Drowning in Deceit

Our democracy is operating without oxygen. Below are excerpts from a sampling of recent news stories reflecting how every major issue in our society -- war; medicine; integrity in government, in journalism, even in elementary vote-counting in elections -- is drenched in confusion.

Florida electoral "incompetence" would boost Republican votes

Of nearly 48,000 Florida residents on the felon list, only 61 are Hispanic. By contrast, more than 22,000 are African-American.

About 8 percent of Florida voters describe themselves as Hispanic, and about 11 percent as black.

In a presidential-election battleground state that decided the 2000 race by giving George W. Bush a margin of only 537 votes, the effect could be significant: black voters are overwhelmingly Democratic, while Hispanics in Florida tend to vote Republican.

"This was absolutely unintentional," said Nicole de Lara, spokeswoman for the Florida secretary of state, Glenda E. Hood, an appointee of Gov. Jeb Bush, the president's brother. "The matching criteria were approved by several interested parties in the lawsuit, and the court. I don't know how it got by all those people without anyone noticing."

Anita Earls, one of the lawyers for plaintiffs in the civil rights suit, said state officials had not given them the kind of access to data that might have uncovered the flaw.

The method uses race as one of several factors in determining whether a felon has registered to vote. If a voter's first name, last name and date of birth are the same as those of a convicted felon but the race is different, the name is not put on the list for potential purging.

But the database of felons has only five variables for race: white, black, Asian, Indian and unknown. And a voter registered as Hispanic whose name and birth date matched a felon's would be left off the purge list unless his race was listed as unknown.

A spokeswoman for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Kristen Perezluha, said the felon database used F.B.I. criteria for judging race and so never listed Hispanic.

Florida undertook a similar purge of voter rolls in 2000, but that list was shown to include the names of many who were not felons. The new effort at such a purge, begun by Governor Bush's administration in May, was supposed to be free of those problems. But after a state judge last week ordered the release of the current list, it became clear that thousands of felons who had been granted clemency were still on it.

Democrats said yesterday that the latest disclosure should be the last straw. "Either this administration is acting incompetently in regard to voters' rights,'' said Scott Maddox, the Democratic state chairman, "or they have ill will toward a certain class of voters. Either way, it's unacceptable.''

"The honorable thing to do,'' Mr. Maddox added, ''is throw the list out and not purge people erroneously on the eve of election."

Some county election supervisors have said they are reluctant to use the state's list to purge the names of any voters. The law leaves that responsibility to the county officials, but it is unclear how many will use it.

"It's an impossible task to do properly," said Ion Sancho, the supervisor in Leon County, in the Florida Panhandle.

The paucity of Hispanic voters on the felon list was first reported Wednesday, by The Sarasota Herald-Tribune, but officials said then that the problem was not systematic. After The New York Times examined the data, state officials acknowledged that the method for matching lists of felons to those of voters automatically exempted all felons who identified themselves as Hispanic.

Hispanic Republicans outnumber Hispanic Democrats by about 100,000 voters in Florida. But more than 90 percent of the approximately one million registered blacks there are Democrats. The exclusion of Hispanics from the purge list explains some of the wide discrepancy in party affiliation of voters on the felon list, which bears the names of 28,025 Democrats and just 9,521 Republicans, with most of the rest unaffiliated.

--"Florida List for Purge of Voters Proves Flawed," New York Times, July 10, 2004

Questionable vote-counting in upcoming election

In what may turn out to be one of the most scrutinized general elections in the country's history, nearly one-third of the more than 150 million registered voters in the United States will be asked to cast their ballots on machines whose accuracy and security against fraud have yet to be tested on such a grand scale.

The system that will be used in the state of Maryland, for example, is far from foolproof, in the view of Michael Wertheimer, a computer security consultant with RABA Technologies, who was hired by the state of Maryland last year to conduct a mock hacking attack against the Diebold machines. A number of security holes were found, including one in the Microsoft operating system that runs the election software, which did not have up-to-date security patches. The flaws, Mr. Wertheimer said, could allow tampering and skewed election results.

Harris N. Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America, a trade group that represents many of the voting machine makers, said that vendors submit their source code - the underlying instructions for the machines' software - for independent inspection, to uncover any hidden programming and to ensure that the machines calculate properly.

Critics, however, point out that the labs inspecting the software are typically paid by the vendors themselves, and that they somehow failed to uncover the flaws discovered by Mr. Wertheimer, Professor Rubin, and election officials in Ohio, Maryland and elsewhere.

--"Ready or Not, Electronic Voting Goes National," New York Times, September 19, 2004

Campaign ads lie -- and are believed, survey shows

Even people who say they learn nothing from the advertisements believe the claims made in them, the University of Pennsylvania's National Annenberg Election Survey shows. At the same time, people are remarkably unfamiliar with the candidates' true positions -- the stuff that hasn't been advertised much.

The Annenberg survey recently interviewed 1,026 adults in the 18 battleground states where the campaigns have been showing commercials since March. In those states, 61 percent of respondents believe Mr. Bush "favors sending American jobs overseas" and 56 percent believe Mr. Kerry "voted for higher taxes 350 times." Both of those statements have been repeated countless times in commercials -- but neither is accurate.

A Kerry commercial contends that "George Bush says sending jobs overseas `makes sense' for America." Mr. Bush himself never said that, nor did he sign a document saying so. What he signed was a message accompanying the annual report of his Council of Economic Advisers, a report that asserted it made sense for the United States to buy goods and services from countries that produced them more cheaply than the United States could. Standard economic thought -- although dumb politics -- but Mr. Bush never said it.

Bush commercials, and the president himself, contend that Mr. Kerry "voted for higher taxes 350 times." But this list includes occasions when Mr. Kerry voted to keep taxes at existing levels, or supported lower tax cuts than Republicans sought. Now, he is calling for higher taxes only on people earning more than $200,000 a year while promising new cuts for middle-income families.

Most other dubious claims did not achieve majority acceptance in the battleground states. But one came close. Forty-six percent, including a majority of independents, agree that "John Kerry wants to raise gasoline taxes by 50 cents a gallon," a claim of Bush ads. Mr. Kerry vaguely endorsed the idea in 1994, but now opposes it.

In the survey, only 19 percent admit to learning something from commercials. But it's plain that is where Americans get many of their "factual" conclusions. The 46 percent who believe that Mr. Kerry wants to raise gas taxes could not have "learned" that from anything except Mr. Bush's ads. Nor could the 72 percent who say three million jobs have been lost since Mr. Bush became president (it is now fewer than two million) have drawn that conclusion from careful study of employment statistics. Democrats have sold the three million number so well that even a majority of Republican respondents believe it.

Along with the things they know that aren't so, voters don't know things that might matter. Sixty-six percent do not know that Mr. Bush favors extending the ban on assault weapons, and 68 percent do not know that he proposes cutting the federal deficit in half. Sixty-one percent do not know that Mr. Kerry wants to eliminate tax breaks for profits made overseas and use the money to encourage companies to invest their foreign earnings in the United States, and 44 percent do not know he wants to have the government help pay to get health insurance to all children and to help employers pay their workers' costs.

The election is still six months off. Maybe the campaigns will get around to advertising at least some of these policy positions -- but only if they run out of fantasies about what the other guy stands for.

--"Lie, and the Voters Will Believe," New York Times, May 12, 2004, by Adam Clymer, political director of the National Annenberg Election Survey.

White House violates Congress's right to truthful information

In a report on Monday, the research service said that Congress's "right to receive truthful information from federal agencies to assist in its legislative functions is clear and unassailable." Since 1912, it said, federal laws have protected the rights of federal employees to communicate with Congress, and recent laws have "reaffirmed and strengthened" those protections.

The actuary, Richard S. Foster, has testified that he was ordered to withhold the cost estimates last year, when Congress was considering legislation to add a drug benefit to Medicare. The order, he said, came from Thomas A. Scully, who was then the administrator of Medicare.

Mr. Foster said Mr. Scully threatened to discipline him for insubordination if he gave Congress the data.

The research service, a nonpartisan arm of Congress, said Mr. Scully's order "would appear to violate a specific and express prohibition of federal law." The actuary, it said, has a duty to "make professional and reliable cost estimates, unfettered by any particular partisan agenda."

In March, Bush administration officials suggested that they would provide the actuary's cost estimates to Congress. "We have nothing to hide, so I want to make darn sure that everything comes out," Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, said on March 16. But a month later, in a letter to Congress, the administration refused to provide the documents.

--"Agency Sees Withholding of Medicare Data From Congress as Illegal," New York Times, May 4, 2004

Bush applies "market principles" to Medicare; vulnerable seniors left to sort through chaos

Among retirees of different income groups interviewed last week, the initial reaction was incomprehension.

"Even the person who came to explain it to us didn't understand it," said Mary Shen, 77, at the Whittaker Senior Center on Manhattan's Lower East Side. "It's not fair to expect seniors, who have enough difficulties already, to have to figure this out."

Shirley Brauner, 75, pushed a metal walker through the center's lunchroom. "All I've got to say is they confuse the elderly, including me," she said. "I'm furious. They're taking advantage of the seniors. How can the seniors understand it?"

"What it's like is a bunch of confusion," said Katharine Roberts, 77, who said she had not been to a movie in six years, in part because of her drug expenses. "You might find you really need three cards, and you can only choose one."

The cards are a 19-month stopgap measure to provide discounts of 10 percent to 25 percent for Medicare participants who have no other prescription drug coverage.

The Department of Health and Human Services approved 28 companies or organizations to issue cards. Cards cost up to $30 a year. Each card provides different discounts on different drugs, and is accepted by different pharmacies. Participants can choose only one.

To help people sort through the options, Medicare and a company called DestinationRx set up a database on its Web site, medicare.gov, that lists the prices charged under various plans for whatever medications a user types in. People can get similar help by telephone at 1-800-MEDICAR. But some providers complained that the prices on the site were inaccurate, and some cards are not listed at all.

For many retirees, it is too much.

"I'm 85, do I have to go through this nonsense?" asked Florence Daniels, a retired engineer. To make ends meet and afford her drugs, she said she bought used clothing and put off buying new glasses. Some of her friends travel by bus to Canada to buy drugs; others do without, she said.

Ms. Daniels did not use the government Web site to compare drug cards, in part because she cannot afford a computer. "I'm trying to absorb all the information, but it's ridiculous," she said. "Not just ridiculous, it's scary. If there was a single card and it was administered by Medicare, and it got the cost of drugs down - wonderful, marvelous. But with these cards, the only thing we know is that we'll have to pay money to other people to administer what we can get and can't get."

The discount program, which is financed largely by the cards' sponsors, reflects the Bush administration's desire to open Medicare to market principles without allowing participants to import drugs from other countries, which many Democrats favored.

Often, the discount provided by the cards is not as good as what people can get from existing state programs, union plans or consumer groups, said Robert M. Hayes, president of the Medicare Rights Center, a nonprofit organization that helps individuals with Medicare problems.

Sydney Bild, 81, a retired doctor in Chicago, compared the discount cards with the prices he paid ordering his drugs by mail from Canada. Dr. Bild pays $4,000 to $5,000 a year for five medications. When he checked the government Web site, he said the best plans were about 50 percent to 60 percent higher than what he was paying.

But Dr. Bild said his main objection to the new plans was that companies could change prices on drugs, or change the drugs covered. Medicare requires plans to cover only one drug in each of 209 common categories. Consumers can change cards only once a year. Committing to a card is "like love - it's a sometime thing," Dr. Bild said. "What if I chose one? They could drop my drugs two weeks later."

Companies began soliciting customers for their discount drug cards last week. When the first pamphlets arrived at Beverly Lowy's home in New York City, Ms. Lowy said, she looked at them carefully. She does not have drug coverage and last year spent about $3,000 on prescription drugs. But the more brochures she read, Ms. Lowy said, the less clear things became.

"You really have to be a rocket scientist," Ms. Lowy, 71, said. "It takes time, energy, and you don't even save money. I thought, 'This one is offering this, this one is offering that.' Finally I decided this isn't for me."

Carlos Lopez, the director of Leonard Covello Senior Center in East Harlem, said the cards had so far produced little but anxiety. Mr. Lopez asked participants to bring any applications to him before signing them, and warned them about people selling phony cards.

"They're not nervous, but concerned," he said. "They feel, why now? Why do I suddenly need a card for medications?"

--"73 Options for Medicare Plan Fuel Chaos, Not Prescriptions," New York Times, May 12, 2004

[NOTE: An Editors' Note appearing on the Times website the day after publication of the above article suggests that even these expressions of difficulty by apparently artless seniors might actually just be a further offshoot of the propaganda that dominates civic discourse:

"An article yesterday about confusion surrounding new prescription drug discount cards that are being offered to Medicare recipients included comments in the first four paragraphs from Mildred Fruhling and later in the article from Dr. Sydney Bild.

"Unknown to the writer, both had been interviewed for a video on a Web site operated by Families USA, a consumer advocacy group that has criticized current Medicare policy as inadequate. When approached by The Times during the preparation of the article, Families USA suggested Mrs. Fruhling and Dr. Bild as interviewees without disclosing that they had appeared in the video. Had that been known, The Times would have chosen others to comment for the article or would have made clear the two interviewees' connection to the advocacy group."]

"Reporters" on news shows are govt-hired actors

The videos are intended for use in local television news programs. Several include pictures of President Bush receiving a standing ovation from a crowd cheering as he signed the Medicare law on Dec. 8.

The materials were produced by the Department of Health and Human Services, which called them video news releases, but the source is not identified. Two videos end with the voice of a woman who says, "In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting."

But the production company, Home Front Communications, said it had hired her to read a script prepared by the government.

Another video, intended for Hispanic audiences, shows a Bush administration official being interviewed in Spanish by a man who identifies himself as a reporter named Alberto Garcia.

Another segment shows a pharmacist talking to an elderly customer. The pharmacist says the new law "helps you better afford your medications," and the customer says, "It sounds like a good idea." Indeed, the pharmacist says, "A very good idea."

The government also prepared scripts that can be used by news anchors introducing what the administration describes as a made-for-television "story package."

In one script, the administration suggests that anchors use this language: "In December, President Bush signed into law the first-ever prescription drug benefit for people with Medicare. Since then, there have been a lot of questions about how the law will help older Americans and people with disabilities. Reporter Karen Ryan helps sort through the details."

The "reporter" then explains the benefits of the new law.

Lawyers from the General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, discovered the materials last month when they were looking into the use of federal money to pay for certain fliers and advertisements that publicize the Medicare law.

In a report to Congress last week, the lawyers said those fliers and advertisements were legal, despite "notable omissions and other weaknesses." Administration officials said the television news segments were also a legal, effective way to educate beneficiaries.

Gary L. Kepplinger, deputy general counsel of the accounting office, said, "We are actively considering some follow-up work related to the materials we received from the Department of Health and Human Services."

One question is whether the government might mislead viewers by concealing the source of the Medicare videos, which have been broadcast by stations in Oklahoma, Louisiana and other states.

Federal law prohibits the use of federal money for "publicity or propaganda purposes" not authorized by Congress. In the past, the General Accounting Office has found that federal agencies violated this restriction when they disseminated editorials and newspaper articles written by the government or its contractors without identifying the source.

Kevin W. Keane, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said there was nothing nefarious about the television materials, which he said had been distributed to stations nationwide. Under federal law, he said, the government is required to inform beneficiaries about changes in Medicare.

"The use of video news releases is a common, routine practice in government and the private sector," Mr. Keane said. "Anyone who has questions about this practice needs to do some research on modern public information tools."

But Democrats disagreed. "These materials are even more disturbing than the Medicare flier and advertisements," said Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey. "The distribution of these videos is a covert attempt to manipulate the press."

In the videos and advertisements, the government urges beneficiaries to call a toll-free telephone number, 1-800-MEDICARE. People who call that number can obtain recorded information about prescription drug benefits if they recite the words "Medicare improvement."

Documents from the Medicare agency show why the administration is eager to advertise the benefits of the new law, on radio and television, in newspapers and on the Internet.

"Our consumer research has shown that beneficiaries are confused about the Medicare Modernization Act and uncertain about what it means for them," says one document from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Other documents suggest the scope of the publicity campaign: $12.6 million for advertising this winter, $18.5 million to publicize drug discount cards this spring, about $18.5 million this summer, $30 million for a year of beneficiary education starting this fall and $44 million starting in the fall of 2005.

"Video news releases" have been used for more than a decade. Pharmaceutical companies have done particularly well with them, producing news-style health features about the afflictions their drugs are meant to cure.

The videos became more prominent in the late 1980's, as more and more television stations cut news-gathering budgets and were glad to have packaged news bits to call their own, even if they were prepared by corporations seeking to sell products.

As such, the videos have drawn criticism from some news media ethicists, who consider them to be at odds with journalism's mission to verify independently the claims of corporations and governments.

Government agencies have also produced such videos for years, often on subjects like teenage smoking and the dangers of using steroids. But the Medicare materials wander into more controversial territory.

Bill Kovach, chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, expressed disbelief that any television stations would present the Medicare videos as real news segments, considering the current debate about the merits of the new law.

"Those to me are just the next thing to fraud," Mr. Kovach said. "It's running a paid advertisement in the heart of a news program."

--"U.S. Videos, for TV News, Come Under Scrutiny," New York Times, March 15, 2004

Ad-addled doctors write millions of worse-than-useless prescriptions

Much of the problem stems from drug companies' unequal treatment of the clinical trials they sponsor. Findings that support drug sales tend to get published in medical journals, and become accepted as fact. Unfavorable findings often don't see the light of day.

There are many examples, however, of drug sales skyrocketing despite the availability of research showing negative results or serious side effects.

An article published in the Archives of General Psychiatry in April 2000 reported research results indicating that an older class of antidepressants, known as tricyclics, was more effective than new antidepressants like Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft that have been hyped as "revolutionary." Yet the new antidepressants remained the best-selling class of drugs in the United States in 2000 and 2001.

Similarly with the two arthritis drugs, Celebrex and Vioxx.

Celebrex is much more expensive, provides no better relief of arthritis symptoms, and overall causes 11 percent more serious complications than the other drugs.

Even among people without elevated risk, those taking Vioxx suffered twice as many serious cardiovascular complications as those who took naproxen (sold as Naprosyn or Aleve). Most important, the data on the F.D.A. Web site show that patients taking Vioxx developed 21 percent more serious complications than those who took naproxen.

Since that data was posted more than three years ago, American doctors have prescribed more than $15 billion worth of Celebrex and Vioxx. Full transparency, it appears, doesn't solve the problem of commercial influence.

Given the drug industry's domination of our medical knowledge, nothing short of an oversight board - modeled after the Federal Reserve Board, will make a real difference. The board's members must serve lengthy terms to avoid political influence and have no commercial ties.

--"Information Is the Best Medicine," New York Times, September 18, 2004, by John Abramson

Millions of women tested for cancer in an organ they don't have

The screening Pap test looks for precancerous cells in tissue scraped from a woman's cervix and can prevent what would otherwise be a common and deadly cancer. But testing most women without a cervix makes little sense, leads to false positives and wastes money, said Dr. Brenda E. Sirovich, the study's lead author. Each test costs $20 to $40, she estimated.

The women in question do not include the 1.1 million who had a hysterectomy and still have a cervix, nor the 2.2 million who had their uteruses and cervices removed because they had cancer or precancerous cells in their cervix. (Doctors occasionally leave the cervix behind in hysterectomies, although a large study found no particular advantage to doing so.) In both of these groups, Pap tests are warranted. But most women who have their uteruses and cervices removed do so for reasons other than cancer, like noncancerous fibroid tumors, Dr. Sirovich said.

Dr. Sirovich said she was taken aback by her study's findings.

"We were actually quite surprised," she said. "These women are being screened for cancer in an organ that they don't have."

The 10 million women having unnecessary Pap tests constitute about 12 percent of the 85 million women currently being screened, Dr. Sirovich said.

No one is suggesting fraud or mendacity on the part of the doctors or laboratories. Instead, Dr. Sirovich and others say, the situation seems to reflect doctors' habits and women's expectations.

In their paper, published today in The Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Sirovich and her colleague, Dr. H. Gilbert Welch, analyzed national data on Pap testing and on hysterectomies over 10 years.

Not only are most women who have had hysterectomies having Pap tests, they found, but the proportion having them also held steady, at 68 percent, from 1992 to 2002. No professional organization recommends Pap tests for most women without a cervix.

The screening guidelines "either have not been heard or have been ignored," the investigators wrote.

When a woman does not have a cervix, a doctor scrapes cells from her vagina instead, sending them off to be examined. And that, cancer experts say, is problematic.

Vaginal cancer is exceedingly rare, and tests of vaginal cells are much more likely to result in false positives than they are to find vaginal cancers. A result is unnecessary vaginal biopsies that can result in their own false positives. As a result, women can end up having vaginal tissue removed to treat a cancer that is not even present.

--"10 Million Women Who Lack Cervix Get Pap Tests," New York Times, June 23, 2004

Political distortion of science

The sweeping accusations were later discussed in a conference call organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists, an independent organization that focuses on technical issues and has often taken stands at odds with administration policy. On Wednesday, the organization also issued a 38-page report detailing its accusations.

The two documents accuse the administration of repeatedly censoring and suppressing reports by its own scientists, stacking advisory committees with unqualified political appointees, disbanding government panels that provide unwanted advice and refusing to seek any independent scientific expertise in some cases.

--"Scientists Say Administration Distorts Facts," New York Times, February 19, 2004

Kids can't even trust guidance counsellors

He is working on it, though. For the last two years, Mr. Davolt has been playing host to high school guidance counselors, the "extremely influential" people he hopes will send more students to his 90-acre campus in Denver. He flies them in from around the country to meet the faculty, review the curriculum and, well, go skiing on the world-famous slopes of Vail, try snowmobiling or spend some time at a spa getting a facial or massage - all courtesy of the university, of course.

"Wooing of Guidance Counselors Is Raising Profiles and Eyebrows," New York Times, July 8, 2004

Govt's accounting tricks conceal "devastating" reckoning to come --US Comptroller General

The federal government's gross debt -- the accumulation of its annual deficits -- was about $7 trillion last September, which works out to about $24,000 for every man, woman and child in this country. But that number excludes items like the gap between the government's Social Security and Medicare commitments and the money put aside to pay for them. If these items are factored in, the burden for every American rises to well over $100,000.

The new Medicare prescription drug benefit will add thousands more to that tab. This benefit is unquestionably popular and will make it easier for some older Americans to afford expensive prescription drugs. But it also comes with a steep price tag that few want to talk about. The truth is that the drug benefit as signed into law is one of the largest commitments ever undertaken by the federal government. Preliminary estimates of its long-term cost in current dollars range up to $8 trillion.

To put that number into perspective: it is about four times the entire federal budget. Long-term simulations from the legislative agency I head, the General Accounting Office, paint a chilling picture. Even before the new drug benefit was enacted, these simulations showed that by 2040 current policy could require a 50 percent reduction in federal spending or a doubling of taxes to balance the budget.

Either would be devastating. And keep in mind, it is likely that efforts will be made to expand the drug benefit in the future.

A key lesson from Enron, Worldcom and other business failures is that our free-market system depends on public confidence in the accuracy of corporate financial information. Recent G.A.O. reports have highlighted the increasing frequency of corporate earnings restatements. Who would knowingly buy stock in, lend to, or do business with a company that conceals its true financial condition?

A national education campaign to help the public understand the nature and magnitude of the long-term financial challenge facing this nation is essential. After all, an informed electorate is indispensable for a sound democracy.

--"The Debt No One Wants to Talk About," New York Times, February 4, 2004, by David M. Walker, comptroller general of the United States.

CIA hides relevant info from its own analysts

The problem, which contributed to errors in the agency's prewar estimates on Iraq, is rooted in practices that severely limit how much information about human sources is shared with analysts who produce intelligence assessments, according to senior intelligence officials.

The difficulty of working out a solution reflects a deep gulf between the C.I.A.'s operations directorate, which recruits and supervises spies around the world and is always sensitive about revealing information that might endanger them, and the intelligence directorate, which is in charge of sifting through raw intelligence from spies, satellites and eavesdropping devices and drawing broad conclusions from it.

In the case of Iraq, senior intelligence officials have said, analysts who produced reports stating that Iraq possessed illicit weapons did so without knowing that some of the central charges came from defectors linked to exile organizations that were promoting an American invasion, including Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress. Much of the information that Mr. Chalabi's organization provided to the United States and to news organizations including The New York Times now appears to have been wrong, exaggerated or fabricated, according to internal reviews by the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Intelligence Council.

In these and other cases, the prewar assessments about Iraq's illicit weapons were based on reports from intelligence sources who did not have firsthand information about what they described. That fact, too, was sometimes known to intelligence officers but rarely shared with intelligence analysts, according to senior intelligence officials.

The flawed intelligence that contributed to prewar assessments on Iraq included claims from a defector who was identified as early as May 2002 as a fabricator by the Defense Intelligence Agency. Nevertheless, reports based on his debriefings arranged by the Iraqi National Congress found their way into documents and speeches, including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's presentation in February 2003 to the United Nations Security Council, which laid out the case for war.

According to senior administration officials, Mr. Powell has been seeking explanations from the C.I.A. about that episode and others. They include the fact that serious questions have now been raised about the veracity of not only that source, but three others that Mr. Powell cited in the United Nations speech as having told American intelligence that Iraq possessed mobile laboratories to produce biological weapons, a claim now widely doubted within American intelligence agencies.

--"Fixing an Internal Problem Takes Time at the C.I.A.," New York Times, June 10, 2004

Intelligence that led to war not just wrong but unfounded and unreasonable --Senate Committee review

The detailed 511-page report, the result of a yearlong review, found in particular that the stark prewar judgment by American intelligence agencies that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons had not been substantiated by the agencies' own reporting at the time.

"Most of the major key judgments" in an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's illicit weapons were "either overstated, or were not supported by, the underlying intelligence reporting," the committee report said. "A series of failures, particularly in analytic trade craft, led to the mischaracterization of intelligence."

Even Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, the panel's Republican chairman, an ardent supporter of the war, said he was not sure that Congress would have authorized the war had it known of the flimsiness on which the prewar intelligence assessments were based.

On the issue of Iraq and illicit weapons, the huge gap between the intelligence agencies' prewar assertions, most notably in the National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002, and the fact that no such weapons have been found has been apparent for more than a year.

What the Senate report added to the picture was the conclusion that the intelligence assessments about Iraq were not just wrong, but that they were generally unfounded.

--"Senators Assail C.I.A. Judgments on Iraq's Arms as Deeply Flawed," New York Times, July 10, 2004

New York Times's incomplete acknowledgement of its own journalistic breaches

Five days later, The Times reporters learned that the tubes were in fact a subject of debate among intelligence agencies. [This indicated that the administration had not been forthright in its statements for the earlier article. --UW] The misgivings appeared deep in an article on Page A13, under a headline that gave no inkling that we were revising our earlier view ("White House Lists Iraq Steps to Build Banned Weapons"). The Times gave voice to skeptics of the tubes on Jan. 9, when the key piece of evidence was challenged by the International Atomic Energy Agency. That challenge was reported on Page A10; it might well have belonged on Page A1.

--"FROM THE EDITORS: The Times and Iraq," New York Times, May 26, 2004

To anyone who read the paper between September 2002 and June 2003, the impression that Saddam Hussein possessed, or was acquiring, a frightening arsenal of W.M.D. seemed unmistakable. Except, of course, it appears to have been mistaken.

Some of The Times's coverage in the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq was credulous; much of it was inappropriately italicized by lavish front-page display and heavy-breathing headlines; and several fine articles by David Johnston, James Risen and others that provided perspective or challenged information in the faulty stories were played as quietly as a lullaby. Especially notable among these was Risen's "C.I.A. Aides Feel Pressure in Preparing Iraqi Reports," which was completed several days before the invasion and unaccountably held for a week. It didn't appear until three days after the war's start, and even then was interred on Page B10....

There is nothing more toxic to responsible journalism than an anonymous source. There is often nothing more necessary, too; crucial stories might never see print if a name had to be attached to every piece of information. But a newspaper has an obligation to convince readers why it believes the sources it does not identify are telling the truth. That automatic editor defense, "We're not confirming what he says, we're just reporting it," may apply to the statements of people speaking on the record. For anonymous sources, it's worse than no defense. It's a license granted to liars.

The contract between a reporter and an unnamed source - the offer of information in return for anonymity - is properly a binding one. But I believe that a source who turns out to have lied has breached that contract, and can fairly be exposed. The victims of the lie are the paper's readers, and the contract with them supersedes all others. (See Chalabi, Ahmad, et al.) Beyond that, when the cultivation of a source leads to what amounts to a free pass for the source, truth takes the fall. A reporter who protects a source not just from exposure but from unfriendly reporting by colleagues is severely compromised. Reporters must be willing to help reveal a source's misdeeds; information does not earn immunity.

[NOTE: The article fails to elaborate on or give any specifics about how lying sources were protected by "severely compromised" Times journalists. --UW]

--"Weapons of Mass Destruction? Or Mass Distraction?", May 30, 2004, by NYT Ombudsman Dan Okrent