This is how the Los Angeles Times reported on Able Danger in their 8/23 article “No Evidence Atta Was Identified, Official Says“:

The Pentagon has been unable to validate claims that a secret intelligence unit identified Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta as a terrorist more than a year before the attacks, a Defense Department spokesman said.

Larry Di Rita said research into the matter continued, but that there had been no evidence that the intelligence unit, called Able Danger, came up with information as specific as an Army Reserve officer associated with the program had asserted.

If the Los Angeles Times was one’s only information source, one would naturally conclude that there was no story, no evidence, no witnesses, etc. to the Able Danger claims. Not so fast…The New York Times and Fox News were already reporting that a second military intelligence has publicly backed claims  that Able Danger identified Mohamed Atta as a security risk.

Navy Capt. Scott Phillpott  told FOX News in a statement Monday evening that the lead hijacker in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks was identified as someone with ties to known terrorists.

So the question is, did the Los Angeles Times not know this information when they published their story or did they simply choose to ignore it. Both raise uncomfortable questions. If it is the former, that the Times simply did not know the information, then they should be embarrassed by being scooped by Fox, the NYT, and conservative bloggers such as Captain Ed, as well as having put out a misleading piece. If the latter (i.e., they purposely chose to ignore the corroborating witness), then it is either because they did not think that it was an important development (which is implausible) or was it because they unilaterally discounted the allegations of Capt. Phillpott–a decorated officer and who briefed the 9/11 commission before their report was issued.

Next topic is the headline which the Times used “No Evidence Atta Was Identified, Official Says.” Fox ran the headline “Navy Captain Backs Able Danger Claims” and then included the more accurate and informative wording that “Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita said he is not certain the Pentagon can substantiate the claims made by the officers.” To add further clarification, Fox then ran the direct quote from the Pentagon spokesman:

“There appear to be more memories than there is information to substantiate those memories. We’re reviewing the matter carefully, but thus far have not found what it is these handful of individuals seem to remember,” he said.

Fox also included the quite relevant remark that because was a classified project it would be illegal for them to retain documents for personal use (in other words don’t look for corroborating emails or other “smoking guns” that people might expect in undoing a cover-up.) While one might want to dispute aspects of the claims, it is inappropriate to assert that the public allegations of two intelligence officers could equate to “no evidence.”

While the Los Angeles Times was not alone in putting its slant into a headline. The Detroit Free press ran it as “No proof U.S. hid info on terrorist.” However, the majority of other papers reporting the story made mention of Scott Phillpott’s support of Shaffer as well as used a more-balanced headline.

For example, The New York Times used the headline “Second Officer Says 9/11 Leader Was Named Before Attacks“. The New York Times also put the Pentagon’s statement in context saying that “His comments came on the same day that the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita, told reporters that the Defense Department had been unable to validate the assertions made by an Army intelligence veteran, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, and now backed up by Captain Phillpott, about the early identification of Mr. Atta.

The New York Times also noted that Pentagon spokesman, Maj. Paul Swiergosz, said he did not know if the Defense Department had questioned Captain Phillpott in its two-week-old investigation of Able Danger. (Again, it is important to note that the ”no evidence” statement excludes the public statements of two intelligence officers, one of which may not yet have been interviewed by the DOD). At least the NYT gave us enough information to see that there could still be a great deal to this story. LAT readers are out of luck. (Maybe that’s why I see so many blue wrapped NYT papers on driveways in my Los Angeles neighbourhood).

Readers of the L.A. Times would also know nothing nothing about Pennsylvania Congressman Curt Weldon’s  statement:

“Three people associated with Able Danger have gone on the record to certify that it was a program tasked with mapping Al-Qaeda worldwide – its work included the linkages which identified Mohamed Atta. That finding should not be taken lightly, and neither should the credibility of the three people who have bravely gone on the record.”

While it is possible that the Times had gone to print prior to this statement’s release, it is certainly in time for the LAT 8/24 edition which will be going to print in the next hour. At the time of this writing, 11:45 pm, there was nothing up on the LAT website for this story. (Click here to go to the LAT website and type in “Able Danger” to the search window.)

In summary, at a minimum the LAT omitted material allegations in its Able Danger story and gave undue weight to the DOD statement that there was “no evidence” by failing to include all of the qualifiers to the “no evidence” statement. Other papers did, so why didn’t the LAT? The DOD has been trying to recover from its public relations disaster and has been parsing words (”can’t substantiate” instead of “we can prove they are wrong”). Is this the dawn of a new era where the DOD releases a statement and the LAT takes it as gospel?

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For the record: Media Matters for America reports that both the New York Times and Fox News falsely reported that a second military officer backed up Shaffer’s Able Danger claim. For those of you not familiar with Media Matters they are a self-described watchdog of “conservative misinformation in the U.S. media” so their claims need to be thoroughly vetted before being relied on. Furthermore, even if this is true it does not explain why the L.A. Times omitted any reference to it for all of the reasons outlined above.

For more reliable and comprehensive coverage than either the LAT or Media for Matters, Captain Ed was been focusing on this story from day one.

Additional reading: This isn’t the first time Independent Sources has questioned the Los Angeles Times. Check out “Bad Analogy Trend Continuing Unabated” and here (for all of our LAT posts.

technorati: able danger Weldon 9/11 Commission

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 24th, 2005 at 12:35 am by Insider and is filed under War, Los Angeles Times. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.