NY Times Reporting Based on False Letter?

The shoddiness of the NY Times weapons report becomes even more disturbing. NRO mentions that a source indicates the Times uses for its report a possibly false letter leaked by El Baradi in order to embarrass the Bush administration. If true, the implications of an employee of the United Nations attempting to influence the American election could be huge. Hopefully, Kerry will have the sense to shut down the use of the Times report on the stump.

Drudge is reporting CBS News' 60 Minutes, that MSM outlet with such a stellar history this year was all set to air an attack piece on the missing munitions the weekend before the election in order to send the Bush administration into crisis mode. Somebody was obviously shopping an October surprise here.

Interesting that the harder the MSM tries to help him, the more damage they potentially cause. We'll have to see how things shake out over the next several days. However, this really does have the same feel as what happened with Rathergate - an initial inflamatory report siezed upon by all corners of the MSM. An almost immediate debunking and uprising in the blogsphere while the MSM and Kerry campaign insist there is nothing to the contradictions. Followed finally by a very slow and painful denuement.

UPDATE: Kerry has no intention of admiting problems with the weapons report. Lockhart needs to get his head out of his ass.

UPDATE: Josh Marshall has a refutation of the refutation.

The Note this morning had a decent breakdown of the issue as it stands now

There is a strong and not always unwarranted suspicion on the right that the press likes to end-load the pre-election news cycle with lots of hard-hitting, negative stories … so with that, we bring you the latest "surprise" stories that have the potential to develop nationally.

Yesterday's "surprise" — the New York Times story on the missing explosives, " … gave Kerry an opening on national security" and leads some to say that Monday was "the second day in a row that Bush appeared on the defensive on the issue his advisers believe will lead to Kerry's defeat: keeping the United States safe," reports the Washington Post 's VandeHei and Allen.

An NBC News report last night suggested that those explosives went missing before April 10, 2003 — before U.S. troops ever got to the site in Iraq, leading to an avalanche of push-back from the Bush campaign last night. If the 101st Airborne Division was indeed there one day after liberation and they could not find any of the high grade explosives, that does cast doubt on the suggestion that the Bush Administration's alleged failure to plan for post-war eventualities was to blame.

(Timing is a critical issue here: the Times story yesterday include this paragraph: "Earlier this month, in a letter to the I.A.E.A. in Vienna, a senior official from Iraq's Ministry of Science and Technology wrote that the stockpile disappeared after early April 2003 because of '"the theft and looting of the governmental installations due to lack of security."'" (emphasis ours).

The NBC story does not exonerate the president, but it does add context that rebuts, at least to some extent, the most hyperbolic charges that we heard yesterday.

Perhaps the Bush Administration can be faulted for not pre-securing the site, and there is ample evidence that they were warned about it and the dangerous explosives. But that's a different and less meaty charge than what the story sounded like across America — that they knew about the site and failed to secure it after the war.

And unless one knows for sure the timing of the removal, one can't say for sure either way how seriously this should be treated substantively or politically.

There is no hard evidence yet that the missing Al Qaqaa explosives are being used to kill U.S. troops or that the troops are less safe because of what the administration did or didn't do to secure this material.

What is up with the Times? Jason Blair was not enough for the folks in the newsroom? I have a feeling this may be more damaging for them than even Sir Jason was. Hopefully, they have learned from the Rathergate fiasco and will start issuing mea-culpas asap, but I doubt it.

Here are some early comments on the issue. I am sure this will become a full blown war on both sides of the blogsphere this week.

• CNN seems to be the first major outlet reporting on the Time's "mistake"
• Hugh Hewitt
• The Belmont Club
• NZ Bear
• Powerline
• Jim Geraghty
• Captian's Quarters
• Roger Simon
• Michelle Malkin
• Secure Liberty