White House Mounts Media Blitz After Killing of Zarqawi
HOWARD KURTZ, HOST: On target. The White House mounts a media blitz after a missile strike kills Abu al-Zarqawi. Is the press portraying this as a turning point in the war or being overly cautious after three years of violence in Iraq? We'll ask "New York Times" columnist Tom Friedman, ABC's Martha Raddatz, and CNN's Jamie McIntyre. Blaming the widows. Ann Coulter wreaks a publicity bonanza for trashing the women whose husbands died on 9/11. Why do the media keep giving her a platform? Plus...</s>AMANDA CONGDON, ROCKETBOOM.COM: The Internet community...</s>KURTZ: Rocket boom. How this woman sitting in a tiny New York apartment is becoming an Internet cult figure. Welcome to RELIABLE SOURCES, where today we turn our critical lens on the missile strike heard round the world. I'm Howard Kurtz. Most of the country was asleep. It was 2:38 Eastern on Thursday morning, to be precise, when ABC's Martha Raddatz broke the story.</s>MARTHA RADDATZ, ABC NEWS: We just received word from a senior military official. ABC has learned that Zarqawi was killed in some sort of bombing raid. I'm actually reporting from Washington and got a call from Baghdad confirming that Zarqawi was killed.</s>KURTZ: One by one, the other networks confirmed that Iraq terrorist leader Abu al-Zarqawi was dead, and the president went before the cameras during the morning news shows at 7:30.</s>GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Now Zarqawi has met his end, and this violent man will never murder again.</s>KURTZ (voice-over): That was just the start of a lengthy media blitz: a briefing by General George Casey, an appearance by Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld; another briefing by Tony Snow.</s>KURTZ: ... White House meeting with governors. But amid all of the television talk, one lingering question: Was this a major victory in the war on terror or were journalists going overboard about a killer whose importance had been pumped up by the Bush administration? Joining us now, Martha Raddatz, chief White House correspondent for ABC News; Jamie McIntyre, CNN's senior Pentagon correspondent; and three-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Tom Friedman, the foreign affairs columnist for the "New York Times." Tom Friedman, is it possible that the media have made too much of this one success and that the administration's prodding had built up Zarqawi into this mythical figure?</s>TOM FRIEDMAN, "NEW YORK TIMES": I'm actually struck by the opposite, Howie. And most of the analyses I've read, certainly from the reporters in Iraq, I thought they've been quite balanced. I think they've pointed out two things. One is Zarqawi was a unique figure. The fact is he terrorized the U.S. military and eluded them for three years. He's good, and so killing someone like that is important. At the same time, he was turned in -- his network was broken clearly by the support of some Sunnis. That's important. But I think everyone has made it very clear what matters now is not that Zarqawi is dead, but whether Zarqawism is dead. This guy's main contribution to the war was to try to promote sectarian conflict between Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq. And whether that's over is really what's going to determine Iraq's future, and I found most people are quite cautious about that.</s>KURTZ: A question we can't fully answer, obviously at this moment. Martha Raddatz, what were you doing at 2:30 in the morning that enabled you to break this story?</s>RADDATZ: Well, I had actually just gotten home. I love that we call it a vacation. I was actually taking a couple of weeks book leave writing about a particular battle in Iraq, and I had just gotten home after a very long day of writing. And I got a phone call. But, as you know, I've been...</s>KURTZ: So somebody wanted this out?</s>RADDATZ: Well...</s>KURTZ: ... as opposed to waiting for the press conference?</s>RADDATZ: Yes, yes.</s>KURTZ: Why?</s>RADDATZ: I don't go into the motivations. I know I didn't interrupt any operations that were ongoing, which is, of course, important. You don't want to break any sort of operational security.</s>JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SENIOR PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, Martha's being a little modest. The way this works is, you know, you have a relationship with sources, and a lot of times the motivation is as simple as wanting to help you be first on the story.</s>RADDATZ: Thank you, Jamie. Thank you.</s>MCINTYRE: And it's based on, you know, the reporting that you've done in the past and the relationships you build with people. And why does anybody get a tip? It's often a complex series of...</s>KURTZ: And did you also start waking people up once this broke?</s>MCINTYRE: Yes, because I got the call right after Martha, but it was from CNN saying what Martha had reported.</s>KURTZ: I know those kind...</s>RADDATZ: Well, I was going to say I called Jamie, but I...</s>MCINTYRE: And then you start thinking, who can you call at that hour in the morning? And what you discover is you call people and they're awake, and they already know something, and that tells you right away that there's something...</s>FRIEDMAN: ... probably would be surprised, Howie, at how much e- mail contact there is between reporters here, and columnists, and generals, and officers in the field in Iraq.</s>KURTZ: Yes, but you do have to be awake to look at the e-mail, depending on what time it is there.</s>RADDATZ: That's true. If it was my e-mail, I would have been in trouble.</s>KURTZ: Now, I want to understand how a columnist's mind works when you take positions, because you were chided recently for writing several times in different occasions "the next six months are crucial in Iraq," the next six months. And now you've written a column saying that Americans are simply not going to tolerate this kind of anarchy for another two years and deadlines have to be set. Were you conscious that you were now shifting your position on this?</s>FRIEDMAN: Not really. You know, the problem with analyzing the story, Howie, is that it doesn't -- everyone, first of all, this is the most polarized story I've certainly written about, so everyone wants, basically, to be proven right, OK? So the left -- people who hated the war, they want you to declare the war is over, finish, we give up. The right, just the opposite. But I've been trying to just simply track the situation on the ground. And the fact is that the outcome there is unclear, and I reflected that in my column. And I will continue to reflect.</s>KURTZ: Unclear, but you're running out of patience?</s>FRIEDMAN: Well, it's not that I'm running out of patience. The story's evolving. And what strikes me as I see it evolve, when it drags on, six months after an election we still don't have a government. Then, as a columnist who's offering opinions on what I think the right policy is, it seems to me we have to be telling Iraqis we are not going to be here forever, providing a kind of floor under the chaos, while you dicker over the most minute things when American lives are at stake. So I think it's a constantly evolving thing.</s>MCINTYRE: I'll tell you what you're not hearing at the Pentagon, is you're not hearing people say, "This is a turning point." You know, they know that that's a hopeful scenario, and those...</s>RADDATZ: Because they've said that before.</s>MCINTYRE: ... and those hopes have been dashed so many times before.</s>KURTZ: We've heard many turning points, after Iraqi elections, after the capture of Saddam, and so forth.</s>MCINTYRE: But you're not hearing that.</s>FRIEDMAN: ... I've been guided by what Iraqis do and say. And when Iraqis give up, all right, I'll give up. But when they don't...</s>KURTZ: Well, let me just jump in here, Martha, because I want to play a piece of tape for you, coming back to that Thursday morning. This is very tightly choreographed series of appearances by the president and others. Tony Snow gave a remarkably detailed briefing about how this came about. Let's watch a little bit of that.</s>TONY SNOW, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: During the course of that meeting, Ray LaHood, Representative Ray LaHood offered the helpful suggestion that things would be better if somebody would get Zarqawi. There was a little snickering in the room at the time. Little did we know.</s>KURTZ: That meeting, of course, before the announcement that Zarqawi had been killed. Is the White House now in the business of providing lots of colorful details for reporters to write their narratives or is this a one-time offer by Snow?</s>RADDATZ: Well, I think there is a plan in place on how to react if and when Zarqawi was captured and killed. There's a plan in place if Osama bin Laden is captured or killed, and there was a plan in place for Saddam Hussein, as well. I think they've probably learned quite a bit since the capture of Saddam Hussein on how to react, but they had this lined up on what to do, what to say. They had a lot of information. Remember, regardless of the fact that I went on the air probably earlier than anyone wanted, this happened the day before. They were gathering as many facts as they could. As you know, some of the facts changed on the ground.</s>KURTZ: And on that point...</s>RADDATZ: I mean, at first they said...</s>KURTZ: ... the Pentagon said that it was the two 500-pound bombs that killed Zarqawi, and they provided the aerial footage, and it was a nice, neat narrative. And then it comes out -- turns out the next day that Zarqawi had survived and died afterwards. Was this the fog of war? Or was the Pentagon being a little overdramatic?</s>MCINTYRE: Well, yes, I mean, first of all, just to be clear, he did die from the bombs.</s>KURTZ: Right, just not immediately.</s>MCINTYRE: I mean, you know, definitely, not immediately, and that kind of detail is often the case where the first reports are incomplete and they don't get that stuff right. The problem is, whenever you do that, it tends to undermine your credibility. And because so many people are suspicious of the government, so many people are predisposed to believe the worst about everyone, they start asking a lot of questions. You could certainly see that from the tenor of the questions in the Pentagon briefing the next -- and people in there, "Were the pictures altered? Have you been"...</s>RADDATZ: "Why is it just a head?" Right?</s>MCINTYRE: Yes, "Why does he look so good?" I talked to a viewer the other day who wanted to know, why did they put his picture in a frame? What was that all about? What does that mean? Why would they go to the thing -- and I said, "You know, they probably just wanted to put it in a frame for the presentation."</s>KURTZ: Let me play, Tom Friedman, a bite from President Bush on Friday talking about the coverage of this war.</s>BUSH: One of the things I'm trying to be is realistic with the American people and say there's still going to be tough days ahead, because the enemy has got the capacity to get on our TV screens with death and destruction.</s>KURTZ: Now, the president doesn't quite say it there, but he has made the argument many times, and so has Rumsfeld, that the media are spending too much attention, too much air time, too much ink on the violence here, and therefore we're ignoring signs of real progress in Iraq. Do you buy that?</s>FRIEDMAN: No, I don't buy it at all. I think that the media has really actually been ahead of the story more than behind the story in Iraq. I think they've been very sober. And the fact is now, you know, you look at the situation there, I go back to Zarqawi. There's only one way this is going to mean anything other than a one-day story. If it's going to be a one-month story, let alone a five-year story, it's going to be on whether Iraqis get their act together and to make a fist as a society. And that is still totally indetermined, and that's the most important thing. And I think the media is focused on that.</s>RADDATZ: And you know what, Howie? Iraq has not been on the front pages a lot in the last several months. Iraq has not led newscasts in the last several months with the violence. It has slowly gone down the chain.</s>KURTZ: Why do you think that is?</s>RADDATZ: Well, I think because it's this violence over, and over, and over again.</s>KURTZ: The repetitive nature of the story.</s>RADDATZ: And people -- the repetitive nature of the story...</s>KURTZ: But is it also...</s>RADDATZ: It's difficult to cover.</s>KURTZ: Difficult to cover, that's what I was going to ask you.</s>RADDATZ: Yes.</s>KURTZ: You've been there several times. You also covered the wounding of your ABC colleague, Bob Woodruff. This is a very, very difficult story for correspondents to get out and just talk to ordinary shopkeepers and people in the streets. Obviously, you do it sometimes, but doesn't that put the focus more on the car bomb attacks, the suicide attacks, and all of that?</s>RADDATZ: Yes, it does. I mean, yes, you absolutely cover that.</s>KURTZ: And is that an accurate picture?</s>RADDATZ: Yes, I think it is. I mean, the reason we're covering this is because we have 130,000 troops over there, because the situation over there is not secure. Now, at the same time, the president has given approximately 17 different speeches during this period, pushing the good news, but Americans still realize we are still at war over there. It is still a very violent place.</s>KURTZ: A lot of breaking news this morning, Jamie McIntyre. We have the three detainees at Guantanamo Bay committing suicide, bringing the spotlight again to the conditions at Gitmo, which a U.N. panel and others have asked to be closed. And right next to it on the front page of this morning's "Washington Post" -- I don't know if you can see this -- "Marine says rules were followed." This is about the Haditha incident, as CNN back in march, when it was first reported word of this, and there was this "Time" magazine investigation that really got to the substance of it, then it kind of faded in and out of the news, and then it became a huge story. Now, for the first time, we're hearing from a lawyer for the leader of this Marine squad saying there was no massacre. This was an unfortunate firefight that resulted in civilian casualties. You've talked to one of the lawyers involved. Why is this the first time that we're hearing the other side, as opposed to the leaks from the investigation?</s>MCINTYRE: Well, it's not, actually, because this is -- while we've been pursuing what's going on in Iraq, CNN has also been very aggressive in this story. In fact, we did two stories this week trying to get at what defense attorneys would be saying was the other side of the story. We filed on earlier in the week and then one on Friday night with the attorney you mentioned who's been talking to some of the Marines. And we have talked, as the "Washington Post" says, to this attorney for the senior noncommissioned officer who was on the scene who does tell a different version of the story, as you might well imagine. And, you know, the facts are still in dispute, but we're continuing to aggressively try to follow it, because we know the story is more complex than the simple time line that we've been able to piece together from leaks so far.</s>RADDATZ: But there's also video. I mean, there are also video and pictures, which make this...</s>KURTZ: Taken by ordinary Iraqis?</s>RADDATZ: ... far -- taken by Iraqis in there, taken by apparently Marines afterward that no one has seen, and that always puts something in a different light. I mean, remember Abu Ghraib. I think the Pentagon at that point thought, "OK, there are these little pictures, and this will go away," and yet this is the digital age. These pictures go everywhere. This video goes everywhere. And I think that to commanders was the most shocking thing about this: There was some pretty hard evidence that is much harder to dispute.</s>KURTZ: Because of the leaks, most people now think Haditha massacre, even though these charges have not been proven, but they're certainly out there. How important is this incident, perhaps tragedy, to the image and reporting of the war?</s>FRIEDMAN: Well, I think it's hugely important, Howie. Guantanamo Bay and the three suicides just reported, Guantanamo Bay to me is the anti-Statue of Liberty. It's just become an absolute -- a horrible advertisement for what should be the best of American values, how we treat prisoners of war. But, you know, as far as Haditha is concerned, the message I take away from that is -- you asked before, like, why are you suddenly starting to talk about time line? Occupations cannot go on forever. When occupations drag on like this, it's things like Haditha that happen. And that's why I think we do have to remain focused in doing our business in Iraq, finishing this project, because otherwise this is what you get.</s>KURTZ: All right. That will be the last word for this segment. Martha Raddatz, Jamie McIntyre, thanks very much for joining us. You can catch Jamie McIntyre and other CNN correspondents at 1:00 p.m. Eastern for a special CNN program, "Iraq: A Week at War," hosted by Wolf Blitzer. Coming up, Tom Friedman, don't go away. He'll give us his take on General Motors and his take on America's addition to oil, which is coming to the big screen. We'll ask him about that in a moment.