The NYT’s Can’t Handle The Truth

If a car crashed into the lobby of the New York Times, one wonders if it would report it. Sadly, for the many who want a newspaper of record, the truth crashed on the front page of the New York Times last weekend, and the New York Times hasn’t reported it, to correct it.

I did, here and here.

Monday, at RealClearPolitics, veteran investigative reporter Thomas Lipscomb in the first of three carefully researched and documented columns picks up where the New York Times didn’t, “The Truth, John Kerry, And The New York Times”. Read it for the many details.

The core point is the utterly incompetent flackery of Kate Zernike, condoned by the New York Times. Excerpts:

What does it take to wake up a good reporter than there are some issues here besides one junior lieutenant’s latest assertions on the basis, once again, of totally undisclosed records? It isn’t simply a matter of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth “lies.” The facts recited by Kerry make no military sense, fly in direct opposition to authoritative testimony, and are yet to be backed by any records anyone has seen. And Kerry keeps changing his story.

In any case, it is time for some tough reporting to evaluate the Kerry’s claims as listed in Zernike’s article. I will be following up with several other key incidents which appear to be widely at variance with these claims. These will include what appears to be the current state of the evidence about the “skimmer” operation Kerry has decided to put in play again and the greatest newspaper coverup in modern history.

It is time we all got to see a picture of the famous Kerry “lucky hat,” rather than another account by the latest star-struck journalist. It is time for Kerry to stop alluding to “records” and start producing them. And it is time media assigned reporters with military experience or the resources to analyze this record and see just who is lying about what.

Lipscomb refers to several matters in which I have first hand knowledge. For reference, see the New York Times online archive for June 2, 1971 for my challenge to Kerry to debate, see here for my narrative on August 27, 2004 of how VVJP was formed in 1971, see here for what Purdum did choose to print in the New York Times on August 29, 2004, and see here (October 26, 2004) for my documentation to the New York Times of its unsubstantiated multi-use of “unsubstantiated” to describe the Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth.

All these references, and the reporters’ notes, are available at the New York Times and the rest by Google search. Kate Zernike and her editors at the New York Times can only plead inability to find their own archives, and computer and journalistic incompetence, and admit their transparent bias and errors. -- I won’t be staying up late waiting for their apologies.

Look forward to Lipscomb’s next columns unveiling the rotten carcass that is John Kerry’s deceptions. John Kerry won’t be, and neither will the New York Times.

And neither will the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Its garbled, factless editorial Saturday says of “Kerry takes up the Swift Boat charges,” such delusional drivel as the old chestnut of the MoveOn Left that Karl Rove instigated the Vietnam veterans revolt against Kerry’s self-invented service. Wake up and smell the coffee,Minneapolis Star editorialist, from your 2004 hangover: Where was Rove in 1971 when I did? Where was Rove when the Swiftees came together in 2004? (Which the Star editorialist, perhaps enjoying a sixpack of pre-weekend moonjuice, only mentions in passing.) Then, the editorialist howls at the moon:

Eventually, and bizarrely, people were arguing about whether Kerry took his boat into Cambodia on one occasion. To us the story sounded quite plausible (a number of Americans made clandestine trips into Cambodia during that time), as well as irrelevant to the campaign.

Hey, Minneapolis Star editorialist, if “to us”, you’re the only one clinging to that Kerry invention, as even he and the New York Times can’t get closer than 35-miles.

If that wasn’t enough to shut the window on such wild caterwauling, it’s followed by this howl:

No candidate should have to endure what Kerry got. Some wanted him to sue, but he is a public figure, which complicates matters, and any lawsuit would have taken too long to work its way through the courts, in the meantime highlighting the accusations.

Kerry wouldn’t dare go to court, as the legal right of discovery in his journals and records are just the light of day that Kerry can’t stand, and has refused to open to the public. Virtually everything that is open to the public, including the witnessing of over sixty Swiftees who know different, exposes Kerry, the New York Times, and their prairie home companion paper to withering truth.

UPDATE: Kate Zernike, the New York Times, Minneapolis Star Tribune, and others may want to “meet informational computing.”