell the truth...did you lose a bet or something? Why else would you have that idiotic editorial that completely contradicts the article on your own front page? Oh, and completely contradicts that the facts? Of course, facts and your editorials don't have anything in common anymore, do they?

The Post has a credibility problem. At least One of your editors has a professional and financial stake in the public's perception of the Bush administration. Bush's credibility with the public is disasterously low. It is not your job to buttress the standing of the administration, nor to "balance" your reporting on slippery and dishonest ideological grounds. Anyone who has close ties to the current administration should not be writing editorials period.

The Post's editiorial today "A Good Leak" was the most ridiculous, absurd piece of garbage I've seen in a very long time.

One would hope that the Post's editorial staff would bother to read the reporting in their own paper. Just a thought.

I find the idea that it's the Post's opinion that it is appropriate for the President of the United States to use the apparatus of state to punish a critic to be beyond the pale.

Shame of you guys.

Is Mr. Hiatt considering working for National Review?

He seems to have the inherent inability to grasp well-known facts for the sake of defending George W. Bush requisite for such a task.

This is the Washington Post?

Good Lord, you folks have truly reached your nadir.

Will one of your White House reporters ask Scott McClellan how it "serves the public interest" to publicly disclose the name of an undercover CIA agent?

"A good Leak" represents a disappointing low in the Washington Posts integrity. There is certainly a wide range of opinions that are perfectly respectable to express on the editorial page. However, to misrepresent the truth in order to support your views undermines your credibility as a news source. Joe Wilson never claimed that the Vice President personally decided to send him to Niger, and claiming this to discredit him is a red herring. His report from Niger in no way supported the idea that Iraq was seeking Uranium in Niger.

But that is besides the point. The leak of classified information was not used to inform the public, rather it was used to manipulate public opinion for political purposes. Considering that this was done to support a war that achieved very little beyond the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians and US Soldiers, one wonders why the Washington Post thinks that it is proper.

Hiatt:
Love you man, especially when you get under the skin of these liberal attack dogs. Keep up the good work, I don't mind you screwing around with the facts when you're pushing Dear Leader's agenda.

Seldom is an editorial so thoroughly debunked by the news content of the same same paper. I presume that, whoever the author of the "A Good Leak" editorial was (and for the sake of the Post's journalistic integrity, I would second the call for the Post to state the author's identity), I assume he or she could easily have looked from that editorial as posted online immediately to the left, under "Most Viewed Articles," and find the link for the Gellman and Linzer article.
The editorial might be excused if it put together a cogent argument against the evidence that Gellman and Linzer used. But the editorial does not do that; it simply ignores that evidence (and a great deal of other, publicly-available evidence) in one of the most egregious examples of Orwellian "memory-hole" journalism that I have ever seen.
The Bush administration has shown, in the leak revealed this week, that it did not believe it could win an honest debate on Iraq, and therefore gave the public carefully selected information and thereby deceived the public.
It seems that the "A Good Leak" editorial replicates that strategy.
Please let the public know who its author is and when we may expect a correction or retraction.

Thank you.

R Cauthen
Los Angeles

I sincerely hope the responsible journalists of the Washington Post have taken proper precautions to protect themselves from the paper's editorial board.

The willingness of the Fred Hiatt and company to defend mass murderers clearly indicates they will stop at nothing.

WHY THE WAPO IS WRONG ABOUT PLAMEGATE

Aside from the FACT that the Washington Post chose to repeat misinformation about Plamegate repudiated on page one of the same paper, they left out a few glaring details in their ridiculous approval of Valerie Plame's outing for political gain.

Leaking Valerie Plame's name took a valuable resource out of the REAL war on terror. This action approved by the President and Vice President has endangered the lives of every American citizen, both at home and abroad.

Leaking Plame's name also blew her front cover employer, Brewster Jennings & Associates. It was Robert Novak, American traitor, and political commentator hack, who in collusion with Bush and Cheney, first published the highly classified information.

It has been suggested that there were other resources within the CIA who were also working undercover as non-official cover operative" (NOC) as employees of Brewster Jennings. It has also been suggested that once their undercover status was compromised, they were quickly captured and eliminated, thus multiplying the damage done to the CIA's ability to gather valuable information in the Mid East.

The outing of Plame destroyed all trust the CIA had for the Bush/Cheney administration. Why would they now put their lives on the line as NOCs knowing that at any time, their cover could also be blown for political gain, thus ending their careers and possibly ending their lives as well?

But there's more!

Plame... 'was a long-term proprietary and deep-cover NOC - well established and consistently producing "take" from ARAMCO (and who knows what else in Saudi Arabia). It was destroyed with a motive of personal vengeance (there may have been other motives) by someone inside the White House.

From the CIA's point of view, at a time when Saudi Arabia is one of the three or four countries of highest interest to the US, the Plame operation was irreplaceable.

Almost the entire Bush administration has an interest in ARAMCO.

The Boston Globe reported that in 2001 ARAMCO had signed a $140 million multi-year contract with Halliburton, then chaired by Dick Cheney, to develop a new oil field. Halliburton does a lot of business in Saudi Arabia. Current estimates of Halliburton contracts or joint ventures in the country run into the tens of billions of dollars.

So do the fortunes of some shady figures from the Bush family's past.

As recently as 1991 ARAMCO had Khalid bin Mahfouz sitting on its Supreme Council or board of directors. Mahfouz, Saudi Arabia's former treasurer and the nation's largest banker, has been reported in several places to be Osama bin Laden's brother in law.

ARAMCO is the largest oil group in the world, a state-owned Saudi company in partnership with four major US oil companies.

Another one of Aramco’s partners is Chevron-Texaco which gave up one of its board members, Condoleezza Rice, when she became the National Security Advisor to George Bush.

All of ARAMCO’s key decisions are made by the Saudi royal family while US oil expertise, personnel and technology keeps the cash coming in and the oil going out. ARAMCO operates, manages, and maintains virtually all Saudi oil fields – 25% of all the oil on the planet.'

http://www.oilempire.us/plame.html

Also, let's not forget the long term friendship and business partnerships between the Bush family and the bin Laden family.

Knowing all of this, how can anyone in their right mind approve of Bush and Cheney's treasonous behavior of outing Valerie Plame and Brewster Jennings for political gain?

I am simply amazed that the Washington Post would run an editorial that contradicts its reporting featured on Page One. Either the editorial writers failed to read the story "Concerted Effort to Discredit" or else they read the story and deliberately included misleading statements in the editorial. Is the Editorial Page guilty of intellectual incompetenece or intellectual dishonesty. Which is it?

ThinkProgress fact-checks Hiatt's lying posterior:

CLAIM: “Mr. Libby’s motive in allegedly disclosing her name to reporters, Mr. Fitzgerald said, was to disprove yet another false assertion, that Mr. Wilson had been dispatched to Niger by Mr. Cheney.” [Washington Post, 4/9/06]

FACT:

Wilson never said that Cheney sent him, only that the vice president’s office had questions about an intelligence report that referred to the sale of uranium yellowcake to Iraq from Niger. Wilson, in his New York Times article, said CIA officials were informed of Cheney’s questions. [Bloomberg, 7/14/05]

Think Progress further fact-checks Hiatt's posterior:

CLAIM: “Mr. Wilson subsequently claimed that the White House set out to punish him for his supposed whistle-blowing by deliberately blowing the cover of his wife, Valerie Plame, who he said was an undercover CIA operative…After more than 2 1/2 years of investigation, Mr. Fitzgerald has reported no evidence to support Mr. Wilson’s charge.” [Washington Post, 4/9/06]

FACT:

Moreover, given that there is evidence that other White House officials with whom defendant spoke prior to July14, 2003 discussed Wilson’s wife’s employment with the press both prior to, and after, July 14, 2003 – which evidence has been shared with defendant – it is hard to conceive of what evidence there could be that would disprove the existence of White House efforts to “punish” Wilson. [Fitzgerald filing, pg. 29-30]

the Post has gone the way of the WSJ: fairly decent reporting but with a wingnut editorial board ...

Think Progress not only further fact-checks Hiatt's posterior but makes the Washington Post look very, very foolish indeed:

CLAIM: “Vice President Cheney initially chose to be secretive, ordering his chief of staff at the time, I. Lewis Libby, to leak the information to a favorite New York Times reporter…There was nothing illegal or even particularly unusual about that.” [Washington Post, 4/9/06]

FACT:

Defendant testified that this July 8th meeting was the only time he recalled in his government experience when he disclosed a document to a reporter that was effectively declassified by virtue of the President’s authorization that it be declassified.” [Fitzgerald filing, pg. 23]

CLAIM: “The material that Mr. Bush ordered declassified established, as have several subsequent investigations, that Mr. Wilson was the one guilty of twisting the truth. In fact, his report supported the conclusion that Iraq had sought uranium.” [Washington Post, 4/9/06]

FACT:

Two-year old assertions by former ambassador Joseph Wilson regarding Iraq and uranium, which lie at the heart of the controversy over who at the White House identified a covert U.S. operative, have held up in the face of attacks by supporters of presidential adviser Karl Rove…[T]he Senate panel conclusions didn’t discredit Wilson. The committee concluded that the Niger intelligence information wasn’t solid enough to be included in the State of the Union speech. It added that Wilson’s report didn’t change the minds of analysts on either side of the issue… [Bloomberg, 7/14/05]

Karl Lafong said: "I assume the Washington Post Editorial board will be having a send-off party soon for their sons and daughters who have volunteered for active duty in Iraq."

I think he meant to say "active duty in IRAN"!

Great job, Hiatt! Looks like you bought a little more time before Rove's pictures of you are made public.

I just read the editorial 'A Good Leak'. I could not believe my eyes. You know that this was reported IN YOUR OWN PAPER TO BE FALSE?

see...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/08/AR2006040800916.htm

Does your editorial board even read your own paper? If you are not going to be consistant with reporting facts then just stop putting out a paper.

Your editorial in today’s paper is absolutely stunning. I mean Wow! Fred Hiatt should be ashamed of this terrible piece of non-journalism. There has to be some explanation as to why you feel it's necessary to misinform your readers through this kind of baseless and embarrassing rhetoric. The Washington Post has been rolling down the hill of shame here lately, but unfortunately today might be the day in which it loses all of its remaining credibility, if there was any.

I have a recommendation for you folks down at the Editorial Page. How about you try reading a real piece of journalism that came out in the Washington Post this morning, but wait, that’s your own paper. It contradicts most of everything you spewed out in this prize-winning editorial you concocted this Sunday morning.

The only explanation I can come up with as to why you would put something like this into print is because Karl Rove must have been barking down your door all weekend. Why else would you folks come up with something like this? What an embarrassment this is to people in your own paper who are trying to get to the bottom of this story.

A Good Leak. Wow!! Someone needs to resign over this one.

I'm so glad that Fred Hiatt've decided to push Rove's agenda. Otherwise, I'll be disappointed with WP editoral.

Dirty liberals, stop slamming Mr. Hiatt. He has done nothing wrong. He just helped propagandizing these 'facts' to make White House looks good. It's his job! Back off moonbats!

Damn communists.

P.S. I'm entirely disappointed with Barton Gellman and Dafna Linzer. Damn them for printing these hardass facts which contradict Mr. Hiatt's article. It is not fair to Mr. Hiatt...

The Post owes its readers an explanation of the ludicrously counterfactual editorial, "A Good Leak."

the Post is probably too liberal for the Editorial Board to read - for them, if it ain't in the Moonie Times or the blastfaxes from Mehlman, it must be a liberal lie!

Good Leak = Disinformation

Today's editorial in support of "A Good Leak" was a shocker, and so bizarre. The editorial writer didn't seem to be aware of the facts as spelled out in their own paper.

Bush and Cheney were working to leak DISCREDITED information. That's pushing disinformation. Is the Post trying to out-Judy Miller the Times on this?

I'm sorry we spent the three bucks to buy the paper.

Why do liberals hate America?

You guys should fire republican shill Fred Hiatt or make him the new redstate blogger, you choose, but you can not leave him in charge of the editorial page any longer. Your credibility, long suffering in this year of Bob Woodward, is now gone after weekend of Hiatt editorial lying and kissing ass for Bush Co. Shame on the Wash Post!

Oh, boo hoo, poor Valerie Plame, undercover agent extraordinaire. The moonbat spin about here "career" being destroyed has fooled many. And those it doesn't fool -- like the Op-Ed page here -- are now targets for moonbat anger. Hell hath no fury like a moonbat scorned.

-----------------------------
http://scrutator.net

R Cauthen - The sound you hear is crickets chirping. There is no one at home at WaPo. Poor devils.

I think I have finally figured it out. The hiring of a right leaning blogger was an attempt to "balance" the paper correct? Well that didn't work out so well for them. But that won't prevent them from carrying out their mission! It is now plain and for all to see what the WaPo thinks of as balance. Given the OpEd today that contradicts the WaPo's own factually based reporting, FOUND IN THE SAME ISSUE, I can now see that what they meant when they say they wanted balance was just that - falsehoods, obfuscation and disinformation to "balance" truth and fact. What a novel approach to "journalism".

moonbat

What has happened to the WaPo? I cannot believe that editorial! How on earth can a major newspaper have penned such a horrendously erroneous piece of garbage, and so pathetically and obviously full of suck-up butt-kissing. I moved from Maryland to Tampa a few years ago, and I have to say that not even the conservative and mid-tier-city Tampa Tribune would dare write something so amateurish and irresponsible. Shame on the Post. I subscribed for many years but today I am thankful that I didn't waste a dime to read such trash.

Be honest -- when you first read "A Good Leak" didn't you wonder for just a moment if the Post had been punked by Ben Domenech? The irony was just too rich having that editorial appear on the same day that the Gellman and Linzer article skewers the argument it makes by reviewing the facts.

I refer whoever wrote that atrocious editorial to this page:

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/04/09/post-mangles-facts/

Since when has the Post's editorials become less intelligent and informed than a High School newspaper??

Smarter and more informed people please.

Well, thats it for me;If this paper isn't good enough for Fred Hiatt (one of its own editors) to read, then why should I waste my time.

Your title, "A Good Leak" is apt only in that a good leak feels good to the leaker. The editorial itself is rank hypocrisy, and Katharine Graham's newspaper now reeks worse than stale urine. Hope y'all are proud of what you've accomplished here; the rest of the country, otoh, has more than had enough.

Do we need another Wall Street Journal-a paper with editiorial writers so confined to their fantasy world that they do not know or understand the news that is printed on their own front page. The WSJ has something they consider an ideology to follow, but what can justify the ignorance and stupidity of the Post's editorial. Do they owe Karl another boot licking? Do they believe the country will be in danger if it is generally known that the President is a liar. But outside our country, that is known and understood, and inside the country, no more than 35 per cent believe what the president says. Trying to rewrite history so that the president does not look so imcompetent and dishonest only makes the editorial writers look foolish.

i are a gooder reeder than i are a gooder riter..can i rite for ur paper?

Hey, i thought you guys fired Ben Domenech. What's he doing writing editorials. This is an outrage!

I don't want fair and balanced reporting from the Washington Post. That is the realm of Bill O'Reilly and Fox News, neither of which do fair or balanced.
Nor do I want Air America here.
Nor do I want The Washington Times version of truthiness.

From the Washington Post I want facts of news that is corroborrated and then I want editors that take those facts and write about them in editorials.
You failed me today.

Soooooo, Fred,

If this is a "good leak", why didn't Bush just answer Wilson's claims himself instead of telling someone to tell someone to tell someone like a lovesick Jr. High girl. AND, why didn't he stand up when Libby was being indicted and say, "I told him to say that."

Post editorial is as much of a lie as the lies it tries to cover up.

The WAPO has turned to trash espeically with frauds like Bib Woodward shilling for our unitary executive.

Hahahaha We caught you!

This is better reading from a person more informed than whoever wrote that atrocious editorial:

http://www.firedoglake.com/2006/04/09/does-fred-hiatt-even-read-the-washington-post/

Fred Hiatt and I love the WSJ. A Journal editorial will state an opinion contrary to the facts reported on its front page.

It’s unfortunate that those who seek to prove the latter would now claim that Mr. Bush did something wrong by releasing for public review some of the intelligence he used in making his most momentous decision.

it's unfortunate that sycophantic drivel like this gets promulgated by the fourth estate, which to my knowledge, and certainly in my hopes, is supposed to provide a check to government that has clearly run amok. thanx for the help buds. way to hold 'em accountable.

momentous decision = 2300 hundred dead... and many other gruesome statistics...

So, according to today's editorial a "good leak" is leaking information that has been discredited (according to your own newspaper).

Okay

Good to see Ian recycling GOP talking points. My response is why does Fed Hiatt hate America.

Haven't been here for a while...
I'm just checking to see if the Post ever offered proof that Abramoff directed donations to Democrats. You guys still on that topic, or has something else come up? Oh, and by proof, I mean something other than a link to a tendentious Wapoo article without any documentation either.

The good Bush leak would be the one where he leaked out enough facts, figures and tangible proof that all of this psyching us into a war and killing a whole lot of our soldiers and Iraqi civilians, just to bust an unprepared country through the gate to civil war was for the public good and in the public interest like he says.
Can't happen though because there isn't any good to it.
I can see that from my unlofty perch in Georgia.
Can I have a job? I could write you a fine editorial without reading for months if that's all it takes. But maybe I'm asking the wrong people for the job...

Its about credibility stupid.

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5476/2098/1600/LeakerInChief.jpg

Leaking, Lying, and An Election
by georgia10
Sun Apr 09, 2006 at 03:37:53 PM PDT

Reading today's Washington Post editorial, I had to double check to see if they cropped the RNC logo off of the press release before publication. Throwing facts to the wind (including investigations by its own reporters) the editorial board calls the selective leaking of classified information as "a good leak" meant to counter Ambassador Wilson's "twisting of the truth." Indeed, the Washington Post is so proud and sure of the accuracy of these claims, it chose to publish them in an unsigned editorial (come on, Fred Hiatt, even Ben Domenech had the guts to put his name to his journalistic embarrassments).

I'd like to focus specifically on the first line of the piece:

PRESIDENT BUSH was right to approve the declassification of parts of a National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq three years ago in order to make clear why he had believed that Saddam Hussein was seeking nuclear weapons.

While the WaPo channels Scott McClellan, let me channel the facts. President Bush did not selectively leak highly classified information to "set the record straight." He wielded his executive power in a partisan, pointed way with a singular purpose: to cover his ass, and to ensure a second term.

It is this simple fact that tends to get lost in the intricate discussions of the Plame scandal. If the President wanted to clear the air, he would have released the NIE in its entirety, to the entire press. Yet the selective leaking allowed Bush to cherry-pick the intelligence (again). This time around, it wasn't done to mislead us into war, but to mislead the nation into believing the President was deserving of a second Bush term.

As Murray Waas detailed last month, the entire discrediting of Wilson and the subsequent cover-up were centered around the pivotal task of insulating the incumbent President:

Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser, cautioned other White House aides in the summer of 2003 that Bush's 2004 re-election prospects would be severely damaged if it was publicly disclosed that he had been personally warned that a key rationale for going to war had been challenged within the administration.

Which is why, of course, the Executive Branch engaged in a massive, covert campaign to silence Joe Wilson. This is why only parts of the NIE were leaked to Judy Miller, so she could parrot away in the newspaper of record that the poor President was just the victim of a failed intelligence apparatus. Never mind the rest of the NIE--the parts where the Energy Department and the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research said the tubes were "intended for conventional weapons". No, the goal here again was to fix the facts around the policy. The goal was to represent those leaked parts of the NIE as the "key judgments" (even though they weren't) and to represent to Judy Miller that the rest of the document bolstered those fundamentally wrong claims that the uranium was for nuclear weapons. [UPDATE: Big thanks to Quicksilver for pointing out that the NIE still remains classified--only the "key judgments" were released to the public.] The goal was to shield the President--the candidate--at all costs.

And this is why the President's actions are so revolting, so repulsive. His abuse of power--and yes, selective leaking in this way is an abuse of power--wasn't meant just to silence a war critic. It was to meant to silence the American people, to assauge their doubts about his leadership, and to portray himself as a competent Commander-in-Chief worthy of re-election.

This President cannot help himself. He is a habitual manipulator, a serial cherry-picker of intelligence. From pre-war to pre-election, his goal has been the personal interest, not the public interest. His legacy is one of a Leaker-in-Chief, selectively leaking us into war, and into a second Bush term.

motherlowman, great post!

Congratulations, I will now lump your fine papers editorial into the likes of Bill O'Reilley and Hannity. Your back hurt from carrying so much water? (R)

The Washington Post is clearly suffering from schizophrenic symptoms.

This is the most preposterous editorial I have read in a long time.

The Washington Post is clearly suffering from schizophrenic symptoms.

This is the most preposterous editorial I have read in a long time.

Fred Hiatt's editorial in the Sunday WaPo is an abominable disgrace. We expect misrepresentation (lying?) from Faux News, but are having trouble getting used to it in the WaPo.

If I wanted b.s. right-wing talking points shoved in my brain, I'd buy the Washington Times. I expected better from the Post, but unfortunately it seems that many in charge, including Fred "the hack" Hiatt, have their heads buried in the sand screaming "lalalalala" as they kiss George Bush's feet.

How about reporting the news?? What a grand notion.

Editor and Publisher are all over your a**. Won't get fooled again, WP. Your editorial board will not cheerlead us into another war. Sorry.

http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002314409

"Also, the NIE was not first published for public consumption but leaked to “friendly reporter,” Judith Miller of The New York Times (who didn’t even write about it). Even then, Libby selectively quoted form the NIE, accentuating the part that seemed to bolster the Bush case and ignoring the doubts. This cherry-picking, in fact, mirrored the conduct of the administration (and the Post editorial page) during the entire run-up to the war. "

We are on to you, a-holes.

The good Bush leak is that he is pissing off/on the entire country!!!

Shame shame shame on the Washington Post!

Dear Jim Brady,

I have to thank you for this feature allowing reader comments. Although, from previous experience it does seem that you don't bother to read the comments your customers leave - it does provide an important service. It is reassuring to know that I am not alone in the thinking that whoever wrote today's editorial "A Good Leak", doesn't bother to actually read the news - including their own paper (for example: today's excellent front page article "A 'Concerted Effort' to Discredit Bush Critic Prosecutor Describes Cheney, Libby as Key Voices Pitching Iraq-Niger Story" by Barton Gellman and Dafna Linzer).

I'm very glad to know that many Washington Post readers, as evidenced by the comments left here, recognize that this editoral appears to be just a piece of Whitehouse stenography. The editors ought to be ashamed, and the readers ought to be outraged. Well, at least the readers are outraged.

If that was a good leak, this is a good war

What is to become of our republic if our press refuses to do its job? I have never seen a more frighteningly dishonest editorial than A Good Leak in my lifetime.

To so transparently and deliberately misrepresent the facts is a breach of the public trust. This sloppy piece of work isn't fit to line a bird cage. The publisher and the Board should be embarrassed and the editorialist should be looking for a new line of work. I hear the National Enquirer is always in the market for a good fantasy writer.

Sincerely,
The Detroit News blogger

So, who ya gonna believe - Fred Hiatt or the lyin' facts gathered by the WaPo's own reporters?

Did Sue Schmidt take dictation on that editorial from Rove? Inquiring minds want to know.

Is it April Fools Day ? You can't expect ANYONE to take your "Good Leak" opinion piece seriously.

I wonder if your reporters can sue your editorial writers for something - maybe gross incompetence.

All that I can say is that the glory days of Watergate are over for the Washington POst - and it's reputation.

Mike,

Notice that Ian's talking points are getting thinner by the day?

This administration is so inept that not even the GOP can come up with talking points to cover their asses.

They can't even get a leak out without screwing it up.

Huzzah to the Post, for beating back the socialist enablers of appeasement and speaking truth for power with one mighty blow.

As ample liberalphobic precedent has firmly established, 'when the President does it, it's not illegal'...The Leader Of The Free World has enough irrelevant bedevilment from the Democrat-supported Islamofascistic hydra without bothering himself with some obscure legal niceties that are the sole province of nanny-state ninnies who go goo-goo for terror like little girls in a Wal-Mart Barbie aisle whilst supping on finger sandwiches and tea with Joseph Wilson and his so-called 'spy wife', pinkies delicately upraised in the international sign for surrender, and seditious trysting of an unseemly nature.

When will America lift the scales from its eyes and heed worthies as Ken Mehlman, and cease this senseless, pointless prosecution of an anointed innocent and all-American patriot, Irving 'Scooter' Libby?

When will the faith of our fathers triumph over the godless so-called 'reality community', burying such petty trivialities in the
ash-heap of history?

When will informative scribes such as Ann Coulter and Jerome Corsi have the vital information that they alone possess placed front and center before an American public starved for the truth of how Democrat-sponsored liberal terrorism has put us forth on the path of societal extinction?

When? when? When?

Yours,

Christian White

You know, I had a good laugh the other night when NYT's David Brooks said on the Nightly News Hour that the Plame 'thing' didn't have much traction outside of Washington. He could only wished that that were so.
I hope you have some sense of the scope of people following this issue and that if this administration tries to pull a Saturday Night Massacre, they won't know what hit them.
Plame, Brewster Jennings et al was a vital source of information about nuclear proliferation that the administration blew out of the water as causally as Dead Eye shot Harry Whittington. Why, oh why do you not see and feel outrage at that betrayal? Outing Plame et al was a completely sinful act and the rest of the country 'gets it.'
We are facing, God knows what in Iran, and you come up with that pitiful editorial. Foolish, absolutely foolish! How far the once mightly Washington Post has fallen.

After reading "A Good Leak" one thing has become crystal clear.
The White House has the WaPo's fax number.

Dear Mr. Hiatt,
If you're going to print editorials that are completely ignorant of the facts as your own newspaper reports them, at least have the intelligence to print them on days without front-page articles so comparisons will be more difficult to make.

you think Katherine Graham is spinning in her grave, you should see Ben Franklin. How disappointed our Founding Fathers must be to see our currant state of affairs - a fascist government and the 4th estate either bought or brought low by blackmail. If there is a noble bone left in your body, you should quit publishing, sell your expensive house, and go somewhere else to live modestly but honestly.

"A good leak", in which the Washington Post takes a leak on the truth, has got to be the most outrageous piece of fiction to show up on any editorial page in a long, long time. If the Post doesn't quickly print a front-page retraction and provide evidence that Fred Hiatt is actually mentally impaired, Joe Wilson should sue for libel.

"A Good Leak"?

Shame on you WaPo, shame on you.

It seems like your reporters do research but your op-ed people do not. The juxtaposition of your op-ed with the story of leaking classified information by the president is just on more nail in the coffin of a once great newspaper. What an eloquent example of where the senior editorial staff has taken this paper. The way I see it, The Washington Post has two options to salvage itself in some form. It can either fire it's reporters and hire only journalists that are of the same idealogical bent of the editorial staff and become a full fledged propaganda arm of the Bush administration or it can decide to get back to news reporting and doing so fairly and without bias. For myself, I gave up trusting the Washington Post long ago. Opinions in this country will change, they always do and when public opinion turns even more against the criminals in the white house, you will find yourselves in the same position as FOX "News", trying to regain lost credibility but hopeless to do so because you've sold it out so completely.

Dear Sirs:

After reading "A 'Concerted Effort' to Discredit Bush Critic:
Prosecutor Describes Cheney, Libby as Key Voices Pitching Iraq-Niger Story" I thought when I began to read the editorial "Good Leaks" which begins with the following sentence: PRESIDENT BUSH was right to approve the declassification of parts of a National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq three years ago in order to make clear why he had believed that Saddam Hussein was seeking nuclear weapons. I swear, I double checked the date as I figured that this must be some sort of April Fools joke.

And then I realized. All credible newspapers erect an impenetrable firewall between the advertising and journalism departments.

Silly me.

I have never written in on this blog before -- not during the Deborah Howell dust-up, not ever. Until right now. Because the editorial deeming the Bush/Cheney/Libby selective leak of classified NIE information to Judith Miller to be a "good leak" is such complete and illegitimate balderdash that it beggars belief. How can the Washington Post even hope to be taken remotely seriously when its editorial page fumbles the most basic facts and concepts that are *reported in its own news pages*?

This is disgraceful. Just disgraceful. This is beyond third-rate wishful thinking. This is a willful insistence on viewing the world through a set of blinders. For shame.

After reading your "Good Leak" editorial, the thought occurred to me that, the rules for facts are somewhat different on the editorial page, the editorial page still has some obligation not to present things that are known to be patently untrue. Being opinion, it is OK to select facts that support your opinion, or to spin facts a particular way, and your editorial certainly does lots of that. However, it is not OK to present lies as truth, even on the editorial page.

What is most significant about the editorial is that, were the truth presented instead of lies, the editorialist would have had to draw precisely the opposite conclusion to what was presented in the editorial. Basically, Joe Wilson was correct. This is known from declassified documents. It is known from testimony in the Libby case. Likewise, it is known that the information leaked by the president was untrue. Furthermore, it is known now that the president KNEW it was untrue. That is the definition of a lie.

Basically, the facts of the matter demonstrate that the president lied by selectively leaking false information to a friendly reporter for the purpose of covering his political butt by discrediting a (truthful) political opponent.

As I have written elsewhere, the use of a legitimate presidential power (declassification) for an illegitimate purpose (smearing a political opponent) is the very definition of abuse of power. If there is any planet in the universe in which that is a good leak, it is a planet that does not know democracy.

It is customary, when a newspaper inadvertently prints falsehoods, to make a correction. I expect the Post will promptly issue a correction and an apology for not checking the most basic facts before printing the editorial.

The 'good leak' was the administration using misinformation to cover its behind.

Watching The Washington Post spinning for politicians who regularly manipulate the Post and the rest of the news media with 'good leaks' makes me a bit dizzy, and quite nauseated.

ZOMG LOL! I just managed to read 'A Good Leak' which comes across as work with all the quality and clearsightedness one would expect of the typical Chuck Asay cartoon. Whatever happened?

"In fact, his (Wilson's) report supported the conclusion that Iraq had sought uranium."

Yes indeed. Film at 11 ... in 1996 or thereabouts if I remember well? "Can we have Yellowcake?" "NO!". "Ok, bye then".

Fred Hiatt
Editorial Page Editor

Colbert I. King
Jackson Diehl
Deputy Editorial Page Editors

Ken Ikenberry
Assistant Editorial Page Editor

Anne Applebaum
Robert Asher
Sebastian Mallaby
Ruth Marcus
Benjamin Wittes
Editorial Writers

* * *

Except for Ken Ikenberry and Benjamin Wittes, the editorial writers also write signed columns in the op-ed page. So going by style and inclination, we can guess as to who wrote the editorial.
You can eliminate Colbert King and Ruth Marcus right away. Maybe Anne Applebaum too - she writes some nonsensical stuff sometimes, but not this blatant. Mallaby is capable of this, but he generally sticks to world bank, IMF and developmental issues. Jackson Diehl can be eliminated too in the second round.

Benjamin Wittes writes about legal issues, I think. This is not his thing.

Out and out, this looks like Fred Hiatt's own writing, when we compare this with his recent signed columns. He is a Bush/Repub groupie.

Rest assured, WaPost Editorial Board, your war drum is still big. Keep up the good beat.

I thought I was reading a Washington Times editorial. Shame on you for doing such a disservice to readers who expect something better of you. The Bush White House doesn't need your help lying to us.

WP has no credibility. Fred's article today is further proof.

A "good leak" is "trickle down" yellow journalism on Fred's head'

All media operations pride themselves on the firewall between the news department and the Editorial Board but that firewall at the Post shouldn't keep the opinion folk from at least reading their own reporters! What a pity!

I hear McClellan is on the way out. Is Hiatt auditioning for his job? His fact-free editoral is quite a writing sample for the annals of partisan spinning.

We have decided to change the name of our paper from the Washington Post, to the Republican Party Post.

We feel this will clear up any confusion; apparently some folks out there still believed we were an independent media source, and not the propoganda arm of the Republican Party.

the washington post editorial page did not turn against the war in vietnam until after nixon's election, despite decent news reporting showing the folly of the war effort since even before tet.

on form, then, the washington post editorial page will turn against the war in iraq as soon as the democrats win the 2008 elections on an antiwar platform.

it is too much to expect them to be against the war now. nobody they know is dying!

Never in my life have I seen a more patently mendacious editorial appear in a newspaper of the Washington Post's former stature. Can you go lower still? I hope not, but I'm not betting on it.

Tragic, really.

I don't buy it.

The only good leak is one that protects the country's citizens, not an administration's political agenda.

A leak about unsafe mine conditions? good.

A leak about an undercover CIA officer? not good.

"A Good Leak" is nothing more than a work of post-modernist irony.

The commenters here not only take themselves too seriously, are humorless, not to mention sanctimonious.

Hiatt and the other brave editorial pagers are trying to keep us safe from "terror."

They are probably coming up with an editorial justifying our upcoming nuclear strike on Iran, so that when we are forced to smoke the freedom haters--we will understand why it was necessary.

I have long suspected that the editors of the editorial page are all on a retainer from the White House. "A good leak" confirms it for me. I suggest they follow Mr. Wilson's advise and try to use facts, as reported by by your reporters.

Fred, here's what happened after your "Good Leak": U.S. Deaths Confirmed By The DoD: 2347.

re: "A Good Leak"

Publishing this shamefully dishonest set of long since disproven talking points on the very same day as the excellent Gellman/Linzer article is a true masterstroke of boneheaded incompetence worthy of the Bush Adminstration itself. This surpasses even the Domenech, Deborah Howell and Bob Woodward scandals in the annals of journalistic malfeasance. You haven't quite topped the NYT's handling of the Judith Miller Fiasco, but you're getting closer and closer.

This Administration has done NOTHING 'GOOD'! I do believe that their rampage of death and destruction will be stopped by all that is GOOD IN THIS WORLD.

Fred Hiatt needs to utilize the new search function. Or is he not allowed? Mr. Brady, you are NO EDITOR!

as Fred Hiatt was writing his latest screed "A Good Leak", in the background on his office CD player was the song "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp!"

Given previous articles written by Fred,
we know by now that Mr.Hiatt was dropped on his head as a child. After reading the anal leakage piece, I am revising my estimate of the height involved.Also,I am totally amazed he hasn't had his feeding tube removed.

When our democracy is finally dead, WaPo will have blood on its hands. I gave up on WaPo a long time ago, when I thought I'd seen the worst. But not. "A good leak" plumbs new depths of irresponsibility and cravenness at your once, and briefly, great newspaper.

I thought I had taken a journey through the looking glass this morning as I was reading "A Good Leak" after just having read "A 'Concerted Effort' to Discredit Bush Critic".

The Post editorial page is a disgrace. You have done a disservice to the country by abdicating your fourth estate responsibilities.

You should be ashamed.

What's worse the paper or the blog, it's a toss up. Both are bush driven.

I think Bob Woodward wrote that editorial. Everyone knows that he's a shill for the White House. They must have promised him another book.

To leave such a incendiary editorial unsigned is unconscionable. What's happened to the Post?

When Bush and Co. attack Iran and/or Venezuela (October surprise, anyone?) will your paper continue to bloviate?

See my handle? That's right, Vienna local, as in Vienna, VA--as in, I subscribe to your
paper. Should you wish to keep that subscription, you would do well to release Fred Hiatt and Deborah Howell to the Washington Times where they belong.

Please retract Hiatt's editorial, "A Good Leak."

Since the Key Judgements of the NIE did not list the uranium claim, it's clear the VP ordered Libby to lie to a reporter about national intelligence. This was an effort to cover the administration's collective hiney.

Your editorial defended this blatant abuse of power. I hope the writer of this piece of garbage has the decency to resign. At this point it's the patriotic thing to do. Go home, putter in your garden, enjoy your retirement. J