Newspapers ignore reports on Cheney office's push for Al Qaeda-Iraq link (MediaMatters)

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May 18, 2009 7:52 pm ET

SUMMARY: None of five major national newspapers has reported on a Daily Beast article reporting that Vice President Dick Cheney's office "suggested waterboarding an Iraqi prisoner, a former intelligence official for Saddam Hussein, who was suspected to have knowledge of a Saddam-al Qaeda connection."

Despite covering questions regarding what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) knew about the Bush administration's interrogation policies, none of five major newspapers -- The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today -- has reported on a May 13 Daily Beast article reporting that Vice President Dick Cheney's office "suggested waterboarding an Iraqi prisoner, a former intelligence official for Saddam Hussein, who was suspected to have knowledge of a Saddam-al Qaeda connection." On the May 17 edition of ABC's This Week, Cheney's daughter Liz, a former State Department official, was specifically asked twice about the report and dodged both questions.

Moreover, those same newspapers have yet to report on a May 15 McClatchy Newspapers article by Jonathan S. Landay highlighting comments made by Dick Cheney in 2004 that detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, provided information confirming Iraq's involvement in giving chemical and biological weapons training to Al Qaeda.

In the Daily Beast article, former NBC News investigative producer Robert Windrem reported: "Two U.S. intelligence officers confirm that Vice President Cheney's office suggested waterboarding an Iraqi prisoner ... who was suspected to have knowledge of a Saddam-al Qaeda connection." As Media Matters for America noted, MSNBC hosts covered Windrem's report at least twice on May 14, and at one point hosted Windrem to discuss it ...

http://mediamatters.org/research/200905180032

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