“ In 1992 it was the Iran Contra charges brought days before the election ... In 2000 it was the DUI charges a few days before the vote ...And now.... news of missing explosives in Iraq—first reported in April 2003—was being resurrected for a 60 MINUTES election-eve broadcast designed to knock the Bush administration into a crisis mode.” -- Matt Drudge, October 26, 2004

 Never before in our history have mainstream media organizations sunk so deep in the tank for a Democratic ticket.

The latest election-cycle scandal involving major U.S. media organizations involves—once again—now-discredited CBS and its cyber-rag, “60 Minutes.” CBS, which had cooperated with the left-biased New York Times, planned to air a “Bush Missing Explosives” story on Sunday, October 31—virtually on the eve of the presidential election.

The story, which was a re-hash of information reported in April 2003 about a large cache of explosives missing in Iraq , debuted instead in the New York Times. The paper slugged the story about missing explosives as an “exclusive” and conveniently omitted a date line.

 Jeff Fager, executive producer of the Sunday edition of “60 Minutes,” said in a statement “our plan was to run the story on October 31, but it became clear that it wouldn't hold...”

There are two big problems with this newest “October Surprise”: First of all, the story—presented as a current news exposé --is a full year-and-a-half old.

The story was first published and broadcast in April 2003, but in their zeal to promote the election of John F. Kerry, CBS and the New York Times attempted to convince American voters that the “missing ammo” story is a current exposé of how our military (under the inept command of George W. Bush) has allowed a huge ammo dump to virtually disappear on their watch.

The second problem is that the explosives were already missing when the troops arrived. This is according to the NBC news crew embedded with American troops that moved in to secure the Al-Qaqaa weapons facility on April 10, 2003 , one day after the liberation of Iraq .

It is not clear exactly who it was that shopped an election-eve repackaging of the “missing explosives” story. The L.A.Times claims, “The source on the story first went to “60 Minutes” but also expressed interest in working with the N.Y. Times. . . . The tip was received last Wednesday.”

Clifford May, who has had a long and distinguished career in international relations, journalism, communications and politics, believes the source was the UN. May is the President of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism created immediately following the 9/11 attacks on the United States. He shares the following statement, sent to him by a source in the U.S. government:

“The Iraqi explosives story is a fraud. These weapons were not there when U.S. troops went to this site in 2003. The IAEA and its head, the anti-American Mohammed El Baradei, leaked a false letter on this issue to the media to embarrass the Bush administration. The U.S. is trying to deny El Baradei a second term and we have been on his case for missing the Libyan nuclear weapons program and for weakness on the Iranian nuclear weapons program.”

Desperation . . . or Stupidity?

With the U.S. presidential election just eight days away, news of the “missing explosives” quickly became campaign fodder for the Democrats. Sen. John Kerry immediately seized on the information to accuse President Bush of incompetence in failing to secure the material, charging that “this is one of the great blunders of Iraq and one of the great blunders of this administration.”

In the wake of an NBC report that blows the lid off the latest CBS-New York Times misadventure into “creative journalism,” the Bush campaign fired off a statement saying that Kerry's criticism of the president over the missing material has “been proven false before the day is over.”

Town Hall columnist Diana West asked some pointed questions in her October 26 column: “Are you incensed over Dan Rather's crude attempt to influence the presidential election with a sheaf of pathetic forgeries? Appalled by Nightline’s Ted Koppel for using dictatorship-vetted sources in communist Vietnam to contradict the testimonies of decorated American veterans? Outraged by ABC's head-office directive to its reporters to go easier on John Kerry than George W. Bush, and not ‘reflexively and artificially hold both sides equally accountable’? Don't get mad, vote Republican.”

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