New York Times bows to White House pressure over CIA tapes story

In interviewing Mark Mazzetti, one of the reporters who wrote the story for the Times, CNN’s John Roberts declared, “The White House tried to beat the stuffing out of you.”

At least for the moment, the cowardly climbdown by the Times has tended to overshadow the substance of the story itself, which points to the administration’s role in a criminal coverup of acts of torture that amount to war crimes.

The Times story established that at least four senior lawyers and White House advisors—Alberto Gonzales, Bush’s White House counsel and then attorney general; Harriet Miers, his successor in the counsel position; David Addington, counsel and then chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney; and John Bellinger III, the National Security Council’s top lawyer—had participated in discussions on the tapes and their destruction.