[Q]Some Understand Covert Journey; Others Fear Bad Precedent
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 28, 2003; Page A44
Although the White House lied to much of the press to conceal President Bush's Thanksgiving visit to Baghdad, many journalists and analysts yesterday were willing to give the administration a pass.
"In this case, it's justified," said Bob Schieffer, CBS's chief Washington correspondent. "It was extremely important for the president to demonstrate that he's willing to go where those young men and women he sent over there have gone." If the reporters "were going with a military operation in Baghdad, they'd keep it off the record."
But Philip Taubman, Washington bureau chief of the New York Times, said that "in this day and age, there should have been a way to take more reporters. People are perfectly capable of maintaining a confidence for security reasons. It's a bad precedent." Once White House officials "decided to do a stealth trip, they bought into a whole series of things that are questionable."
Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, criticized the White House correspondents who made the trip without spilling the secret. "That's just not kosher," he said. "Reporters are in the business of telling the truth. They can't decide it's okay to lie sometimes because it serves a larger truth or good cause."
The deception was so complete that White House officials had not only said the president would be spending the holiday in Crawford, Tex., but they also announced a free-range turkey menu. The Associated Press carried a report Wednesday, based on a "senior administration official," that while in Crawford, "President Bush will spend part of his Thanksgiving Day calling soldiers to express his and the nation's gratitude for their service in Iraq."
Although journalists routinely keep secret details of military operations, as they did during the war in Iraq, it is highly unusual for them not to reveal a major presidential trip overseas.
Former White House spokesman Joe Lockhart, who worked for President Bill Clinton, said: "There's no way to do this kind of trip if it's broadcast in advance, for security reasons. My problem with this is not that he misled the press. This is a president who has been unwilling to provide his presence to the families who have suffered but thinks nothing of flying to Baghdad to use the troops there as a prop."
But Jonah Goldberg, editor-at-large of National Review Online, called the trip "a political masterstroke," saying: "This wasn't lying about an 18-minute gap on a tape or lying under oath. If they had announced the trip and there were attacks and people had died, everyone would be screaming bloody murder about how Bush put people in harm's way. I'm sure the press corps has their dresses over their head about it, but I sincerely doubt anyone in the real America will have any concern about it whatsoever."
Rosenstiel, however, said the trip "was much bigger news on a slow news day if it was unexpected. What reporters have done by going along with this is to help Bush politically."
The 13 pool correspondents summoned for the trip included Jim Angle of Fox News, the AP's Terence Hunt, Mike Allen of The Washington Post, Richard Keil of Bloomberg News, a Reuters reporter and photographers from Time, Newsweek and three wire services.
The White House uses a rotating system for a pool that includes newspaper, wire-service and television reporters when the president travels, but even news executives were uncertain yesterday whether the standard procedures had been followed.
Mike Abramowitz, The Post's national editor, said Allen did not tell his editors of the Baghdad trip in advance. "I'm glad Mike was on the plane. He had a great file," Abramowitz said. But, he added, "I am concerned that no one on the desk knew where a White House reporter was."
Kim Hume, Fox's Washington bureau chief, who knew that Angle was going, said White House officials "obviously made a decision that this was more important than the flak they were going to take from it." She said the administration took a network pool crew, as it was supposed to, and "we didn't get any competitive advantage from it." Had more journalists been told, Hume said, "the story would have leaked in about two seconds" because "news people are the biggest gossips alive."
Kathryn Kross, CNN's Washington bureau chief, said a two-person crew from her network was dismissed from the White House pool Wednesday, with the understanding that no further news would be made. "We're all for the president boosting the troops however the White House feels is appropriate," she said. "But apparently the White House put together its own group of people to accompany the president on this trip, and we're real interested to learn their reasons for doing that."
The surprise visit produced upbeat, sometimes gushing coverage on the cable networks, which kept rerunning video of Bush with a turkey platter and his pep talk to the troops. "This is a show of power. . . . This has significance in terms of showing the power of the presidency," Fox anchor David Asman said.
Time's Vivian Walt said on CNN that "an electric shock went through the room" and that for Bush, crying and trembling, it was "a taste of victory."
The message, retired Col. Ken Allard said on MSNBC, is that "you underestimate George Bush at your peril. It was a gutsy call, a Hail Mary pass, and he pulled it off."
Past official deceptions have tended to involve military matters. In 1983, then-White House spokesman Larry Speakes told a reporter a day before the United States invaded Grenada that the idea was "preposterous."
Howard Kurtz hosts CNN's weekly media program.
[/Q]
sick.
is she using it for political gain? of course... what politician, no matter what the party, doesn't use whatever they can to help their career? the only problem i have with it is that she's probably spent more time in afgahnistan and iraq over the past month than she's spent in the state of new york in the past year.
