NYT Bows To White House Pressure. Again.
In the article’s 11th paragraph, the Times disclosed that publication was delayed “for more than three years,” after the administration argued “that premature disclosure could hurt the effort to secure the weapons.”
What was going on three years ago? Oh, that's right, President Bush was running for re-election against Sen. John Kerry (D-MA).
And, gee, what else does this "sitting on the story" remind us of? The NYT sat on its December 2005 story about warrantless, domestic electronic surveillance, "for a year" at the request of the White House according to Executive Editor Bill Keller.
Two stories that would have changed the nature of 2004 presidential campaign debate were gagged by the NYT. What liberal media?
Politico reports that Keller is mum on the nuclear relationship story or why the Times has decided now is the time to publish the piece, which is based on "current and former senior administration officials." No names are named -- in or out of the White House -- unless a person has spoken on the record at some official event.
However, less than two weeks ago, the NYT published, "So, What About Those Nukes?," a Richard Sanger piece that provides some of the backstory for the Sunday article:
The administration says it hopes to put Pakistan on a path to democracy. But Washington’s actions show it does not want to go so fast that nuclear control becomes a casualty. So President Bush was on the phone to General Musharraf on Wednesday to press for the patina of a return to democracy: He said General Musharraf must shed his title as army chief, hold parliamentary elections early next year, and find a way to work with Benazir Bhutto, the opposition leader with whom the United States has urged him to share power. The general promised to hold elections by February, but the crisis was far from over.
UPI notes that Pakistan acquired nuclear weapons "under the very noses of the U.S. Reagan administration." From that time forward, it seems we've been playing nice, trying to get a handle on the risk there.
Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell complained a few years back that the United States does not know the exact location of all the nuclear components. This means that U.S. secret services, although hand-in-glove with their Pakistani counterparts since the 1980s, have not fully penetrated the Pakistani nuclear security system. They do not fully understand the complexity of all the safeguards, although the United States helped to train personnel and supplied hardware to secure the nuclear materials.
It's pretty clear how the wiretapping story could have influenced the tenor of pre-election debate, based on the activities of the courts in the intervening period. What about the Pakistan nuke story? Given that it's a foreign policy story, the American people would probably have yawned.
On the other hand, the The Hindu has an eyebrow-raising allegation about complicity (remember, India and Pakistan share a border):
‘Deception’ tells the tale of how ‘for three decades, consecutive US administrations, Republican and Democrat, as well as the governments in Britain and other European countries, had allowed Pakistan to acquire highly restricted nuclear technology’. If you wonder ‘why anyone would want to place the survival of a military regime in Pakistan above the long-term safety of the world,’ the answer lies in the Cold War era, when ‘Washington was willing to turn a blind eye to General Zia ul-Haq’s nuclear aspirations.”
What do you think?
For more information:
- About.com, "ABC: Pakistan To Give OBL A Break"
- UPI Asia, "Commentary: Secure Pakistan's nuclear weapons first"
- About.com, "India - Pakistan: Background and Threat"
- About.com, "Musharraf Declares Martial Law in Pakistan"
- About.com, "Pakistan Geography"
- About.com, "Profile: Gen. Pervez Musharraf"
- About.com, "Terrorism Timeline: Pakistan and the Global War on Terror"
- About.com, "What Should the US Do About Pakistan"
- The Australian, "The US is missing the point"
- Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "Dictator, nukes must go"
- The Hindu, "On ‘the global nuclear weapons conspiracy’"
- Hindustan Times, "Nuclear Nightmare"