You would think that after the fiasco of non-existent weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, the New York Times would be more careful in its reporting on alleged WMD development programs, especially anything of a nuclear weapons nature, in other countries in the Middle East. You would think that after two major UN agencies, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, found no evidence of biological, chemical or nuclear WMDs prior to the March 2003 Iraq invasion and the US-created Iraq Survey Group turned up nothing after the invasion, the Times would exercise greater skepticism about Bush administration claims that Iran is determined to develop its own atomic bomb.

You would think that based on the kinds of analysis offered up by nuclear arms expert David Albright, investigative report Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker, John Prados in his book Hoodwinked: The Documents That Reveal How Bush Sold Us a War and others, the Times might have learned a lesson or two about fact-checking and how to better uncover the truth by maintaining distance from an administration blinded by dreams of remaking the Middle East in their own self-made image of democracy.

Think again.

Déjà vu All Over Again? . . .

On November 13, 2005, the Times published a report by William J. Broad and David E. Sanger headlined, “Relying on Computer, U.S. Seeks to Prove Iran's Nuclear Aims”. The report contains allegations of secret Iranian plans to obtain a nuclear warhead based on information contained in a stolen laptop computer. The allegations are made by anonymous US “officials”, in the mode of former Times reporter Judith Miller, whose fabulously wrong pre-Iraq invasion September 2002 report on Iraq’s quest for aluminum tubes for use in a clandestine nuclear weapons program set the stage for Bush administration heavies Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice to start talking about tubes + Saddam Hussein x 9-11 = mushroom clouds over America.

Like Miller before them, in their story Broad-Sanger rely heavily on anonymous “American officials”, “American intelligence officials”, “officials” in the Bush administration, etc. to roll out the “strongest evidence yet that, despite Iran's insistence that its nuclear program is peaceful, the country is trying to develop a compact warhead.”

What is the evidence found in the laptop? “More than a thousand pages of Iranian computer simulations and accounts of experiments” that show “a long effort to design a nuclear warhead.” Where did the laptop come from? “American officials have said little. . . about the origins of the laptop, other than that they obtained it in mid-2004 from a source in Iran who they said had received it from a second person, now believed to be dead.” Is the evidence (or intelligence) convincing? “[W]hile the intelligence has sold well among countries like Britain, France and Germany, which reviewed the documents as long as a year ago, it has been a tougher sell with countries outside the inner circle.” What is Iran’s response? Not in the Broad-Sanger article but in a Reuters article, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said: “The baseless claim made us laugh. We do not use laptops to keep our classified documents.''

Sound solid enough to you? If you don’t think so, and you’re eager to avoid a re-run of Iraq, you’ll have trouble challenging the Broad-Sanger account, because no US official went on the record with a statement that can be checked.

The really big question: Why is the Times reporting on this evidence now? One answer may be a politically timed propaganda campaign.

By now, the whole world knows that the Bush administration is out to get Iran one way or another (sanctions? bombing attack?). One way they are going about this is through the IAEA. On November 24, the IAEA Board will convene in Vienna, and Iran’s nuclear program will be on the agenda. At its last meeting in September, the Board passed a bogus resolution (to see why it was bogus, read Gordon Prather at Antiwar.com) stating that Iran was effectively in “non compliance” with its IAEA nuclear safeguard requirements (not, as the Times and other media outlets would have it, its obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which the IAEA has no responsibility for enforcing).

But it’s unclear how much mileage the US can get out of the Broad-Sanger story or the laptop discovery itself. The documents that were stored on the laptop have been kicking around since mid 2004 and had been shopped around prior to the IAEA Board’s September meeting, mainly to IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei (winner of this year’s Nobel Prize and the falsifier of pre-Iraq war claims that Hussein was close to getting a nuclear weapon) and other top IAEA officials, along with a select group of US allies. What was ElBaradei’s verdict? As reported by Broad-Sanger, “Dr. ElBaradei said his agency was bound to ‘follow due process, which means I need to establish the veracity, consistency and authenticity of any intelligence, and share it with the country of concern.’ In this case, he added, ‘That has not happened.’” Moreover, Broad-Sanger describe the US as being reluctant to share intelligence “outside a small circle of close allies.” Thus, even if the evidence is incriminating, hardly anyone is allowed to see it, including countries on the IAEA Board who hold the sword of Damocles -- a possible UN Security Council referral -- over Iran’s head. Remember this when US officials someday use the pretext of “all governments had the same intelligence” to excuse themselves for battering Iran under false pretenses.

Another possible reason for the timing is that Broad-Sanger are simply late reporting. The Washington Post ran an article by Dafna Linzer in August that touches on some of the same story elements in the Times piece. More importantly, Linzer reaches an opposition conclusion: “Administration officials have asserted, but have not offered proof, that Tehran is moving determinedly toward a nuclear arsenal.”

. . .Or Just Plain Stupidity or Laziness?

End of story? Not quite.

Returning to Judith Miller, the beauty of her articles is that they had a thumping insistence that something had to be done to stop Iraq. That insistence managed to live on long after the reported facts themselves were disproved or shown to lack credibility or logic.

The Broad-Sanger story also has a thumping insistence, but bad as Miller’s articles were on the facts, the Iranian laptop story appears to be a real stinker. Within 24 hours of the appearance of the Broad-Sanger piece, David Albright, a nuclear arms expert and president of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), weighed in to say that Broad-Sanger got the basic facts seriously wrong. In fact, Albright went so far as to accuse Broad of journalistic malpractice. Here's what Albright had to say:

“William J. Broad and David E. Sanger repeatedly characterize the contents of computer files as containing information about a nuclear warhead design when the information actually describes a reentry vehicle for a missile. This distinction is not minor, and Broad should understand the difference between the two objects, particularly when the information does not contain any words such as nuclear or nuclear warhead.”

How embarrassing!

So next time Broad-Sanger write about a secret Iranian nuclear weapons program, be afraid, be very afraid - - of their grasp of the facts and reliance on anonymous sources with agendas. And maybe check in with the Washington Post, David Albright, or Gordon Prather.

John McGlynn lives and writes in Tokyo.