Bush attempts Censorship; Presses Editors on Security

GWB=Gotta Wrap Blanket with stars and stripes around himself and put the spotlight on editors.

It gives me hope that stories such as this come out (however late) despite the apparent pressure from the WH.

'Times' And 'Post' Should Have Disclosed Meeting with Bush
Some Veteran Journalists Say 'Times' And 'Post' Should Have Disclosed Meeting with Bush on Controversial Stories
E & P By Joe Strupp
Published: December 27, 2005 1:50 PM ET

Word that members of the Bush administration met with editors of two major newspapers in an effort to stop the publication of news articles in recent weeks drew little surprise from veteran Washington journalists, who said such White House pressure has appeared during past decades.

What concerned some, however, was that The New York Times and The Washington Post did not disclose those meetings when they eventually published the articles involved.

"What strikes me is that neither of the papers have reported it," said John Walcott, Washington bureau chief for Knight Ridder. "They agreed to go into it on White House ground rules that the meetings would be off the record. I don't know why the papers accepted that condition."

Andy Alexander, Washington bureau chief for Cox Newspapers, agreed. "You should report it with the story," he said. "It gets into the agreement you have with the White House as to what you can report."

For Jack Germond, a former Washington reporter with The Washington Star and The Sun of Baltimore, it is part of the news. "I was surprised they didn't report it in this case," he said of The Post and Times examples. "Why not report it? It is part of the story. You can agree not to discuss the details of the conversation with the president. But the fact that you have such a meeting is not off the record."

The first incident at issue is a Dec. 5 meeting between Bush and Times Publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., Executive Editor Bill Keller, and Times D.C. Bureau Chief Phil Taubman. According to Newsweek, Bush called that meeting in an effort to get the Times to hold off on a story about the president authorizing secret eavesdropping on U.S. citizens without court orders. That story eventually ran on Dec. 16.

Although the Times revealed in that story that it had held the information for more than a year, it did not disclose the Bush meeting and has yet to confirm it.

The second incident involved a reported meeting between Bush and Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr., before the Post's Nov. 2 story by Dana Priest on secret CIA prisons. Post writer Howard Kurtz revealed the meeting in a story Monday, but did not indicate when it occurred. In that story, Downie confirmed only that Post officials met with "senior administration officials." Priest's story also did not indicate any administration effort to stop the story.

"In general, readers ought to understand, and we ought to be as transparent as we can, about the process," Knight Ridder Washington editor Clark Hoyt said when asked about the papers' failing to report the meetings. "But I don't know what the ground rules on these particular meetings were."

Tom Wicker, a former Times Washington correspondent and bureau chief, said any presidential or administrative intervention is news, and should be reported. "Particularly if it is someone with a political interest trying to intervene," he said.

Neither Downie nor Keller immediately returned calls Tuesday morning.

But at least one veteran Washington journalist did not demand that such meetings be reported. Max Frankel, the former Times executive editor who spent 11 years in the paper's Washington bureau from 1961 to 1972, including the last four years as bureau chief, said it was not a requirement. "I don't see what the big deal is in reporting it," he said. "I guess it is worth a line in the story, but I can't get excited about it."

Frankel also noted, as did others, that such administrative pressure is not unusual. He cited the famous request to the Times by President John F. Kennedy that the paper hold off reporting on the discovery of missiles in Cuba that led to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Frankel, who was a diplomatic correspondent at the time, said he listened in on the call from Kennedy to then-Times bureau chief James "Scotty" Reston.

"We held back some of the facts," Frankel recalls. "Namely that missiles were found. We reported that there was a crises in that region, but not specifics."

Others had similar examples of such intervention -- although usually without the president himself making the request. "Those things do happen, not all the time, but frequently," said Germond, who recalled a lunch meeting with CIA Director William Colby in 1976 which he was asked to hold off on a story. "We had a story we were investigating, but it wasn't big and their concern was greatly exaggerated. We didn't hold the story and I think their concern was mostly that it reflected badly on the agency."

Walcott, who has been in the Knight Ridder bureau for eight years, three as chief, said cabinet-level officials have attempted to stop the news service from publishing stories questioning the Iraq nuclear program and on Iraq-Al Qaeda connections. "A lot of the time it comes after the fact, when they say, 'are you sure that's right?' They are attempts to undermine our confidence in the story."

Alexander of Cox recalled that after the Sept. 11 attacks, then-Press Secretary Ari Fleisher called bureau chiefs and asked that they not report the president's travel plans until the White House revealed them. "They were trying to limit the time a terrorist would have to plan something," Alexander said, adding that such plans were never obtained ahead of time by Cox. "I think it is unusual, but it doesn't surprise me. That is part of the give and take."

Hoyt could not recall a specific instance of administrative pressure, but noted that the bureau itself chose to hold off reporting, in 2003, that U.S. military officials were in Iraq before the invasion occurred. "The thought at the time was that it was information that could potentially put people in harm's way," Hoyt said. "It doesn't happen all the time, but if you look at history, there are instances dating back to the Civil War when the president had put pressure on."

He speculated that the recent examples might be garnering more attention because of Bush's strained relations with the press. "It has been more arm's length," he said of the current Bush-media ties. "And more properly adversarial."
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Joe Strupp ([email protected]) is a senior editor at E&P.