William Safire, minister of disinformation

The New York Times runs corrections when reporters get a middle initial wrong. So why does its conservative columnist get away with glaring errors that shape world affairs?

By Barry Lando

Feb. 21, 2004 | With daily revelations of how the White House made use of faulty intelligence to bolster its political agenda, the media is also beginning to examine its own role in the affair. There's plenty to examine: Take, for instance, William Safire and the New York Times, frequently cited as a conduit for official disinformation.

A recent example was his trumpeting of the sensational charges published last November in the Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine. The article proved, according to Safire, "that Saddam Hussein's spy agency and top al-Qaida operatives certainly were in frequent contact for a decade, and that there is renewed reason to suspect an Iraqi spymaster in Prague may have helped finance the 9/11 attacks." Those charges were based on the leak of a secret memorandum from Douglas Feith, a senior Pentagon official, to the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee.

Safire had been pounding on the Prague connection since November 2001, two months after the 9/11 terror attacks. Fired anew by the Weekly Standard's story, he fired off two imperious columns of his own, demanding action from FBI Director Robert Mueller and the Senate Intelligence Committee. "I'd also assign new agents to follow up leads in Prague," he advised.

"Intrepid journalists," Safire assured his readers, "will ultimately bring the full story of the Saddam-bin Laden connection to light. In the meantime, the F.B.I. should stop treating 9/11 as a cold case."

Sounds pretty sensational indeed, except for the fact that the Pentagon immediately issued an unusual statement declaring that reports claiming that the new information proved there had been contacts between al-Qaida and Iraq "are inaccurate."

Further, the Pentagon continued, the leak "was deplorable and may be illegal."

The memo consists mainly of 50 excerpts drawn from raw intelligence reports from four U.S. agencies from 1990 to 2003. They are vague, mostly unsourced and far from conclusive. Indeed, according to several retired intelligence officers, the memo represents the same kind of ideological cherry-picking of intelligence that led to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in the first place.

In short, the original headline-making conclusions are now seen by most to be threadbare. But not to Safire, who has made no mention of the Pentagon denials and remains incredulous that anyone might doubt the charges.

That, of course, is vintage Safire. Which might be fine if he were writing for a small town paper in Northern Maine. But the fact is that, whether Times editors like it or not, for most readers, Safire's charges also carry the weighty validation of the planet's most important newspaper of record. It's a problem the Times has yet to face.

I speak from the experience of looking into three Safire columns attacking France.

Countries cannot sue for libel. Otherwise, France would have quite a case against Safire and the Times. Safire's wild charges in a three-column barrage last year helped to deepen the war-related alienation between the U.S. and France. And though erroneous, they have entered the realm of historical verity -- and remain there to this day, thanks to the Times.

What is particularly outrageous is that Safire and his sources were allowed to continue their campaign using the Times and the International Herald Tribune as their podium -- even though the editors of both papers had been advised that the charges didn't hold water.

Further, according to Times policy, neither Safire nor his editors are under any obligation whatsoever to correct those errors.

Safire's main accusation was that French companies, with the knowledge of French intelligence services, helped supply vital rocket fuel components to Saddam.

As a former producer for 30 years with CBS' "60 Minutes," I looked into Safire's claim. I concluded that his story was based more on Francophobia than fact, built on flimsy evidence and biased reporting.

Safire's case has two parts. The first is that a French trader, CIS Paris, was the key intermediary enabling a Chinese company, Qilo Chemicals, to ship a product known as HTPB to Iraq. HTPB is used as a "binder" for solid rocket propellants. His charge is based on quotes from an exchange of e-mails, leaked to Safire from "an Arab source." The most damning message was sent Sept. 4, 2002. In that e-mail, James Crown of Qilo Chemicals wrote, "Thank you for your order to our HTPB-III! We just have sent a 40' container to Tartous (Syria) last month."

According to Safire, the chemical was received there by a trading company that was an intermediary for the Iraqi missile industry, the end user. The HTPB was then trucked across Syria to Iraq. According to Safire, it was the French connection -- CIS Paris -- that made the whole deal possible.

CIS Paris president Jean-Pierre Pertriaux makes no secret of his long-term relationship with Iraq, including brokering materials destined for military ends, like HTPB. He also admits having contacted the Chinese company, Qilo Chemicals. Like many such brokers, he skirts the law. By acting only as a go-between, strictly speaking, he would not be breaking any French or European export regulations, if the HTPB were not exported from France.

But the key point is that, according to Pertriaux, he was never able to consummate the deal for HTPB. When contacted by phone, James Crown of Qilo also claimed he'd never completed the sale.

What about the e-mails cited by Safire?

Read in their entirety, they make no sense, one sentence contradicting the next. Indeed, carefully analyzed, the whole convoluted exchange of e-mails quoted by Safire doesn't hold together, which may be why Safire quotes sparingly from them.

Safire also noted that Pertriaux claimed the deal with Qilo Chemicals was never consummated, but there was no way that denial would blunt his attack.

His target wasn't a single French trader but the government of France. CIS Paris, he charged, would never have been able to pursue its trade without the knowledge of French intelligence. "French intelligence has long been aware of it," he wrote.

Safire was right on that point, but totally wrong on his conclusions. In July 2002, both the U.S. State Department and the Defense Intelligence Agency warned France of CIS Paris' attempts to purchase various products for Iraq's arms industry. The French immediately investigated CIS's activities but found nothing illegal. They requested more information from the United States -- information that might permit France to intercept any eventual delivery.

The U.S. authorities never replied.

"We're still waiting," says a French source close to the investigation.

Next page: Safire's charges were consecrated as fact by publications worldwide