Times’ major story blunder
The New York Times published a story (headline above) about alleged contacts between Team Trump and Russian intelligence officials that turned out to be dead wrong, ex-FBI Director James Comey testified Thursday.
“In the main, it was not true,” Comey told the Senate intelligence committee.
“The challenge — and I’m not picking on reporters — about writing stories about classified information is the people talking about it often don’t really know what’s going on, and those of us who actually know what’s going on are not talking about it,” he said during questioning from Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho).
“And we don’t call the press and say, ‘Hey, you got that thing wrong.’ ”
The Gray Lady’s supposed Feb. 14 scoop reported that members of President Trump’s campaign staff had repeated contact with “senior Russian intelligence officials.”
The story cited as sources four current and former US officials, who cited as evidence “phone records” and “intercepted calls.”
The story said that there was no proof of collusion, but that US officials were “alarmed” because the alleged contacts came at the same time Trump was publicly praising Russian strongman Vladimir Putin.
The story fingered former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort as one of the officials — a charge Manafort called “absurd.”
The White House went ballistic after the story broke, with Chief of Staff Reince Priebus telling “Fox News Sunday” that top intelligence officials had assured the administration that the story was false.
The Times “put out an article with no direct sources that said that the Trump campaign had constant contacts with Russian spies, basically, you know, some treasonous type of accusations. We have now all kinds of people looking into this,” Priebus said.
“I can assure you — and I have been approved to say this — that the top levels of the intelligence community have assured me that the story is not only inaccurate, but it’s grossly overstated and it was wrong. And there’s nothing to it.”
The Times even raised red flags about the validity of the reporting in its own story.
“The officials would not disclose many details, including what was discussed on the calls, the identity of the Russian intelligence officials who participated, and how many of Mr. Trump’s advisers were talking to the Russians. It is also unclear whether the conversations had anything to do with Mr. Trump himself,” the story read.
Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet said at the time that the paper stood by the story.
“The Times had numerous sources confirming this story. Attacking it does not make it less true,” he said.
But Thursday, the paper said it would review the story.
“We are looking into James Comey’s statements, and we will report back with more information as soon as we can,” the Times tweeted.
The president is new at this. He’s new to government. And so he probably wasn’t steeped into the long running protocols that established the relationships between DOJ, FBI, and White Houses. — House Speaker Paul Ryan (Wis.) President Trump, if you disagree with anything the director said today, play the tapes for all of America to hear or admit there were no tapes. — Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) I’m not prepared to reach a conclusion on [whether Trump obstructed justice], because we’re not done with all the other pieces that are missing. — Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.)