[Mb-hair] FW: NEWS THAT COULD HAVE MADE KERRY PRESIDENT

[Sharmagne Leland-St.John]

>From: JWANDSL at aol.com
>To: jadelbridge at earthlink.net, Carol_Douglas at tax.org, jwanddf at juno.com,     
>    judithwriter at SBCglobal.net, MSKLEMM at aol.com, Kpickens at bellsouth.net,    
>     RigginWaugh at aol.com, rprovenzano at iopener.net
>Subject: NEWS THAT COULD HAVE MADE KERRY PRESIDENT
>Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2005 19:13:53 EST
>
>(Makes me sick to call myself a Democrat. There has to be something with 
>some
>guts in it. Since when does the press need a candidate to tell them what to
>print?) JKW
>   The Emperor's New Hump
>   By Dave Lindorff
>   Extra!
>   January - February 2005 Edition
>The New York Times killed a story that could have changed the election -
>because it could have changed the election.
>
>It's clear even from unenhanced photos that George W. Bush has been wearing
>some kind of object under his clothing, both during the debates and at 
>other
>public appearances. The enhancements done by NASA scientist Robert Nelson 
>show a
>rectangular object with a long "tail"; in some shots a wire leading over
>Bush's shoulder is visible. This configuration closely resembles a PTT 
>(Push To
>Talk) receiver with an induction earpiece, a device used by some actors,
>newscasters and politicians to allow for inaudible voice communication in a 
>public
>setting. The particular model pictured here (which does not appear to be 
>the
>exact type Bush wore) was manufactured by Resistance Technology, Inc. of 
>Arden
>Hills, Minn.
>   In the weeks leading up to the November 2 election, the New York Times 
>was
>abuzz with excitement. Besides the election itself, the paper's reporters 
>were
>hard at work on two hot investigative projects, each of which could have a
>major impact on the outcome of the tight presidential race.
>   One week before Election Day, the Times (10/25/04) ran a hard-hitting 
>and
>controversial expose of the Al-Qaqaa ammunition dump - identified by U.N.
>inspectors before the war as containing 400 tons of special high-density 
>explosives
>useful for aircraft bombings and as triggers for nuclear devices, but left
>unguarded and available to insurgents by U.S. forces after the invasion.
>   On Thursday, just three days after that first expos'the paper was set to
>run a second, perhaps more explosive piece, exposing how George W. Bush had 
>worn
>an electronic cueing device in his ear and probably cheated during the
>presidential debates.
>   The so-called Bulgegate story had been getting tremendous attention on 
>the
>Internet. Stories about it had also run in many mainstream papers, 
>including
>the New York Times (10/9/04, 10/18/04) and Washington Post (10/9/04), but 
>most
>of these had been light-hearted. Indeed, the issue had even made it into 
>the
>comedy circuit, including the monologues of Jay Leno, David Letterman, Jon
>Stewart and a set of strips by cartoonist Garry Trudeau.
>   That the story hadn't gotten more serious treatment in the mainstream 
>press
>was largely thanks to a well-organized media effort by the Bush White House
>and the Bush/Cheney campaign to label those who attempted to investigate 
>the
>bulge as "conspiracy buffs" (Washington Post, 10/9/04). In an era of 
>pinched
>budgets and an equally pinched notion of the role of the Fourth Estate, the 
>fact
>that the Kerry camp was offering no comment on the matter - perhaps for 
>fear
>of earning a "conspiracy buff" label for the candidate himself - may also 
>have
>made reporters skittish. Jeffrey Klein, a founding editor of Mother Jones
>magazine, told Mother Jones (online edition, 10/30/04) he had called a 
>number of
>contacts at leading news organizations across the country, and was told 
>that
>unless the Kerry campaign raised the issue, they couldn't pursue it.
>   "Totally Off Base"
>   The Times' effort to get to the bottom of the matter through a serious
>investigation seemed to be a striking exception. That investigation, 
>however,
>despite extensive reporting over several weeks by three Times reporters, 
>never
>ran. Now, like the mythic weapons of mass destruction that were the raison 
>d'etre
>for the Iraq War, the Times is thus far claiming that the Bush Bulgegate
>story never existed in the first place.
>   Referring to a FAIR press release (11/5/04) about the spiked story, 
>Village
>Voice press critic Jarrett Murphy wrote (11/16/04), "A Times reporter 
>alleged
>to have worked on such a piece says FAIR was totally off base: The paper
>never pursued the story."
>   Murphy told Extra! that his source at the nation's self-proclaimed paper 
>of
>record 'whom he would not identify' told him the information about the 
>bulge
>seen under Bush's jacket during the debates, provided by a senior 
>astronomer
>and photo imaging specialist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 
>Pasadena,
>had been tossed onto the "nutpile," and was never researched further.
>   In fact, several sources, including a journalist at the Times, have told
>Extra! that the paper put a good deal of effort into this important story 
>about
>presidential competence and integrity; they claim that a story was written,
>edited and scheduled to run on several different days, before senior 
>editors
>finally axed it at the last minute on Wednesday evening, October 27. A 
>Times
>journalist, who said that Times staffers were "pretty upset" about the 
>killing of
>the story, claims the senior editors felt Thursday was "too close" to the
>election to run such a piece. Emails from the Times to the NASA scientist
>corroborate these sources' accounts.
>   Battle of the Bulge
>   The Bulgegate story originated when a number of alert viewers of the 
>first
>presidential debate noticed a peculiar rectangular bulge on the back of 
>Bush's
>jacket. That they got to see that portion of his anatomy at all was an
>accident; the Bush campaign had specifically, and inexplicably, demanded 
>that the
>Presidential Debate Commission bar pool TV cameras from taking rear shots 
>of the
>candidates during any debates. Fox TV, the first pool camera for debate 
>one,
>ignored the rule and put two cameras behind the candidates to provide
>establishing shots.
>   Photos depicting the bulge and speculating on just what it might be (a
>medical device, a radio receiver?) began circulating widely around the 
>Internet,
>and several special blog sites were established to discuss them. The 
>suspicion
>that Bush had been getting cues or answers in his ear was bolstered by his
>strange behavior in that first debate, which included several uncomfortably 
>long
>pauses before and during his answers. On one occasion, he burst out angrily
>with "Now let me finish!" at a time when nobody was interrupting him and 
>his
>warning light was not flashing. Images of visibly bulging backs from 
>earlier Bush
>appearances began circulating, along with reports of prior incidents that
>suggested Bush might have been receiving hidden cues (London Guardian, 
>10/8/04).
>   Finally, on October 8, this reporter ran an investigative report about 
>the
>bulge in the online magazine Salon, following up with a second report
>(10/13/04) an interview with an executive of a firm that makes wireless 
>cueing devices
>that link to hidden earpieces'that suggested that Bush was likely to have
>been improperly receiving secret help during the debates.
>   At that point, Dr. Robert M. Nelson, a 30-year Jet Propulsion Laboratory
>veteran who works on photo imaging for NASA's various space probes and 
>currently
>is part of a photo enhancement team for the Cassini Saturn space probe,
>entered the picture. Nelson recounts that after seeing the Salon story on 
>the
>bulge, professional curiosity prompted him to apply his skills at photo 
>enhancement
>to a digital image he took from a videotape of the first debate. He says 
>that
>when he saw the results of his efforts, which clearly revealed a 
>significant
>T-shaped object in the middle of Bush's back and a wire running up and over
>his shoulder, he realized it was an important story.
>   After first offering it unsuccessfully to his local paper, the Pasadena
>Star-News, and then, with equal lack of success, to the Post-Gazette in
>Pittsburgh, where he had gone to college, he offered it to the Los Angeles 
>Times. (In
>all his media contacts, Nelson says, he offered the use of his enhanced 
>photos
>free of charge.) "About three weeks before the election, I gave the photos 
>to
>the L.A. Times' Eric Slater, who shopped them around the paper," recalls
>Nelson. "After four days, in which they never got back to me, I went to the 
>New
>York Times."
>   Contradictory Explanations
>   The Times was at first very interested, Nelson reports. There was, after
>all, clearly good reason to investigate the issue. The White House and 
>Bush/
>Cheney campaign had initially mocked the bulge story when it had run in 
>Salon,
>first attributing it to "doctored" photos circulating on the Internet (New 
>York
>Times, 10/9/04), and later claiming that the bulge, so noticeable in video
>images, was the result of a "badly tailored suit" (New York Times, 
>10/18/04).
>Bush himself contradicted this White House and campaign line when he told 
>ABC's
>Charles Gibson (Good Morning America, 10/26/04) that the bulge was the 
>result
>of his wearing a "poorly tailored shirt" to the debate.
>   Now Nelson's photos'the result of his applying the same enhancement
>techniques to the debate pictures that he uses to clarify photo images from 
>space
>probes rendered all these official if mutually contradictory explanations
>obviously false. (A November 4, 2004 report in the Washington paper The 
>Hill, citing
>an unidentified source in the Secret Service, claimed that the bulge was
>caused by a bulletproof vest worn by Bush during the debates, though this 
>had been
>specifically denied by the White House and by Bush himself - New York 
>Times,
>10/9/04. In any event, no known vests have rear protuberances resembling 
>the
>image discovered by Nelson.)
>   Times science writer William Broad, as well as reporters Andrew Revkin 
>and
>John Schwartz, got to work on the story, according to Nelson, and produced 
>a
>story that he says they assured him was scheduled to run the week of 
>October
>25. "It got pushed back because of the explosives story," he says, first to
>Wednesday, and then to Thursday, October 28. That would still have been 
>five days
>ahead of Election Day.
>   An indication of the seriousness with which the story was being pursued 
>is
>provided by an email Schwartz sent to Nelson on October 26 - one of a 
>string
>of back-and-forth emails between Schwartz and Nelson. It read:
>   Hey there, Dr. Nelson'this story is shaping up very nicely, but 
>my_editors
>have asked me to hold off for one day while they push through a few other
>stories that are ahead of us in line. I might be calling you again for more
>information, but I hope that you'll hold tight and not tell anyone else 
>about this
>until we get a chance to get our story out there. Please call me with any
>concerns that you might have about this, and thanks again for letting us 
>tell your
>story.
>   But on October 28, the article was not in the paper. After learning from
>the reporters working on the story that their article had been killed the 
>night
>before by senior editors, Nelson eventually sent his photographic evidence 
>of
>presidential cheating to Salon magazine, which ran the photos as the
>magazine's lead item on October 29. That same day, Nelson received the 
>following email
>from the Times' Schwartz:
>   Congratulations on getting the story into Salon. It's already all over 
>the
>Web in every blog I've seen this morning. I'm sorry to have been a source 
>of
>disappointment and frustration to you, but I'm very happy to see your story
>getting out there. Best wishes, John
>   Not exactly the kind of message you'd expect a reporter to send to a 
>"nut."
>   "The Bar Is Raised Higher"
>   In fact, Schwartz, Revkin and Broad, using Nelson's photographic 
>evidence
>as their starting point, had made a major effort to put together the story 
>of
>presidential debate misconduct and deception. Among those called in the 
>course
>of their reporting, in addition to Nelson, who says he received numerous 
>calls
>and emails from the team, were Cornell physicist Kurt Gottfried, who was
>asked to vouch for Nelson's professional credentials; Bush/Cheney campaign 
>chair
>Ken Mehlman (information about this call was provided by a journalist at 
>the
>Times); and Jim Atkinson, an owner of a spyware and debugging company in
>Gloucester, Mass., called Granite Island Group.
>   "The Times reporters called me a number of times on this story," 
>confirms
>Atkinson. "I was able to identify the object Nelson highlighted 
>definitively as
>a magnetic cueing device that uses a wire yoke around the neck to 
>communicate
>with a hidden earpiece'the kind of thing that is used routinely now by 
>music
>performers, actors, reporters and by politicians."
>   He adds, "The Times reporters called me repeatedly. They were absolutely
>going after this story aggressively, though at one point they told me they 
>were
>concerned that their editors were going to kill it."
>   Efforts to learn more about the history and fate of this story at the 
>New
>York Times met for weeks with official silence. Several inquiries were made 
>by
>phone and email to Times public editor Daniel Okrent over a period of three
>weeks, eliciting one response - an email from his assistant asking for the 
>names
>of Extra!'s sources at the Times. He was not provided with the sources, but
>was given the names of the three reporters who worked on the piece, which 
>had
>been disclosed by Dr. Nelson. (At deadline time, Okrent did finally call, 
>and
>promised to seek the answer to the story's fate. A week later, at press 
>time,
>he had yet to do so.)
>   One clue as to what happened at the Times is provided by a final email
>message sent by Times reporter Schwartz to Nelson, who had written to 
>Schwartz to
>alert him that he had gone on to analyze photos of Bush's back in the
>subsequent two debates. Schwartz wrote:
>   Subject: Re: reanalysis of debate images more convincing than before 
>Dear
>Dr. Nelson, Thanks for sticking with me on this. I don't know what might
>convince them - and the bar is raised higher the closer we are to the 
>election,
>because they don't want to seem to be springing something at the last 
>moment - but
>I will bring this up with my bosses.
>   "Voters Have a Right to Know"
>   Ironically, however, on November 1, the New York Times ran a story by
>reporters Jacques Steinberg and David Carr, titled "Media Timing and the 
>October
>Surprise." The Times had been taking considerable heat from conservatives 
>and
>from the Bush campaign for running the Al-Qaqaa story, an investigative 
>piece
>critical of Iraq War leadership - and thus damaging to Bush's election
>campaign'so close to Election Day. While the thrust of this article was a 
>justification
>for the Times' decision to run the controversial missing-explosives story a
>week ahead of the election, executive editor Bill Keller added a comment 
>about
>the seemingly hypothetical issue of running a damaging story about a 
>candidate
>as close as two days ahead of the voting:
>   I can't say categorically you should not publish an article damaging to 
>a
>candidate in the last days before an election. . . . If you learned a day 
>or
>two before the election that a candidate had lied about some essential
>qualification for the job - his health or criminal record - and there's no 
>real doubt
>and you've given the candidate a chance to respond and the response doesn't
>cast doubt on the story, do you publish it? Yes. Voters certainly have a 
>right to
>know that.
>   Oddly, though, despite Keller's having taken such a position, the Times
>apparently chose not to run the Nelson pictures story on the grounds of 
>proximity
>to Election Day. Even more oddly, despite the fact that the Times had
>thoroughly researched and reported Nelson's story before deciding not to 
>run it -
>even after the story had run in both Salon and Mother Jones'the Times still
>ducked (and continues to duck) the whole bulge story itself, ignoring an 
>important
>issue that it knew to be factually substantiated.
>   No mention of the Bush bulge was made in either the Times or the 
>Washington
>Post between October 29 and Election Day - aside from a one-line mention in 
>a
>New York Times Magazine essay by Matt Bai (10/31/04) that used the 
>Bulgegate
>story as an example of the paranoia of "political
>   conspiracists":
>   A rumor that the president somehow cheated in the televised debates - 
>was
>that a wire under his jacket? was he listening to Karl Rove on a 
>microscopic
>earpiece? - flies across the Internet and takes hold in dark corners of the
>public imagination.
>   The only subsequent reference to the bulge was a light post-election 
>piece
>by Times Washington reporter Elizabeth Bumiller (11/8/04), who cited the
>anonymously sourced Hill story saying the bulge was body armor (an odd 
>decision by
>the Times, which officially frowns on unidentified sources even for its own
>pieces). She reported that the White House tailor was miffed at having 
>earlier
>been blamed for the bulge by the White House.
>   'A Lot of Hoops'
>   While the New York Times seems to have been the only newspaper to write 
>an
>investigative story on the Bush bulge and then kill it, it was not the only
>paper to duck the story about the bulge and its dramatic confirmation and
>delineation by Nelson. In addition to the L. A. Times and the two local 
>papers that
>showed no interest, Nelson says that the same day he learned that his story
>had been killed at the Times, October 28, he received a phone call from
>Washington Post assistant managing editor Bob Woodward, famous for his 
>investigative
>reports on Watergate. "Woodward said he'd heard the Times had killed the 
>story
>and asked me if I could send the photos to him," says Nelson.
>   The JPL scientist did so immediately, via email, noting that he had also
>been in touch with Salon magazine. He says Woodward then sent his 
>photographs
>over to a photo analyst at the paper to check them for authenticity, which
>Nelson says was confirmed.
>   A day later, realizing time was getting short, Nelson called Woodward 
>back.
>Recalls Nelson: "He told me, 'Look, I'm going to have to go through a lot 
>of
>hoops to get this story published. You're already talking to Salon. Why 
>don't
>you work with them?'" (Several emails to Woodward asking him about Nelson's
>account have gone unanswered.)
>   At that point Nelson, despairing of getting the pictures in a major
>publication, went with the online magazine Salon. This reporter 
>subsequently asked
>Nelson to do a similar photo analysis of digital images of Bush's back 
>taken
>from the tapes of the second and third presidential debates. The resulting
>photos, which also clearly show the cueing device and magnetic loop harness 
>under
>his jacket on both occasions, were posted, together with Nelson's images 
>from
>the first debate, on the news website of Mother Jones magazine (10/30/04).
>   What Should Affect Elections?
>   Ben Bagdikian, retired dean of U.C. Berkeley's journalism school, held
>Woodward's current position at the Washington Post during the time of the 
>Pentagon
>Papers. Informed of the fate of the bulge story and Nelson's photos at the
>three newspapers, he said:
>   I cannot imagine a paper I worked for turning down a story like this 
>before
>an election. This was credible photographic evidence not about breaking the
>rules, but of a total lack of integrity on the part of the president, 
>evidence
>that he'd cheated in the debate, and also of a lack of confidence in his
>ability on the part of his campaign. I'm shocked to hear top management 
>decided not
>to run such a story.
>   Could the last-minute decision by the New York Times not to run the 
>Nelson
>photos story, or the decision by the Washington Post and the Los Angeles 
>Times
>not even to pursue it, have affected the outcome of the recent presidential
>race? There is no question that if such a story had run in any one of those
>major venues, instead of just in two online publications, Bulgegate would 
>have
>been a major issue in the waning days of the campaign.
>   Given that exit polls show many who voted for Bush around the country
>listed "moral values" as a big factor in their decision, it seems 
>reasonable to
>assume that at least some would have changed their minds had evidence been
>presented in the nation's biggest and most influential newspapers that Bush 
>had been
>dishonest.
>   "Cheating on a debate should affect an election," says Bagdikian. "The
>decision not to let people know this story could affect the history of the 
>United
>States."
>   Investigative journalist Dave Lindorff is a regular columnist for
>CounterPunch. His latest book is This Can't Be Happening: Resisting the 
>Disintegration
>of American Democracy (Common Courage Press). His writings can be found at
>www.thiscantbehappening.net.
>   Spiking the Bush Bulge Story: Confirmed
>   As Extra! went to press, New York Times public editor Daniel Okrent 
>posted
>a message on his website (12/21/04) confirming that his paper had, in fact,
>killed a story about the device under George W. Bush's suit. Here is the 
>text of
>Okrent's message:
>   President Bush and the Jacket Bulge
>   Online discussion of the famous bulge on President Bush's back at the 
>first
>presidential debate hasn't stopped. One reporter (Dave Lindorff of 
>Salon.com)
>asserted that the Times had a story in the works about a NASA scientist who
>had done a careful study of the graphic evidence, but it was spiked by the
>paper's top editors sometime during the week before the election. Many 
>readers
>have asked me for an explanation.
>   I checked into Lindorff's assertion, and he's right. The story's life at
>the Times began with a tip from the NASA scientist, Robert Nelson, to 
>reporter
>Bill Broad. Soon his colleagues on the science desk, John Schwartz and 
>Andrew
>Revkin, took on the bulk of the reporting. Science editor Laura Chang 
>presented
>the story at the daily news meeting but, like many other stories, it did 
>not
>make the cut. According to executive editor Bill Keller, "In the end, 
>nobody,
>including the scientist who brought it up, could take the story beyond
>speculation. In the crush of election-finale stories, it died a quiet, 
>unlamented
>death."
>   Revkin, for one, wished it had run. Here's what he told me in an e-mail
>message:
>   I can appreciate the broader factors weighing on the paper's top 
>editors,
>particularly that close to the election. But personally, I think that 
>Nelson's
>assertions did rise above the level of garden-variety speculation, mainly
>because of who he is. Here was a veteran government scientist, whose 
>decades-long
>career revolves around interpreting imagery like features of Mars, who 
>decided
>to say very publicly that, without reservation, he was convinced there was
>something under a president's jacket when the White House said there was
>nothing. He essentially put his hard-won reputation utterly on the line 
>(not to
>mention his job) in doing so and certainly with little prospect that he 
>might gain
>something as a result - except, as he put it, his preserved integrity.
>   Revkin also told me that before Nelson called Broad, he had approached
>other media outlets as well. None - until Salon - published anything on 
>Nelson's
>analysis. "I'd certainly choose [Nelson's] opinion over that of a tailor,"
>Revkin concluded, referring to news reports that cited the man who makes 
>the
>president's suits. "Hard to believe that so many in the media chose the 
>tailor,
>even in coverage after the election."
>   -------