The Power Of The Manipulated Press

Remember the good old 1970's? Foghat, The Carol Burnett Show, Reggie Jackson, Viet Nam, Nixon's Enemies List? If you don't, you can always turn on TV Land or download a few choice tunes - or you could take a look at the testimony from "Dick" Cheney's former top press assistant, Cathie Martin.
Testifying at "Scooter" Libby's trial, Ms. Martin described the rating of certain journalists as friends to favor and critics to freeze out. The most pressing example comes from the story of ex-ambassador Joseph Wilson, who happened to be married to a CIA agent. His wife's unit at the CIA had sent him to Niger in 2002 to check a report Iraq was buying uranium for nuclear weapons. Cheney and the departments of State and Defense wanted to verify that. Wilson thought he had debunked the report, but Bush mentioned it anyway in his State of the Union address in 2003. The story helped justify war with Iraq.
Wilson claimed Cheney's questions prompted his trip and Cheney should have received his report long before Bush spoke. Wilson's charges first surfaced, attributed to an unnamed ex-ambassador, in Nicholas Kristof's New York Times column. But Martin testified she felt no urgency to set him straight because Kristof "attacked us, our administration fairly regularly." The liberal bastion of the media, the New York Times, had made the list.
But the questions wouldn't stop. It was decided that CIA Director George Tenet would issue a statement taking the blame for allowing Bush to mention the Niger story. Cheney and Libby worried Tenet would not go far enough to distance the vice president from the whole mess.
You may remember George Tenet as the recipient of the Medal of Freedom. Who resigned in disgrace. And that creaking sound you hear is "Scooter" twisting in the wind.