I have two answers:

1. To turn the page on what occurred in the print media before and after the war -- while most major news organizations have yet to admit their sorry record -- is to lose sight of lessons vital for the future of journalistic principles and ethics. While many of them may be publishing hard-hitting reports today, where were U.S. news organizations before the war, when it might have made a difference in exposing the inaccurate, deceptive or fictional evidence contained in the administration's propaganda over the Iraqi WMD threat?

The Washington Post was the main general exception to the charge (the reporting of James Risen in The New York Times notwithstanding). So was Knight Ridder's triple threat of Jonathan Landay, Warren Strobel and John Walcott. And the Associated Press' Dafna Linzer demonstrated a consistent record of skepticism in her WMD reporting.

Why were they the exceptions, not the rule?

2. But the supreme reason not to drop the matter of press coverage is the price in blood and treasure that the United States is continuing to pay for the pre-emptive attack -- for which the press served as "enablers." Reporters and editors at major newspapers really did help bring on the war, fanning fears and coddling partisan sources (including Iraqi defectors), while dumbing down the views of experts who questioned the prevailing line in Washington.

Even a first-rate military correspondent like Michael Gordon could co-author with Judith Miller the oft-cited front-page New York Times "mushroom cloud" story of Sept. 8, 2002 ("U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts") that followed close on the heels of Vice President Dick Cheney's speech of August 26 asserting that there was "no doubt" that Saddam had WMD and was prepared to use them. In their own words -- not merely quoting the claims of others -- the two asserted: "Mr. Hussein's dogged insistence on pursuing his nuclear ambitions along with what defectors described in interviews as Iraq's push to improve and expand Baghdad's chemical and biological arsenals, have brought Iraq and the United States to the brink of war."

Keller, when defending Miller on Public Editor Daniel Okrent's Web journal recently, cryptically alluded to the "handling and presenting" of her stories by unnamed editors, suggesting that he should not punish her because they were equally to blame. Who were the editors who let her express highly influential opinions in news stories, get away with poor or partisan sourcing, and who placed her stories on the front page? It was not a rare occurrence for Miller to outright editorialize in a "news" article, as when she stated without qualification that her discoveries in the field bolstered Bush administration claims.

Where, oh where is the ombud?

Where is the Times' new ombudsman one might ask? Gradually, alas, the public editor's unique role at a proud paper that had never had an ombudsman, is being co-opted. Nothing illustrates the point better than last week's "you speak, I record" entry with Keller's defense of Miller in Okrent's Web journal (March 26).

The ombudsman provided a forum for the executive editor to spin a rather lazy defense of Miller's past actions. Keller was permitted to contemptuously dismiss many of the critics of her notorious misreporting on WMD as mere Web surfers, even though Okrent has repeatedly refused to take a critical look back at the stories in dispute (which Keller is now defending). Thus, Okrent can wash his hands in public, as if to say the Times has dealt with that.

Earlier, on Feb. 17, Okrent had allowed Miller herself to challenge quotations attributed to her by Michael Massing in his widely-read "Now They Tell Us" essay in the Feb. 26 issue of The New York Review of Books. Okrent explained that many readers had asked him for comment on the Massing story. Breaking his policy of not addressing controversies that arose before he came on board at the paper on Dec. 1, he nevertheless contacted Miller and included a letter she had sent to the NYRB editors complaining about being misquoted. Massing would stand by his reporting, saying he had checked all the quotes with Miller beforehand.

Fairness demands that Okrent's huge task, with limited resources, be acknowledged. His Web log is now attracting attention, some of it sympathetic as in the case of this reader: "I feel for Dan Okrent. He has to have the hardest job in journalism."

But other correspondents have not been so understanding. A recent letter: "The ombudsman appears unusually reticent to deal with this issue fully and candidly. If Daniel Okrent cannot address direct criticism to Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Gail Collins, Bill Keller, and Judith Miller, for their bungling of the WMD story in the lead up to the war, then this office is worthless. This is an ongoing issue, not ancient history. Deal with it."

On another front, so far the public editor has looked the other way in failing to comment on the damning recent statement by Sulzberger on the Miller/WMD controversy. It constituted an indictment of the way he, and Miller's editors, saw her role in covering WMD and the war from "the inside" (reported at E&P Online, March 22).

Sulzberger admitted that Miller's sources were wrong "absolutely." But then "the administration was wrong ... So I don't blame Judy Miller for the lack of finding weapons of mass destruction. I blame the administration for believing its own story line to such a point that they weren't prepared to question the authenticity of what they were told."

Well, if they weren't going to question themselves, wasn't it the role of the press to question them -- instead of so often acting as stenographers for inside sources and defectors? No one is blaming Miller for not finding WMD in Iraq (though she tried mightily while she was there), but rather for hyping their existence before and after the war. The Times too often swallowed the government's narrative on these weapons of mass disappearance.

And some high-placed intelligence analysts (not to mention other members of the media and vast numbers of the American public) surely believed in the authenticity of what the Times was telling them. One imagines a circle of blind animals, linked to one another: The Times tied to the tail of the government which was tied to the tail of Iraqi defectors who were tied to the tail of the Times.

Reporting from the other 'Times'

The latest investigative report by Bob Drogin and Greg Miller of the Los Angeles Times ("Iraqi Defector's Tales Bolstered U.S. Case for War") is about a now discredited source known as 'Curveball' who provided information that Saddam had built a fleet of trucks and railroad cars to produce anthrax and other deadly germs. (These were the "Winnebagos of Death" the Bush administration often warned about.) It turns out U.S. officials never even had direct access to the defector, a brother to one of Iraqi National Congress (INC) leader Ahmed Chalabi's top aides.

David Kay told the L.A. Times that of all the intelligence failures in Iraq, "this is the one that is the most damning." Curveball was an "out-and-out fabricator."

Chalabi says that he has been unfairly blamed for the failure to find germ warfare trucks, or any other unconventional weapons. He blames the CIA for hyping the threat. Since INC defectors were always tainted as partisans, he asked "60 Minutes" recently: "Why did the CIA believe them so much?" Or, one might add, why did The New York Times find them so credible so often?

Scandal dwarfs all others

It should be noted that Miller was gradually weaned from the WMD/Iraq beat after Keller took over in the summer of 2003. Moreover, several recent articles in the Times by Douglas Jehl and James Risen have focused on the role of defectors and exile groups in fooling U.S. intelligence agencies about the alleged presence of WMD in Iraq.

Journalistic ideals are very much alive in the Times' newsroom. Recently, responding to past columns in E&P, a reporter covering foreign policy at the paper sent me this message: "I share your concern about past wrongs, and remain determined to dig further."

Now Keller should revisit the reporting of Miller and some of her colleagues. To this day, the Times has not seen fit to acknowledge -- in editors' notes (like the one Keller himself co-wrote about the Wen Ho Lee debacle) or editorials or public editor columns -- the egg left on their collective faces from being suckered by highly suspect sources when reporting on WMD in 2002-03. This scandal dwarfs all others under the Gray Lady's skirts.

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William E. Jackson Jr. has been covering this subject for E&P since last spring. He was executive director of President Jimmy Carter's General Advisory Committee on Arms Control, 1978-80. After affiliations with the Brookings Institution and the Fulbright Institute of International Relations, Jackson writes on national security issues from Davidson, N.C.

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