The "60 Minutes" staff acts as if it were a bunch of has-beens unable to find a real news story.
On Jan. 11, the CBS News TV magazine reported that, in early 2001, two years before the invasion of Iraq, President Bush’s Pentagon had mapped out how Iraqi oil fields would be carved up after Saddam Hussein was removed.
That story, broadcast to coincide with publication of a book about former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, looked like a blockbuster for about three days, until it crumbled for lack of truth.
It turned out the notorious oil-field map (probably drawn up by the Clinton administration) showed how Saddam himself had divvied up Iraq’s oil fields among foreign contractors in late 2000 or early 2001.
But CBS News never issued a correction or an apology for its false report.
So now, as USA Today exposes the April 18 "60 Minutes" as another distortion, I have to wonder what’s going on with CBS News.
Apparently, Bob Woodward’s book, "Plan of Attack," does not report that Saudi Arabia’s Prince Bandar bin Sultan promised Bush low oil prices just in time for the November presidential election. But "60 Minutes" made it appear that’s exactly what Woodward had found.
The Woodward book says Bandar hoped to smooth oil prices in 2003 after the shock of Iraq’s liberation, to help set the economy right for all of 2004. On "60 Minutes," Mike Wallace twisted the story to sound as if Bandar aimed to collect huge oil profits this spring and summer, but then suddenly to moderate oil prices by Election Day.
Said Wallace: "Woodward told us that Bandar has promised the president that Saudi Arabia will lower oil prices in the months before the election, to ensure the U.S. economy is strong on Election Day."
The twist makes all the difference. Sen. John Kerry already is hinting that Bush and Bandar had made a diabolical "sweetheart deal" on oil prices.
If the deal was to try to stabilize oil prices at moderate levels, $22-$28 a barrel, for a period that started some time in 2003, that was the kind of long-term payback America should expect from a nation the United States saved from invasion from 1990 to 2003.
And that’s how Woodward’s book describes it.
If the deal was to let the Saudis gouge us, demanding $38 a barrel until a price break in autumn 2004, it is a scandal bordering on treason.
"60 Minutes" presented this story as a scandal. Unfortunately, "60 Minutes" was as sloppy and loose with the facts on this story as it was on that oil map.
It seems that selling books and telling the truth are too often incompatible. And in its desperate quest for television ratings, CBS News’ has abandoned its commitment to accuracy.
Frank Warner
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