Below the fold is a letter I've just sent to the New York Times concerning the Dearlove Memo, reported all over the world but not much here. Not fit to print, I guess. It makes me crazy.
Dear Intrepid Reporters:
Can you explain to me, please, why the New York Times' only mention of the Dearlove Memo is contained in Alan Cowell's May 2, 2004 article "For Blair, Iraq Issue Just Won't Go Away," an article about the politics of the election in Britain? More importantly, would you care to hazard a guess as to why we do not see the damning sentence "But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy," quoted from that memo, anywhere on your web site?
The Times Online (U.K.) article, containing the full text of said memo, can be found here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1593607,00.html
That article is dated May 2, 2005.
For the last three and a half years, some in the United States have maintained that members of the Bush administration interfered with members of the U.S. intelligence community in their analyses of information relating to the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. As you may remember, the alleged existence of such weapons was a leading justification used to invade Iraq preemptively in March of 2003.
That this memo was issued by the chief of Britain's MI-6 intelligence service may give it some weight.
I just did a text search both of Google News and of the New York Times web site. I found few occurrences of the phrase "the intelligence and facts were being fixed" in U. S. news media on Google News. A search of the New York Times website returns a "no matches for your search" message.
I cannot tell you how disappointed I am to see the New York Times yet again ignoring a story that has major implications for public opinion in this country, one that should be major news in the United States. Even if the memo turns out to be a forgery, an event I do not expect to see, it is news.
These are perilous times. Some of the citizens of the United States see the Rapture just around the corner, and excoriate the press - and the Times - for being too secular and too liberal. Others of us see the end of the Republic approaching, or perhaps having passed without notice or obituary, and believe that the Fourth Estate has failed us utterly in its concern for safety and profit. We see in the foreign press news that has the potential to rally U. S. public opinion going largely unreported and ignored in this country.
I would have expected better from the New York Times. Its behavior over the last five years has been, at times, little short of sycophantic, and rarely courageous. There were a few good moments from a few good people, but on the whole the Times has been timid and cautious to the point of cowardice in the face of national leadership that bullies and intimidates the press and that lies, regularly and demonstrably, to the people.