4.02.2004

Smear without Fear: David Letterman ran a clip of a bored kid in the audience at a Bush speech, then, after CNN replayed it, the anchor came back on the air and reported that the White House said the benign footage was a fake. "That is an out and out 100 percent absolute lie," says Letterman. "The kid absolutely was there, and he absolutely was doing everything we pictured via the videotape"--and CNN changed their claim: the White House had nothing to do with the "fake" statement. What gives? It's part of a disturbing pattern of media complicity with White House smears, writes Paul Krugman.

9/11 Question of the Day: Why did the Bush administration withhold thousands of pages of classified foreign policy and counterterrorism documents from former President Bill Clinton's White House files from being turned over to the 9/11 commission investigators?

More ignored warnings: Turns out, Richard Clarke wasn't the only official who warned the Bush administration about terror attacks prior to 9/11. So did former Sen. Gary Hart, co-chair of the Commission on National Security, who co-authored a report that "warned that a devastating terrorist attack on America was imminent and called for the immediate creation of a Cabinet-level national security agency, and delivering it to President Bush on January 31, 2001," reports Salon, adding that Rice, Rumsfeld, and Powell were personally briefed on their findings.

Made-for-TV dissent: Hollywood is taking on Bush, not just with their wallets, but with their scripts, writes the New York Times.

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