So began every Saturday Night Live Weekend Update sketch with Norm MacDonald at the desk. Perhaps ABC should consider adopting something similar...
The more I read about this whole Alexis Debat thing, the more it stinks. For more background, consider the following:
Washington Post
Attywood (this is a good one; very comprehensive of all of the ramifications and dovetails)
ABC News Blotter
From the Post:
A former consultant to ABC's investigative unit admitted yesterday that he put his name on a purported interview with Barack Obama that he never conducted.
Alexis Debat, a former French defense official who now works at the Nixon Center, published the interview in the French magazine Politique Internationale. He said he had hired a freelance journalist to conduct the interview, in which the Democratic presidential candidate supposedly said that Iraq was "already a defeat for America" that has "wasted thousands of lives." Debat said he had been unable to locate the intermediary, and the Obama campaign says no such interview took place.
From ABC:
Former President Bill Clinton, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan have added their names to the list of people who say they were the subjects of fake interviews published in a French foreign affairs journal under the name of Alexis Debat, a former ABC News consultant.
See a connecting thread between all of these "fake interview" subjects? If the Obama quotes are any indication, they're all anti-war people on the left, and are/were all painted as hippie pinkos in an effort to make them politically weak (although, how Gates fits in is a bit of a mystery to me... maybe the terrorists use Macs?).
From Attywood:
Debat -- a former French defense official who now works at the (no, you can't make these things up) Nixon Center -- has also been a leading source in pounding the drumbeat for war in Iran, and directly linked to some bizarre stories -- reported on ABC's widely watched news shows, and nowhere else -- that either ratcheted up fears of terrorism or that could have stoked new tensions between Washington and Tehran.
Good God... though ABC's Brian Ross says his information about Al-Qaida was generally "spot on," dude apparently could never prove he had a Ph.D., and is blaming these ghost interviews on free-lance consultants who apparently don't exist and/or can't be tracked down.
I, along with many, blamed the media's rubber stamping of the Iraq war on simple journalistic incompetence. But, does it run deeper than that? This dude is the "terrorism expert" on one of the major networks, and at the same time is publishing/reporting shit that either never happened or can't be corroborated--all while holding a prominent seat in a Washington conservative think-tank group?
Here's the one that kills me (from the ABC Blotter):
In fact, Stephane Dujarric, the deputy communications director for the U.N. secretary-general, said he called the fabricated interview to the attention of the editor of the magazine, Patrick Wajsman, in June 2005.
"I told him that if he went ahead with it, we would denounce the interview as a fake," the U.N. official said. "This was not some obscure guy. This was the sitting secretary-general of the U.N., and the magazine was told it was a fake," he said.
Despite that, Debat continued for the next two years to be cited as the author of interviews with a range of prominent U.S. public officials in Politique Internationale.
The U.N. official said a second supposed interview of Annan by Debat, posted earlier this year by Politique Internationale, was actually portions of a speech the secretary-general had given at Princeton University.
The magazine editor, Wajsman, told ABCNews.com he thought the problem with the Annan interview, one of the first he submitted, was "maybe a technical one" or a misunderstanding.
***
Debat told ABCNews.com yesterday the interview of Sen. Obama was not a fake but conducted for him by a freelance journalist named Rob Sherman in Chicago.
Debat says he believes he was "scammed" by Sherman, who he says he paid $500 to conduct an interview with the senator.
Repeated calls to a number for Sherman provided by Debat have gone unanswered, and today a reporter for the Daily Herald in suburban Chicago told ABC News the address for Sherman on a fax that Debat said he received from him does not exist.
Now THAT'S some journalistic incompetence! It's called fucking FACT CHECKING. And, when a spokesperson for the fucking SECRETARY GENERAL OF THE UN SAYS YOUR INTERVIEW IS FAKE, you should probably do a little legwork yourself. When they point out that it was pulled from a public speech he gave, maybe that should raise a red flag. And, I'm no free-lance journalist, but if you're sending me to interview a presidential candidate, I'm asking for a little more than $500. That would raise a red-flag for me, too.
But, what's the motivation? As Attywood asks:
But what is really going on? Is Debat pulling sensational stories from thin air, as was the case with Obama, to make a name for himself? Or in his role at the Nixon Center -- which still has close ties to Henry Kissinger and others in the conservatve foreign policy establishment like former Secretary of State James Baker, who spoke there recently-- is he serving a higher agenda of spin?
We may never know, as these people tend to circle the wagons better than any others in recorded history (see: Libby, Scooter).
The fact remains that Debat was the primary source for much of ABC's content relating to Iran and/or possible military/terrorist activity there. And, as we are all taught in kindergarten, where there's smoke there's usually fire.
Attywood:
His work should cause a re-examination of all of ABC News' investigative reporting on both terrorism and Iran over the last couple of years, because -- wittingly or unwittingly -- no other network has better served the Bush agenda in the Middle East.
For example, no story raised tension on the Iranian front more than this one -- which was instantly discredited by several knowledgable experts:Iran has more than tripled its ability to produce enriched uranium in the last three months, adding some 1,000 centrifuges which are used to separate radioactive particles from the raw material.
The development means Iran could have enough material for a nuclear bomb by 2009, sources familiar with the dramatic upgrade tell ABC News.
The sources say the unexpected expansion is taking place at Iran's nuclear enrichment plant outside the city of Natanz, in a hardened facility 70 feet underground.
Was Debat -- who was aggressively working with Ross on other Iran stories at the time -- one of the sources on this, as well? If so, it would fit with Debat's modus operandi on the Times of London article.
As noted at the top, there are two radically different ways to look at this scandal. Either Debat is a lone wolf, a deluded self-aggrandizer whose main agenda is promoting himself. Or he is acting in his role at the Nixon Center as a conduit, spreading information and occasional disinformation at the behest of others.
Either way, this is unarguably yet another huge black eye for the American media. But if the latter is true, it could also raise major questions about American foreign policy, and about the future of war and peace in the Persian Gulf.
Some of my questions:
- The righties howled at Dan Rather in 2004 about the Bush/Air National Guard stuff that, while probably still true, couldn't be substantiated and referenced an apparently forged document... where are they and their megaphones now?
- How far down does this rabbit hole really go?
- How much of the news that we get in this country can we actually trust anymore?
- When does the population of this country get off its collective ass and demand more--both in terms of substance and of accountability--from its government and its media?
The US may never attack Iran, but if it does, after what we now know about the 2002/2003 reports of Iraq's WMD capabilities--as well as the continuing grizzly aftermath of our invasion--how can we honestly allow ourselves to place faith in the decision-makers that we're being told the truth?
Scary/disheatening shit, man. And this right as we commemorate 9/11 for the 6th unfortunate time. I'm no tin-foil hat wearer by any means, but it makes you wonder.
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