Rant: Are we that good? Damn right we are

The Rant
Are we that good? Damn right we are
By DOUG THOMPSON
Dec 26, 2005, 04:08

?Why is it,? the emailer who signed their name only as ?skeptical? wanted to know, ?that your story about President Bush?s remarks about the Constitution has not been reported by any other news media? That convinces me that it must be untrue. Why is it that you have sources that no one else seems to have? Are you that good??

In a situation like this, false modesty usually kicks in and I say something like ?well, sometimes we just get lucky? but to hell with false modesty. Luck had nothing to do with this story just as luck has had nothing to do with many other stories that we all too often break long before the so-called ?mainstream media.?

Are we that good? Damn right we are.

On January 22, 2003, before President Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, we ran a story, Role reversal: Bush wants war, Pentagon urges caution. Among the points in that story:

But conversations with sources within the Bush administration, the Pentagon, the FBI and the intelligence community indicate a deepening rift between the professionals who wage war for a living and the administration civilians to want to send them into battle.

Sources say the White House has ordered the FBI and CIA to ?find and document? links between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the 9-11 terrorist attacks.

?The implication is clear,? grumbles one longtime FBI agent. ?Find a link, any link, no matter how vague or unproven, and then use that link to justify action against Iraq.?

We followed that story up the next day, January 23 with this one: Intel pros forced to fabricate Iraqi intelligence:

U.S. intelligence professionals, under pressure from the Bush administration to provide proof needed to justify war with Iraq, say they have been forced to fabricate evidence of Saddam Hussein?s weapons of mass destruction as well as the location of non-existent hidden chemical weapon warheads.

The fabricated documentation, shared for the first time with the White House on Thursday, provides the basis for material the administration requires to justify an attack on Iraq.

It was two years, repeat two years, before the same information appeared in mainstream media.

Last year, June 7, 2004, we reported on the U.S. government?s spying on American citizens with the story: Where big brother snoops on Americans 24/7:

Despite Congressional action cutting funding, and the resignation of the program?s controversial director, retired admiral John Poindexter, DARPA?s TIA program is alive and well and prying into the personal business of Americans 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

?When Congress cut the funding, the Pentagon ? with administration approval ? simply moved the program into a ?black bag? account,? says a security consultant who worked on the DARPA project. ?Black bag programs don?t require Congressional approval and are exempt from traditional oversight.?

In addition, the super-secret National Security Agency, under an executive order signed by President Bush not long after September 11, 2001, began monitoring phone conversations and emails of American citizens even though the agency's charter limits their activities to overseas communications.

It took The New York Times more than a year to get up the guts to publish their story on domestic spying even though they knew about it at the same time.

We?ve been telling the world about the dangers of the USA Patriot Act and the overzealous Department of Homeland Security for the past four years. For example, it was November 20, 2002, when we ran this story: Welcome to the New American Gestapo:

Excuse me if I don?t join in all the senseless celebration over creation of yet another mammoth bureaucracy of the federal government. Pardon me if I don?t go ga-ga over a federal agency that has been given unlimited powers to spy on Americans, trample all over the First and Fourth Amendments, ignore the privacy of anyone it chooses and violate the rights of every man, woman and child who used to live in the Land of the Free.

This new Department of Homeland Security has the power to wiretap any American it wants, without a court order, without cause and without justification to any higher authority. Homeland Security goon squads will have the power to enter any American home, without a search warrant, without probable cause, simply because someone somewhere says ?hey, this guy might be a threat.? No checks and balances, no due process. Nothing.

That column was three years before the current media feeding frenzy on domestic spying.

On March 8, 1999, Felicity Barringer of The New York Times wrote about the mainstream media and Capitol Hill Blue:

The rash of telephone calls started coming in to Doug Thompson, the publisher of Capitol Hill Blue, a four-year-old Web site, about three weeks ago. Journalists from a broadcast news organization, from U.S. News & World Report, and from several British and American newspapers, wanted his Web publication to help them reach the sources for an article he had published.

''What is happening with Capitol Hill Blue reminds me of the early days of Drudge,'' said Stephen G. Smith, the editor of U.S. News & World Report, who confirmed that his reporters were among those who called Mr. Thompson last month. ''It has caught on as an early warning sign of stories coming up.''

It became clear last week that journalists in some corners of the mainstream press check in with Capitol Hill Blue. Last Monday, for the first time, The Hotline, the capital's most widely used daily electronic tip sheet, used material from Capitol Hill Blue and a liberal site called American Politics. Hotline is a summary of all things political, from newspaper coverage of candidates to the most recent polling data.

''It's defensive editing,'' Mr. Smith said. "If there's going to be a freight train moving down the tracks, better to hear the vibrations early.''

We get calls at least once a week from mainstream media outlets wanting access to our sources. We always tell them the same thing: We don?t burn our sources. We suggest they get their own.

Our track record of getting to the truth of a story is a good one. We were a year ahead of other media outlets on Bush?s temper tantrums and the concern it caused White House staff. Recently we beat the Associated Press by two weeks on a story about former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay living large with lobbyists paying the bill.

We break big stories because I?m an old-fashioned journalist who believes the way to find out the truth is by digging out the facts. I work the phone, pump sources and research every item that crosses my desk. And, as the record shows, it can take the mainstream media as long as two years to catch up. That's their problem, not ours.

The keyboard commandos who litter the partisan bulletin boards like cockroaches don?t get it because they only want news that fits into their limited view of the world. They don?t want truth, just partisan spin that conforms to their own political philosophy.

The same is true for the partisan political pukes who claim to be journalists but who are, in reality, nothing more than spin machines for one party or another. Truth is never served when presented through bias.

So let them doubt. Let them claim we don?t have the facts. Our record proves otherwise and that drives them crazy.

Are we that good? You bet we are. And we?re getting better every day.