1. Others Pursue Rove, But ABC Raises Clinton and Lack of Illegality
ABC's World News separated itself from the media pack Thursday night. Though ABC's coverage was keyed to how e-mails supposedly show that Karl Rove was at "the center" of early 2005 discussions about replacing all 93 U.S. attorneys, anchor Charles Gibson pointed out how "these U.S. attorneys do serve at the pleasure of the President. He can fire them at any time. So did anything really get done that was wrong?" Jan Crawford Greenburg answered, in a broadcast network evening newscast first, by informing viewers of how "President Clinton, in fact, fired all the U.S. attorneys when he came into office from the previous Republican administration." Meanwhile, NBC and CBS continued the obsession on the story for the third night in a row. NBC Nightly News anchor Campbell Brown breathlessly teased her lead, "The prosecutor purge: Did the idea of firing all U.S. Attorneys start with inner circle adviser Karl Rove? If so, what now?" CBS led with two stories on the subject, starting with Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher's call for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign. Next, Bob Orr looked at how Gonzales "was tangled in controversy" before becoming AG. "As the President's chief lawyer, Gonzales sanctioned the widespread use of warrant-less wiretaps, allowing the government to snoop on Americans without court orders."

2. Plante Claims None Thought Clinton's Firings Were Political
CBS on Thursday morning finally picked up the Clinton administration's record of firing 93 federal prosecutors, but Bill Plante still rushed to Clinton's defense under a false premise. On the March 15 edition of The Early Show, Plante sought to make a distinction between the Bush and Clinton firings: "Mr. Bush isn't the first President to fire U.S. attorneys and replace them with his own appointments. At the beginning of his first term, President Clinton cleaned house, ousting all 93 U.S. attorneys. Not unusual, they serve at the pleasure of the President. The difference this time, the charge that politics played a role in their dismissal." Not true. As the Washington Post reported on March 26, 1993, Republicans did charge politics in President Clinton's mass firing. The real difference is that the networks didn't care then about such concerns.

3. Vieira Cues Up Obama: Did Gonzales 'Knowingly Subvert Justice'?
NBC Today co-host Meredith Vieira tossed softballs to Barack Obama, in an "exclusive" interview Thursday morning, as she asked him if Alberto Gonzales should resign over firing of U.S. Attorneys and also allowed him to spout off on the President's Iraq policy. In the 7am half-hour Vieira lobbed this pitch to the Democratic presidential candidate: "Senator, let's switch gears now and talk about the firing of those eight U.S. Attorneys. The Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales has admitted that mistakes were made. He wants to right them. He says he wants to stay on the job as well. You opposed his nomination two years ago and this is what you said about the Attorney General on Tuesday, you said, 'He had shown in his role as White House counsel a penchant for subverting justice to serve the President's goals, and I feared that in an Attorney General.' Do you believe, sir, that Mr. Gonzales knowingly subverted justice in this case and do you want him to resign?"

4. Sympathetic GMA Highlights KSM's Regrets, Focus on Water Boarding
On Thursday's Good Morning America, anchor Chris Cuomo and reporter Brian Ross discussed the overnight report that terrorist mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad admitted to planning 9/11 and other major attacks. However, Cuomo and Ross spent much of the segment fretting over the interrogation techniques used by the U.S. And Ross chose to recount an oddly sympathetic quote by the terrorist, noting that Mr. Mohammad said, "he was sorry that 3000 people were killed in the 9/11 attacks, but, quote, 'I don't like to kill children and the kids.'" Ross repeated the quote in his Thursday World News story.

5. KSM Confesses, But Rosie O'Donnell Worries He Was 'Tortured'
On Thursday's The View, Rosie O'Donnell brought up the news of Khalid Sheik Mohammed's many confessions, but she was more outraged at unproven allegations of torture than the horrific atrocities to which Mohammed had confessed. In her latest rant she also demonstrated her lack of knowledge on the extensive al Qaeda network: "I think the man has been in custody of the American government, in secret CIA torture prisons in Guantanamo Bay, where torture is accepted and allowed, and he finally is the guy who admits to doing everything. They finally found the guy. It's not that guy bin Laden. It's this guy they've had since '93. And look, this is the picture they released of him. Doesn't, he look healthy?"

Others Pursue Rove, But ABC Raises Clinton
and Lack of Illegality

     ABC's World News separated itself from the media pack Thursday night. Though ABC's coverage was keyed to how e-mails supposedly show that Karl Rove was at "the center" of early 2005 discussions about replacing all 93 U.S. attorneys, anchor Charles Gibson pointed out how "these U.S. attorneys do serve at the pleasure of the President. He can fire them at any time. So did anything really get done that was wrong?" Jan Crawford Greenburg answered, in a broadcast network evening newscast first, by informing viewers of how "President Clinton, in fact, fired all the U.S. attorneys when he came into office from the previous Republican administration."

     Meanwhile, NBC and CBS continued the obsession on the story for the third night in a row. NBC Nightly News anchor Campbell Brown breathlessly teased her lead, "The prosecutor purge: Did the idea of firing all U.S. Attorneys start with inner circle adviser Karl Rove? If so, what now?" The CBS Evening News led with two stories on the subject, starting with Jim Axelrod on Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher's call for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign. Next, Bob Orr looked at how Gonzales "was tangled in controversy" before becoming AG. "As the President's chief lawyer, Gonzales sanctioned the widespread use of warrant-less wiretaps,"Orr thundered, thus "allowing the government to snoop on Americans without court orders." Plus, "he also approved the so-called 'torture memo'" and "under Bush-Gonzales policies, prisoners were allowed to be held indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay with no access to U.S. courts," policies reflecting an "attitude," Georgetown law professor David Cole charged, in Orr's words, which "led directly to the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib."

     [This item was posted Thursday night on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ]

     (My transcription of the CBS Evening News was impeded by college basketball which aired instead of the CBS Evening News on the CBS affiliate in Washington, DC, so I had to transcribe from the Web-cast.)

     The MRC's Brad Wilmouth corrected the closed-captioning against the video for the March 15 coverage on ABC's World News. Anchor Charles Gibson announced:
     "The Bush administration launched a new defense of its controversial decision to fire a handful of U.S. attorneys without making the reasons immediately clear. Today top White House aide Karl Rove said several of the prosecutors had been fired because they did not make administration policy their top priority. And he said the critics are motivated by politics."
     Karl Rove, before a group in Alabama: "Now, we're at a point where people want to play politics with it. And that's fine. I would simply ask that everybody who's playing politics with this be asked to comment about what they think about the removal of 123 U.S. attorneys during the previous administration, and see if they had the same superheated political rhetoric then that they're having now."
     Gibson: "What Rove didn't say but we now know from White House e-mails released just tonight is that Karl Rove was more involved in the firing of U.S. attorneys than the administration has previously acknowledged. ABC legal correspondent Jan Crawford Greenburg joins me now from Washington. Jan, I had a chance to read this e-mail that you first learned about today, and it does show that a lot of people at the White House, very early on, were discussing the firing of U.S. attorneys, including Rove, but do they show there was political motivation involved?"
     Jan Crawford Greenburg. a former Chicago Tribune Supreme Court reporter who recently joined ABC News: "Well, the e-mails that were released tonight show that Rove was at the center of these discussions from the beginning along with Alberto Gonzales. These e-mails took place a month before Gonzales was confirmed as the Attorney General. Now, Rove was asking whether any decisions had been made about whether to fire the U.S. attorneys, whether they should just target certain ones, so these e-mails show he was in on that from the beginning."
     Gibson: "But to come back to the point the White House makes, was anything necessarily wrong? These U.S. attorneys do serve at the pleasure of the President. He can fire them at any time. So did anything really get done that was wrong?"
     Greenburg: "Well, that's exactly right. And President Clinton, in fact, fired all the U.S. attorneys when he came into office from the previous Republican administration. Of course, a President can fire U.S. attorneys when he chooses. The problem for the White House now and the Justice Department is that these e-mails seem to suggest the White House, at least that's what Democratic Senators are saying tonight, the White House hasn't been forthcoming with how this whole plan began, and they show that Rove was in on it from the beginning."
     Gibson: "This issue consumes Washington, and there will be many hearings on this with Karl Rove called to testify?"
     Greenburg: "Karl Rove is unlikely to testify. The White House right now is discussing whether any White House officials will go up in the Hill and try to explain their role in the matter. The White House believes that goes to the core of separation of powers and executive privilege issues. So they now, there's a large contingent of people in the White House who think that they should not allow Rove or former White House counsel Harriet Miers to testify about those discussions. But as this e-mail shows today, it will be difficult for them to resist because Democrats are stepping up the calls to hear from them."

Plante Claims None Thought Clinton's
Firings Were Political

     CBS on Thursday morning finally picked up the Clinton administration's record of firing 93 federal prosecutors, but Bill Plante still rushed to Clinton's defense under a false premise. On the March 15 edition of The Early Show, Plante sought to make a distinction between the Bush and Clinton firings: "Mr. Bush isn't the first President to fire U.S. attorneys and replace them with his own appointments. At the beginning of his first term, President Clinton cleaned house, ousting all 93 U.S. attorneys. Not unusual, they serve at the pleasure of the President. The difference this time, the charge that politics played a role in their dismissal."

     Not true. As the Washington Post reported on March 26, 1993, Republicans did charge politics in President Clinton's mass firing. The real difference is that the networks didn't care then about such concerns.

     As the April 1993 edition of the MRC's MediaWatch newsletter reported: "Attorney General Janet Reno fired all 93 U.S. attorneys, a very unusual practice. Republicans charged the Clintonites made the move to take U.S. Attorney Jay Stephens off the House Post Office investigation of Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski. The network response: ABC and CBS never mentioned it." See: www.mediaresearch.org

     [This item is adapted from a posting, by Justin McCarthy, on the MRC's NewsBusters blog: newsbusters.org ]

     An excerpt from the 1993 Washington Post story, "Clinton Defends Ousting U.S. Attorneys; GOP Steps Up Criticism of Attorney General's 'March Massacre,'" by Dan Balz:

President Clinton yesterday attempted to rebut Republican criticism of the administration's decision to seek resignations from all U.S. attorneys, saying what he was asking was routine and less political than piecemeal replacements.

"All those people are routinely replaced and I have not done anything differently," Clinton told reporters during a photo opportunity in the Oval Office. He called the decision more politically appropriate "than picking people out one by one."

But Republicans in Congress pressed their criticism of the decision, announced Tuesday by Attorney General Janet Reno, with Senate Minority Leader Robert J. Dole (R-Kan.) describing the decision as "Reno's March Massacre."

Rep. Richard K. Armey (R-Tex.) urged the administration to allow Jay B. Stephens, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, to stay on the job until he completes his investigation of the House Post Office scandal and the role House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.) may have played in it.

Stephens said Tuesday he was about a month away from "a critical decision with regard to resolution" of the probe....

     END of Excerpt

Vieira Cues Up Obama: Did Gonzales 'Knowingly
Subvert Justice'?

     NBC Today co-host Meredith Vieira tossed softballs to Barack Obama, in an "exclusive" interview Thursday morning, as she asked him if Alberto Gonzales should resign over firing of U.S. Attorneys and also allowed him to spout off on the President's Iraq policy. In the 7am half-hour Vieira lobbed this pitch to the Democratic presidential candidate: "Senator, let's switch gears now and talk about the firing of those eight U.S. Attorneys. The Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales has admitted that mistakes were made. He wants to right them. He says he wants to stay on the job as well. You opposed his nomination two years ago and this is what you said about the Attorney General on Tuesday, you said, 'He had shown in his role as White House counsel a penchant for subverting justice to serve the President's goals, and I feared that in an Attorney General.' Do you believe, sir, that Mr. Gonzales knowingly subverted justice in this case and do you want him to resign?"

     [This item, by Geoff Dickens, was posted Thursday on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ]

     The following is the full interview as it occurred on the March 15th Today show:

     Meredith Vieira: "Democratic Senator Barack Obama serves on the Homeland Security committee and he's also running for President. Senator Obama good morning to you sir."
     Barack Obama: "Great to talk to you Meredith."
     Vieira: "Nice to talk to you. I want to start with this confession from Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. He claims to have masterminded some 48 terrorist attacks including 9/11. What is your reaction?"
     Obama: "Well obviously just from the confession we see the scope of planning that was done by al Qaeda and I just think redoubles our need to make sure that we are both securing the homeland, executing the 9/11 commission report and that we are aggressive when it comes to human intelligence and really snuffing out these terrorist networks. Unfortunately we've become so focused on the situation in Iraq that I think we've ended up being distracted, particularly in Afghanistan from dealing with the kind of very real threats that we heard about today."
     Vieira: "Senator do you think we are prepared to deal with the kinds of large scale plots that al Qaeda seems to favor?"
     Obama: "Well I think it's clear that we're not. Obviously we've made some progress since 9/11 but if you look at what's happening in Afghanistan now you're seeing the Taliban resurgent, you're seeing al Qaeda strengthen itself. We have not followed through on the good start that we made in Afghanistan. Partly because we took so many resources out and, and put them into Iraq. And it's part of the reason why I think it's very important for us to begin a planned redeployment from Iraq including targeting Afghanistan."
     Vieira: "Let's talk about that plan because you have co-sponsored a bill that sets a target date of March 2008 for the withdrawal of most troops from Iraq and already Republican Senator John McCain has called that plan, a quote, 'retreat, not a strategy.'"
     Obama: "Well I, you know, I respectfully disagree with John on this. He has been somebody who believes that putting in additional troops is the solution in Iraq. I am absolutely certain that we are not gonna see a military solution to the problems of a civil war in Iraq. What's needed is a political accommodation and the only way that we're gonna get the parties in Iraq to start seriously negotiating is if they recognize that the United States is not going to be keeping the lid on a civil war. They're gonna have to arrive at the kinds of accommodations that are necessary to move the country forward and once we start doing that we can begin to put our troops into places like Afghanistan where the kinds of terrorist plots we heard about today have largely been hatched."
     Vieira: "Senator let's switch gears now and talk about the firing of those eight U.S. Attorneys. The Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales has admitted that mistakes were made. He wants to right them. He says he wants to stay on the job as well. You opposed his nomination two years ago and this is what you said about the Attorney General on Tuesday, you said, 'He had shown in his role as White House counsel a penchant for subverting justice to serve the President's goals, and I feared that in an Attorney General.' Do you believe, sir, that Mr. Gonzales knowingly subverted justice in this case and do you want him to resign?"
     Obama: "You know obviously we don't all have all the facts. What I do know is that Attorney General Gonzales has had a tendency to inject politics into decision-making that should be guided by the public interest. He is close to the President and he considers himself the President's lawyer as opposed to the people's lawyer. I don't think that's an appropriate way to think about the office of the Attorney General but I also think it speaks to a larger problem in this administration and that is politicizing issues that should be guided by competence, practicality, common sense. That's part of what I think the American people really want to see changed in the next president."
     Vieira: "He also says that he did not know the extent of what his chief of staff was doing with the, the White House counsel. If that is true what does it say about the Justice Department to you?"
     Obama: "Well I think what it says is that we are seeing a continuing process of politicization and a lack of accountability that has been the hallmark of many of this administration's actions. And it's that sort of approach to government that sees this as a perpetual campaign as opposed to a mechanism to actually get things done on behalf of the American people that I think are of deep concern."
     Vieira: "And one more question, this one about the presidential campaign. There's been a lot of discussion lately about the marriage factor and how that will play in the race. Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Newt Gingrich all married multiple times, plus Hillary Clinton has had her marriage troubles as well. Do you think that the personal lives of candidates give us any indication of what kind of leaders they will be?"
     Obama: "You know I think ultimately people are gonna make decisions on the basis of their track record, a candidate's track record in the public sphere. You know everybody has personal issues and the, I think ultimately, what people want to know is what are you gonna do on behalf of the American people and, and that's how it should be."
     Vieira: "Will you make the personal issues of other candidates an issue in your race?"
     Obama: "Absolutely not."
     Vieira: "Alright Senator Barack Obama, thanks very much as always."

Sympathetic GMA Highlights KSM's Regrets,
Focus on Water Boarding

     On Thursday's Good Morning America, anchor Chris Cuomo and reporter Brian Ross discussed the overnight report that terrorist mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad admitted to planning 9/11 and other major attacks. However, Cuomo and Ross spent much of the segment fretting over the interrogation techniques used by the U.S. And Ross chose to recount an oddly sympathetic quote by the terrorist, noting that Mr. Mohammad said, "he was sorry that 3000 people were killed in the 9/11 attacks, but, quote, 'I don't like to kill children and the kids.'" Ross repeated the quote in his Thursday World News story.

     One would think that such an absurd comment would at least warrant an eye roll, but the GMA hosts simply continued with the report. Cuomo wondered if the techniques used to extract information from the 9/11 planner could lead "to torture": Everybody's going to want to parse what happened here and why. You mentioned in the piece water boarding. Remind us what that is and if it leads to torture." Ross: "It's a technique used by the CIA with the President's approval in which the person is put upside down, water is poured on their head. They have a sense they're drowning. It creates a gag-like reflex. He lasted the longest under water boarding, we're told, before he broke, between two and two and a half minutes, and then he caved and told all."

     [This item is adapted from a posting, by Scott Whitlock, on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org ]

     Cuomo and Ross began the segment, which aired at 7:02am on March 15, by agreeing that the admission had "come out of nowhere." Apparently the idea that the interrogation techniques worked wasn't considered:

     Cuomo: "But first, let's get to the latest on that stunning admission by Khalid Sheikh Mohammad. The man long considered to be the mastermind behind the September 11th attacks has confessed to that and much more. Chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross is here with the details. This comes out of nowhere."
     Ross: "Indeed, Chris. Good morning, Chris. Good morning, Robin. The confession by the man known by the initials KSM accounted not only for the 9/11 attacks, but virtually every major terror attack in the last 14 years. Plus, an even larger number of terror attacks on U.S. soil that never even got past the planning stage. Among al Qaeda's other supposed intended targets, the Empire State Building, Chicago's Sears Tower and the Library Tower in Los Angeles. KSM also admitted to planning assassinations of former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, along with Pope John Paul II. All of this comes four years after KSM was captured in Pakistan, and subjected to what the U.S. calls extreme interrogation techniques, including, officials tell ABC News, water boarding."
     Eugene Fidell, National Institute of Military Justice: "The problem is it gets too many people saying too many things because under torture anyone will say anything."
     Ross: "U.S. Officials say his written confession came last weekend in a tribunal hearing room at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Claiming no duress, he submitted a list of 31 plots, only eight of which were actually carried out. His confession included the responsibility for the 9/11 attacks, from ‘a to z' as he put it, as well as the earlier 1993 World Trade Center Bombing, the attack on a disco full of tourists in Bali and the failed effort to shoot down an Israeli airliner in Kenya. According to the transcript made public by the Pentagon, KSM speaking in English told the tribunal he he was like George Washington fighting for independence. He said he was sorry that 3000 people were killed in the 9/11 attacks, but, quote, 'I don't like to kill children and the kids,' he said."
     Cuomo: "Everybody's going to want to parse what happened here and why. You mentioned in the piece water boarding. Remind us what that is and if it leads to torture."
     Ross: "It's a technique used by the CIA with the President's approval in which the person is put upside down, water is poured on their head. They have a sense they're drowning. It creates a gag-like reflex. He lasted the longest under water boarding, we're told, before he broke, between two and two and a half minutes, and then he caved and told all."
     Robin Roberts: "Brian, a lot of people want to know, Is there any outside information that confirms what KSM has said to be truthful?"
     Ross: "Good question. Much of what he said has been corroborated by U.S. officials. There are questions about the authenticity and integrity of confessions made under such extreme techniques."
     Roberts: "Sure."
     Ross: "But there is corroboration for much of what he said."
     Cuomo: "I know the transcript is dense, but what else have you been able to find? I remember years ago, you reporting that you believed KSM was attached to something that happened with the Sears Tower, planning on that. At the time you got a little controversy about that."
     Ross: "That's right, reported right on this program. And afterwards the he FBI In Chicago denied our reports, now according to this transcript it was entirely true and the FBI was misleading people. I don't know why. Also, in the transcript is information that is redacted but it appears to suggest he was behind the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl."

KSM Confesses, But Rosie O'Donnell Worries
He Was 'Tortured'

     On Thursday's The View, Rosie O'Donnell brought up the news of Khalid Sheik Mohammed's many confessions, but she was more outraged at unproven allegations of torture than the horrific atrocities to which Mohammed had confessed. In her latest rant she also demonstrated her lack of knowledge on the extensive al Qaeda network: "I think the man has been in custody of the American government, in secret CIA torture prisons in Guantanamo Bay, where torture is accepted and allowed, and he finally is the guy who admits to doing everything. They finally found the guy. It's not that guy bin Laden. It's this guy they've had since '93. And look, this is the picture they released of him. Doesn't, he look healthy?"

     [This item was adapted from a Thursday posting by Justin McCarthy, on the MRC's NewsBusters blog: newsbusters.org ]

     Token non-liberal Elisabeth Hasselbeck was unusually assertive throughout the course of the discussion, and even exposed the shallowness of O'Donnell's opinions. Just as O'Donnell did not answer whether or not she wanted the United States to win in Iraq, she did not answer what she would do with the detained terrorists.

     Hasselbeck: "What do think should happen? What do you think should happen?"
     O'Donnell: "We should uphold the standards of the Geneva Convention and lead the free world in democracy."
     [Applause]
     Hasselbeck: "I believe that. But what, specifically, if there was someone, say, who had been plotting an attack, how do you think they should be interrogated? What methods do you think would be fair?"
     O'Donnell: "I don't think the United States should ever, ever, ever torture other people."

     O'Donnell was concerned about robbing the "humanity" of terrorists. "Because you don't think terrorists, you don't think terrorists, you think that robs them of their humanity. That name 'terrorist' makes them not human any more? They don't-"

     While giving the full benefit of the doubt to a known terror leader, Rosie asserted without doubt that the United States tortured this information out of the al Qaeda leader: "But I think this man, for whatever he did or didn't do, he is not the be-all and end-all of terrorism in America and our government has not found the answer and this one thing-"
     Behar: "One thing: He does, he does-"
     Hasselbeck: "But he said he was."
     O'Donnell: "After hood on his head and beaten to death."
     Hasselbeck: "Do you know that a hood was on his head that he was beaten?"
     O'Donnell: "Oh dear God, Elisabeth."
     Hasselbeck: "He's still alive."
     O'Donnell: "Why, since March 2003 has he not admitted it until now?"
    

-- Brent Baker