New York Times Reporter Gave CIA Flack A Sneak Peak At Maureen Dowd's Column

[DeSwiss]

Aug 28, 2012 4:39 PM
John Cook



New York Times reporter Mark Mazzetti e-mailed an advance, unpublished copy of a Maureen Dowd column dealing with the CIA to an Agency spokeswoman last year, according to newly released emails obtained by Judicial Watch under the Freedom of Information Act. Depending on whom at the Times you ask, that was either "much ado about nothing" or a "mistake that is not consistent with New York Times standards."

The emails were released to Judicial Watch as part of a FOIA lawsuit the group brought seeking information about the Agency's cooperation with filmmakers Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal, who are working on a film about the assassination of Osama bin Laden. They show that last August, Mazzetti, who covers national security for the Times, sent CIA spokeswoman Marie Harf a Maureen Dowd column the paper was about to publish critiquing the White House's attempt to spin the raid with the admonition, "this didn't come from me...and please delete after you read." Earlier, Harf had emailed Mazzetti asking "any word?" Mazzetti had replied, "Going to see a version before it gets filed. My sense is there is a very brief mention at the very bottom of column about CIA ceremony, but that Boal also got high level access at the Pentagon."

Indeed, the column reported that Boal had been invited to a CIA ceremony honoring the SEALs. The exchange was obviously an effort on Harf's part to gather intelligence about what the Times was going to report. And if Mazzetti did indeed send Harf a version he saw "before it [got] filed," that means the CIA read Dowd's column before her own editors did. Mazzetti declined to comment for the record.

As far as Times managing editor Dean Baquet is concerned, this sort of cozy information-sharing (for which Wall Street Journal reporter and elephant-fucker Gina Chon was nominally fired in June) is no big deal at all. "I know the circumstances, and if you knew everything that's going on, you'd know it's much ado about nothing," Baquet told Politico's Dylan Byers. "I can't go into in detail. But I'm confident after talking to Mark that it's much ado about nothing. The optics aren't what they look like."

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- Sure, the ''optics aren't what they look like.'' In other words: Don't trust your eyes cause those lil' bastards will lie to you every time......

Here's a little ''deja vuing'' for ya:

[leveymg]

1. Thanks for this. Both Mazzetti and Dowd have done some good work reporting stuff others won't touch

Not sure how to take this. If this is only Mazzetti's gossip with a CIA source about an upcoming Dowd's column critiquing a movie that has zero new information content, I think this is really "much ado about nothing."

BTW: Judicial Watch Has near-zero credibility after the way it dropped the ball in litigation about Saudi Royal complicity in 9/11.

I'd really like to see some actual reporting from these people at the Times on what we've been doing in Syria and Iran rather than insider cat fighting.

[cali]

2. Maureen Dowd isn't a reporter.

She writes an opinion piece. She reports nothing.

[leveymg]

3. She was the only one at the Times to comment on George Tenet's perjury before the 9/11 Comm.

Please, see,

See, Tenet's Perjury And Resignation: Door Now Open To Question ...
http://www.democrats.com/view.cfm?id=21917
Jun 10, 2004 – Owing to his perjury before the 9/11 Commission, Tenet has also forfeited ... In exhange for his true testimony about this, and what he knows about ... in Terror Case] NYT columnist Maureen Dowd is the only major journalist to ...