Readers of the Washington Post were greeted with the following front page story on April 24 by Post reporter Robin Wright:
N. Koreans Taped At Syrian Reactor
Video Played a Role in Israeli Raid
A video taken inside a secret Syrian facility last summer convinced the Israeli government and the Bush administration that North Korea was helping to construct a reactor similar to one that produces plutonium for North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, according to senior U.S. officials who said it would be shared with lawmakers today.
The officials said the video of the remote site, code-named Al Kibar by the Syrians, shows North Koreans inside. It played a pivotal role in Israel’s decision to bomb the facility late at night last Sept. 6, a move that was publicly denounced by Damascus but not by Washington.
Hot stuff, eh? But the next day the story was rewritten, running on page 12:
U.S. Details Reactor in Syria
Americans Push Damascus, N. Korea To Admit Collusion
…
Not until last year were experts certain the compound was for a gas-cooled, graphite-moderate reactor, they said, a conclusion that hinged partly on pictures taken of the interior of the facility before its completion. The pictures depicted a site similar to the one at Yongbyon, which produces plutonium for nuclear weapons, but unlike any other nuclear reactor constructed in the past 35 years, officials said.
…
At the same time, a senior U.S. official acknowledged that the U.S. intelligence experts had formally assigned only “low confidence” to the possibility that the site was at the heart of a Syrian nuclear weapons program, because it lacked basic components such as a reprocessing plant. The sole photograph shared with reporters depicting Syrian and North Korean officials together did not appear to be the Al Kibar reactor site. [my italics]
You might have thought that Robin might have been indignant about being lied to by “senior U.S. officials,” but, apparently, not so much. I don’t know if Robin is a man or a woman. But s/he is starting to remind me of Judith Miller.
