Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
NEW YORK - The New York Times acknowledged Wednesday that some of its coverage of the Iraq crisis "was not as rigorous as it should have been" and relied on reports from informants whose credibility was later called into question.
Before the war, reports of claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or ties to international terrorists contained information that was unchallenged by editors and was not adequately followed up, the newspaper said in an editor's note.
"In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged," the newspaper said. "Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged or failed to emerge."
The New York Times also said it had featured articles containing alarming claims about Iraq more prominently than followup stories that countered those claims. Many of the stories used information from Iraqi exiles and critics of Saddam Hussein who were pressing the United States to oust the Iraqi leader, but the newspaper said it did not always emphasize the informants' motivations.
Among the sources used by the New York Times was Ahmad Chalabi, who has been mentioned in articles since at least 1991 and became a paid broker of information from Iraqi exiles.
Chalabi, once thought by the Pentagon to be a possible successor to Hussein, has fallen out of favor with the United States, which has accused him of giving sensitive information to Iran about the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Last week, U.S. soldiers and Iraqi police raided his home and offices.
Several articles in question were written by Judith Miller, who has been criticized by some in the news industry for her reporting on weapons of mass destruction before the war. The editor's note did not mention any reporter by name.
Among the stories cited by the editor's note was one published on Dec. 20, 2001, that cited an Iraqi defector who described himself as a civil engineer.
According to the story by Miller, the defector said "he personally worked on renovations of secret facilities for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in underground wells, private villas and under the Saddam Hussein Hospital in Baghdad as recently as a year ago."
Knight Ridder reported last week that the defector was taken to Iraq to point out the sites where he said he had worked but no weapons were found, the New York Times noted.
"Editors at several levels who should have been challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper," the editor's note said.
The newspaper said it reviewed hundreds of articles. It posted a sampling of the stories on its Web site (www.nytimes.com/critique - registration is required, covering issues such as hidden weapons facilities and the destruction of weapons.
Nearly all the stories were published during the tenure of former executive editor Howell Raines, who resigned in June after the Jayson Blair scandal.