The White House's Weak Denials

As for the White House's attack on him: "Character assassination is what they do when they have nothing else to say," Suskind said.

The Coverage

On the NBC Nightly News, Brian Williams reported: "In a new book, journalist Ron Suskind claims he has new evidence to show the case was more than a failure of intelligence. It was, he writes, an out and out deception." CBS and ABC all but ignored the story. There was a great deal of discussion on CNN and MSNBC.

Joby Warrick's story in The Washington Post focused on the denials: "The Bush administration joined former top CIA officials in denouncing a new book's assertion that White House officials ordered the forgery of Iraqi documents to suggest a link between Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the lead hijacker in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks."

Brett J. Blackledge writes for the Associated Press: "Two former CIA officers Tuesday denied that they or the spy agency faked an Iraqi intelligence document purporting to link Saddam Hussein with 9/11 bomber Mohammed Atta, as they are quoted as saying in a new book.

"The White House issued the statement on behalf of the former officials after a day of adamant denials from the CIA and Bush administration about the claim, made in 'The Way of the World,' a book by Washington-based journalist Ron Suskind."

Opinion Watch

Dick Polman blogs for the Philadelphia Inquirer: "So who do you believe: Ron Suskind (who says that everything in the book is on the record, many sources), or the Bush White House (which is assailing Suskind for "gutter journalism")? Unfortunately for Bush, we have an imbalance here.

"Suskind, who won a Pulitzer while writing for The Wall Street Journal, has been watchdogging this White House ever since he worked with ex-Treasury Department secretary Paul O'Neill on the latter's tell-all book, and the administration has never been able to wreck his reputation. Suskind, in 2004, authored the now-famous New York Times Magazine article that quoted a Bush official voicing disdain for "the reality-based community," a comment that has come to epitomize the Bush regime's faith-based mindset. Suskind spoke to a wide range of Republicans for that article, and ultimately concluded that Bush's governing style was characterized by "a disdain for contemplation or deliberation, an embrace of decisiveness, a retreat from empiricism, a sometimes bullying impatience with doubters and even friendly questioners." Four years later, is there even a phrase in his conclusion that rings false?

"On the other end of the believability scale, we of course have a White House long practiced in the art of deception. Bush oversold a slew of Saddam threats that turned out to be phony. . . . Indeed, over the past several years, roughly six in 10 Americans have said that Bush deliberately misled us into war.

"Tony Fratto, a Bush deputy press secretary, uttered the standard denial about Suskind yesterday. . . . but how would he know? When the alleged letter forgery was carried out in 2003, Fratto was working for the Treasury Department, and we already know, from Scott McClellan's book, that Bush press secretaries are routinely kept in the dark anyway. . . .

"Even if one is inclined to doubt the notion that the Bush war team would actually fake a document in the service of better propaganda, Suskind's broader theme has long rung true - that Bush has spent much of the last seven years seeking only the kind of evidence that would square with his certitudes."

Marty Kaplan blogs on Huffingtonpost.com: "When this came up on MSNBC, moderator Chuck Todd asked Politico's Mike Allen whether this would lead 'the anti-war crowd' in Congress to call for impeachment. Allen replied that it would 'give the lefty blogosphere something to grab onto.'

"And so, in less time than it takes to say 'Dick Cheney,' the subject is changed from what would be one of the most outrageous violations of the Constitution in the history of the Republic to a left/right issue. . . .