Looking For Drunks At The NY Times

The Soccer Dad kicks some, uhh, balls.

Comments

[clarice]

Yes. The Epstein piece (hard to find on his bizarre site) is the best explication of the story. Unfortunately,the Bamford lie and consistently bad reporting make the truth of this known to relatively few people. And it is very hard to persuade the rest that they've been misled.

Who is this James Bamford?

[Gary Maxwell]

Wait a couple of days ago our lefties told us that this story was completely debunked. Ran out a Telegraph article in 2002 quoting Vaclav Havel as saying "nothing here move along."

[clarice]

The first disinformation about it was that the Czechs had backstracked and denied the original reports. That was false but it took forever to correct.

Then there was that ridiculous FBI story--including the risible notion that only the registered owner of a cell phone could use it.

The one plausible bit of contrary evidence was that there was no evidence that he had some other travel documents and did not use his own on the trip, and that was demolished when Spanish authorities found that AQ had been supplied with false documents by Spanish cohorts in advance of this trip.

It is interesting to see how much evidence the media requires of every assertion of the Administration about Iraq and how little it takes for them to continually state this critical report was "debunked".

[JM Hanes]

The Times has long been non compos mentis on this topic. Their mission in life has been to sever all connection between Iraq and al Qaeda/9-11/WOT. The mere mention of 9/11 within hailing distance of Iraq is a cardinal sin. They even rather famously suggested that unless one accepted the fact that Iraq was unrelated to the WOT, reasonable discussion was an impossibility.

[r flanagan]

Clarice ,Bamford writes about security.
I've only read his book (given to me 25
years ago by an associate) "The Puzzle Palace" a history of the NSA . It was noted
(and attacked)for describing an incident in 1967 when Isreali planes attacked a US ship off the coast of Egypt. I won't defend Bamford's position on that incident-I haven't enough information nor enough interest to try to obtain it..

In the particular case described here
I have interest . I've always doubted any connection between Saddam and Bin Laden and I now give it more credence at least until I read a refutation.

[David Gerstman]

Bamford is the writer of several well regarded books (Puzzle Palace, Body of Secrets) on intelligence. I have absolutely no respect for him, though. I doubt that anyone has really read his works too carefully. But here's an excerpt from an NY Times review of Body of Secrets referring to the attack on the Liberty:

It hardly seems plausible that Israel would deliberately attack an American ship, killing dozens of American sailors, risking a confrontation with a superpower and its only ally -- in short, perpetrating one massacre in order to cover up another. Perhaps Bamford's analysis has been skewed by his palpable distaste for the Israeli state: ''Throughout its history, Israel has hidden its abominable human rights record behind pious religious claims,'' he writes. ''Critics are regularly silenced with outrageous charges of anti-Semitism.'' And: ''No one in the weak-kneed House and Senate wanted to offend powerful pro-Israel groups and lose their fat campaign contributions.''

Nearly 2 years ago I went to a presentation at the State Department about the 6 day war. I went to hear Judge Cristol (author of the Liberty Incident). Bamford spoke and seemingly organized the Liberty survivors groups to cheer him on and jeer Cristol.

[kim]

Why don't we have Clarke or Berger tell us about Lady Liberty?
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