'N.Y. Times' vs. 'Wash Post' in Editorial 'Leak' Battle

'N.Y. Times' vs. 'Wash Post' in Editorial 'Leak' Battle

By E&P Staff

Published: April 16, 2006 9:00 AM ET

NEW YORK It’s war. No, not Sunni vs. Shia in Iraq, but The New York Times editorial page vs. its Washington Post counterpart.

Perhaps it’s all in good fun, but it was startling to find a Times’ editorial on Sunday titled “The Bad Leak” exactly one week after a controversial Post editorial called “A Good Leak.” The leak—involving former White House aide“Scooter” Libby—was the same, but the point of view about 180 degrees different.

Just a week ago, the hawkish Post had defended Libby’s leak of intelligence information to reporters as being in the public interest; Ambassador Joseph Wilson had it coming; President Bush had good reason to think Iraq tried to get uranium in Niger a few years ago; and now the president’s critics were unfairly criticizing him for the leak, among other things.

In a bit of embarrassment, the Post, on the very day the editorial appeared, had pretty much proved in its news pages that the leak was really meant to punish Wilson, and most of the information in the leak was obviously, and knowingly, false.

Now comes the Times editorial—siding with the Post news team against its editorial page.

President Bush, the Times opens, “says he declassified portions of the prewar intelligence assessment on Iraq because he ‘wanted people to see the truth' about Iraq's weapons programs and to understand why he kept accusing Saddam Hussein of stockpiling weapons that turned out not to exist. This would be a noble sentiment if it actually bore any relationship to Mr. Bush's actions in this case, or his overall record.

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