CAIR BEARS. I hold no brief for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, but it really does seem to me that if The New York Times is going to go to the trouble of doing a long story about how they are being accused of having ties to terrorists, and how they've recently become a subject of controversy within Congress, and then put the whole mess on A1, they could at least provide some indication of who is doing the accusing. I looked and looked, scrolling to the end and waiting for the big reveal, but the "House Republicans" cited as accusers in the fourth paragraph of this story were never named. Instead, we get their guilt-by-association accusations against Nancy Pelosi and New Jersey Democrat Bill Pascrell Jr., and then Barbara Boxer's decision not to be associated with the group. But no "House Republicans."
CAIR has been the subject of controversy in Washington conservative policy circles since at least 2001, and for all I know, such concerns are justified. I've heard criticisms of the group from secular Arab intellectuals, as well. But the news peg for the Times story was the recent congressional controversy, and a front-page story on the controversy that names only Democrats -- and not the House G.O.P. accusers who created the controversy in the first place -- is a smear-job, pure and simple.
If you look at the Associated Press story on this from two days ago -- and why is The Times two whole days behind the AP, anyway? -- you'll see the accusers were the House Republican Conference, which reportedly put out a press release attacking Pelosi and others based on a Washington Times story. The Republican Conference is chaired by Adam Putnam, the red-headed "Howdy-Doody Looking Nimrod" from Florida who most recently came to national attention for -- wait for it -- pushing the false charge against Pelosi that she had specifically requested, in his words, "a jumbo jet that costs $22,000 an hour to operate to taxi her and her buddies back and forth to California" even though he later admitted to the The Tampa Tribune that he had no direct knowledge of such a thing and was pushing it based on an anonymously-sourced report in -- wait for it -- The Washington Times. The Tribune concluded that "there's no evidence Pelosi requested any such thing," and dubbed Putnam the "G.O.P.'s Top Aggressor" for his efforts.
If the A.P. could track down and quote House Republican Conference spokesman Ed Patru, so could The Times. I never thought the day would come when I would say this, but here goes: If you really want to learn about what's at stake in this controversy, read the original Washington Times report from Monday. It's fairer to CAIR and to Democrats. ADDENDUM: What the Washington Times makes clear, and what The New York Times elides, is that the controversy over CAIR has not been a purely partisan affair, as one might think from the morning's coverage. In fact, according to the conservative Times of D.C., Sen. Chuck Schumer has previously said, "We know [CAIR] has ties to terrorism" and criticized the group for having "intimate links with Hamas." An article where Democrats are all on the defensive about associations with CAIR does not paint a full picture of their thinking, but does sync well with Putnam's attempts to create a controversy for them.
--Garance Franke-Ruta
