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Michelle Malkin, a nationally syndicated columnist, blogged the story Able Danger: Weldon Goes Ballistic. Ed Morrissey of The Captain’s Quarters is pushing the story of how the Defense Intelligence Agency is attempting to destroy the credibility of Lieutenant Colonel Tony Shaffer, one of the witnesses testifying to the accuracy of Representative Curt Weldon’s (R-PA) allegations on Able Danger. But what about The Philadelphia Inquirer? Curt Weldon represents the seventh congressional district in the suburbs of The Washington Post has been trying to discredit the entire story, including William M. Arkin’s opinion piece The Secret History of Able Danger. NewsMax.com has a longer story, dated The Able Danger story is the biggest story that the American mainstream press has ignored. If true, it means that the federal government ignored the presence of Mohammed Atta (the ringleader of the nineteen September 11 attackers), and the Clinton Administration set up policy walls which deliberately prevented the presence of reasonably suspected terrorists from being monitored. If false, it means that a ten-term congressman, who is a vice-chairman of both the Armed Services and Homeland Security committees has been led astray (at best) or is a complete idiot (at worst). Yet the mainstream media in general, and The Philadelphia Inquirer specifically, are ignoring the entire story. I have to ask: why? Well, though the editors of the Inquirer will never admit it, they have a solid reason to have a grudge against Mr. Weldon. Being a native of the region, Mr. Weldon approached the Inquirer first with this story as it was about to break into the national spotlight – and the Inquirer rebuffed him. He wound up giving the story to The New York Times rather than to his hometown newspaper; see More Liberal Bias from The Philadelphia Inquirer. The Inquirer is a partisan Democratic newspaper: it invariably endorses the Democratic presidential candidates, and is such a strong opponent of President Bush that rather than a single endorsement editorial, ran editorials endorsing Senator John Kerry’s (D-MA) presidential candidacy for twenty-one straight days, in what was called a twenty-one gun salute. The editors are anything but fans of conservative Republicans, and certainly are not fans of Mr. Weldon. Congressman Weldon suggested on The Michael Smerconish Show, on WPHT-AM, on Tuesday, August 9, 2005, that the Philadelphia Inquirer was also reluctant to follow the story because the paper did not want to promote Mr. Weldon’s current book, Countdown to Terror: The Top-Secret Information that Could Prevent the Next Terrorist Attack on America... and How the CIA has Ignored it. I have to wonder: given the two possibilities of this story I noted four paragraphs above, why wouldn’t the mainstream media pursue it? If Mr. Weldon is some sort of crackpot, the editors of the Inquirer have not only personal reasons to see that fact exposed, but have a journalistic duty to the area to get that fact out. That the editors have not done so leads me to believe that they have no information (save, perhaps, personal opinions) to that effect. And that means his story needs to be taken seriously – but the editors don’t want to do that, either. The only thing I have left is the conclusion that the editors want to try to ignore this story to death; given that reporters and editors are in the business of investigating and writing the news, there would have to be some sort of motive to ignore a story with such a huge potential. My speculation, and it clearly is speculation, is that the editors don’t want to do anything to publicize what was a huge failing on the part of the Clinton Administration, even though the story has some, though fewer, negative consequences for the Bush Administration. Related to that is the serious policy debate issue of whether terrorism ought to be fought with military force (as the Bush Administration is doing) or by law enforcement techniques, which was the Clinton Administration’s preference; it was the consequences of using law enforcement thinking which led Jamie S. Gorelick, formerly the number two person in the Justice Department, to enforce barriers between intelligence information and prosecution, against contrary advice from a subordinate. (See Memos show Gorelick involvement in “wall.”) If the editors of the Inquirer are totally committed to the preference of using law enforcement techniques to fight terrorism, the last thing that they want to see, and publicize, is evidence that their policy preference failed miserably in this instance. Speculation? Admittedly. But I have tried to think of other reasons that could serve as motivation for the editors of the Inquirer, and simply cannot think of anything else, at least nothing that makes even the remotest bit of sense. Posted by Dana
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