The following article appeared on the front page of the New York Times. I'm posting it here because it is an amazing example of the "free press" functioning as state propagandist:

Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of War, an Iraqi Scientist Is Said to Assert
By JUDITH MILLER

WITH THE 101ST AIRBORNE DIVISION, south of Baghdad, Iraq, April 20 — A scientist who claims to have worked in Iraq's chemical weapons program for more than a decade has told an American military team that Iraq destroyed chemical weapons and biological warfare equipment only days before the war began, members of the team said.

They said the scientist led Americans to a supply of material that proved to be the building blocks of illegal weapons, which he claimed to have buried as evidence of Iraq's illicit weapons programs. The scientist also told American weapons experts that Iraq had secretly sent unconventional weapons and technology to Syria, starting in the mid-1990's, and that more recently Iraq was cooperating with Al Qaeda, the military officials said.

The Americans said the scientist told them that President Saddam Hussein's government had destroyed some stockpiles of deadly agents as early as the mid-1990's, transferred others to Syria, and had recently focused its efforts instead on research and development projects that are virtually impervious to detection by international inspectors, and even American forces on the ground combing through Iraq's giant weapons plants.

An American military team hunting for unconventional weapons in Iraq, the Mobile Exploitation Team Alpha, or MET Alpha, which found the scientist, declined to identify him, saying they feared he might be subject to reprisals. But they said that they considered him credible and that the material unearthed over the last three days at sites to which he led them had proved to be precursors for a toxic agent that is banned by chemical weapons treaties.

The officials' account of the scientist's assertions and the discovery of the buried material, which they described as the most important discovery to date in the hunt for illegal weapons, supports the Bush administration's charges that Iraq continued to develop those weapons and lied to the United Nations about it. Finding and destroying illegal weapons was a major justification for the war.

The officials' accounts also provided an explanation for why United States forces had not yet turned up banned weapons in Iraq. The failure to find such weapons has become a political issue in Washington.

Under the terms of her accreditation to report on the activities of MET Alpha, this reporter was not permitted to interview the scientist or visit his home. Nor was she permitted to write about the discovery of the scientist for three days, and the copy was then submitted for a check by military officials.

Those officials asked that details of what chemicals were uncovered be deleted. They said they feared that such information could jeopardize the scientist's safety by identifying the part of the weapons program where he worked.

The MET Alpha team said it reported its findings to Washington after testing the buried material and checking the scientist's identity with experts in the United States. A report was sent to the White House on Friday, experts said.

Military spokesmen at the Pentagon and at Central Command headquarters in Doha, Qatar, said they could not confirm that an Iraqi chemical weapons scientist was providing American forces with new information.

The scientist was found by a team headed by Chief Warrant Officer Richard L. Gonzales, the leader of MET Alpha, one of several teams charged with hunting for unconventional weapons throughout Iraq. Departing from his team's assigned mission, Mr. Gonzales and his team of specialists from the Defense Intelligence Agency tracked down the scientist on Thursday through a series of interviews and increasingly frantic site visits.

While this reporter could not interview the scientist, she was permitted to see him from a distance at the sites where he said that material from the arms program was buried.

Clad in nondescript clothes and a baseball cap, he pointed to several spots in the sand where he said chemical precursors and other weapons material were buried. This reporter also accompanied MET Alpha on the search for him and was permitted to examine a letter written in Arabic that he slipped to American soldiers offering them information about the program and seeking their protection.

Military officials said the scientist told them that four days before President Bush gave Mr. Hussein 48 hours to leave Iraq or face war, Iraqi officials set fire to a warehouse where biological weapons research and development was conducted.

The officials quoted him as saying he had watched several months before the outbreak of the war as Iraqis buried chemical precursors and other sensitive material to conceal and preserve them for future use. The officials said the scientist showed them documents, samples, and other evidence of the program that he claimed to have stolen to prove that the program existed.

MET Alpha is one of several teams created earlier this year to hunt for unconventional weapons in Iraq. Supported by the 75th Exploitation Task Force, a field artillery brigade based in Fort Sill, Okla., the teams were charged with visiting some 150 top sites that intelligence agencies have identified as suspect.

But the Pentagon-led teams, which include specialists from several Pentagon agencies, have been hampered by a lack of resources and by geography.

Because the task force has two expensive, highly sophisticated, transportable labs in which chemical and germ samples can be analyzed quickly, it was kept at a safe distance from fighting at a desert camp in Kuwait, just across the Iraqi border.

Unable to move their task force closer to Baghdad, where most of the suspect sites and scientists who worked in them are situated, the mobile exploitation teams have had to rely on scarce helicopters to travel to suspect sites in the Baghdad area. Until recently, these were reserved mainly for soldiers going to battle. As a result, most of the teams had done almost no weapons hunting until the fighting had largely concluded.

Two weeks ago, MET Alpha was finally given a mission of inspecting barrels filled with chemicals that were buried on the outskirts of Al Muhawish, a small town south of Baghdad. A small team with little equipment and virtually no supplies traveled to the town for what was supposed to be a half-day survey. The barrels turned out to contain no chemical weapons agents.

But during the survey of that site, Maj. Brian Lynch, the chemical officer of the 101st Airborne Division, told MET Alpha members about a report of suspect containers buried in the area that fit the description of mobile labs.

Other officers mentioned that a man who said he was an Iraqi scientist had given troops a note about Iraq's chemical warfare program. No one had yet followed up the report, they said, because of the fighting and also because similar tips had failed to produce evidence of unconventional weapons.

The team, with vehicles and supplies from the 101st Airborne Division, went out on its own to survey other sites and pursue the tip about the buried containers and the scientist. After completing a lengthy survey of one installation, Mr. Gonzales and other team members from the Defense Intelligence Agency's Chemical Biological Intelligence Support Team decided to try to find the scientist.

Mr. Gonzales tracked down the scientist's note, which had never been formally analyzed and was still in a brigade headquarters, along with the scientist's address, military officials said.

The next morning, MET Alpha weapons experts found the scientist at home, along with some documents from the program and samples he had buried in his backyard and at other sites.

The scientist has told MET Alpha members that because Iraq's unconventional weapons programs were highly compartmented, he only had firsthand information about the chemical weapons sector in which he worked, team members said.

But he has given the Americans information about other unconventional weapons activities, they said, as well as information about Iraqi weapons cooperation with Syria, and with terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda. It was not clear how the scientist knew of such a connection.

The potential of MET Alpha's work is "enormous," said Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the 101st Airborne Division.

"What they've discovered," he added, "could prove to be of incalculable value. Though much work must still be done to validate the information MET Alpha has uncovered, if it proves out it will clearly be one of the major discoveries of this operation, and it may be the major discovery."

New York Times, "Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of War, an Iraqi Scientist Is Said to Assert" by Judith Miller, April 21, 2003

This story is almost certainly a complete lie. And yet the New York Times, the nation's preeminent newspaper, published it anyway. Why? What makes this credible enough to print on the front page? The only source is American government officials and, through them, a letter of an unnamed Iraqi scientist whose credibility could in no way be judged by the journalist (if we dare call the author that). The only difference between this piece and a piece appearing in the Soviet newspaper Pravda is the explicit mention of government censorship, which is of little redemptive value given that you would be hard pressed to find a Russian who was not aware that its news was coming from the state.

There's little need to explain how the piece serves state interests. It is shamefully transparent in this regard. We learn that the Bush administration was correct after all in its assertion that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. We learn that we shouldn't expect the government to find any weapons since they've conveniently all been destroyed just prior to the invasion. We learn that some illegal weapons have been passed to Syria to whom the government has been making overtures of war lately. And, best of all, we learn that the Hussein regime was cooperating with al Qeada after all!

It should be noted that none of these assertions are out of the realm of possibility. But it should also be noted that the government has absolutely no knowledge of it, and this piece was published for the sole purpose of buttressing the government's credibility, not exactly how the official job description of the "free press" is usually presented. So who is Judith Miller, the author of the piece, currently embedded with the 101st Airborne Division? She "broke" the story about Iraq's attempt to purchase "specially designed" aluminum tubes for nuclear weapons production, which later was concluded by competent and qualified persons with the IAEA to be a legitimate purchase.

More than a decade after Saddam Hussein agreed to give up weapons of mass destruction, Iraq has stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb, Bush administration officials said today.

In the last 14 months, Iraq has sought to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes, which American officials believe were intended as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium. American officials said several efforts to arrange the shipment of the aluminum tubes were blocked or intercepted but declined to say, citing the sensitivity of the intelligence, where they came from or how they were stopped. The diameter, thickness and other technical specifications of the aluminum tubes had persuaded American intelligence experts that they were meant for Iraq's nuclear program, officials said, and that the latest attempt to ship the material had taken place in recent months.

The attempted purchases are not the only signs of a renewed Iraqi interest in acquiring nuclear arms. President Hussein has met repeatedly in recent months with Iraq's top nuclear scientists and, according to American intelligence, praised their efforts as part of his campaign against the West.

New York Times, "Threats and Responses: The Iraqis; U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts" by Judith Miller and Michael Gordon, September 8, 2002

Here's what El Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, had to say about the tubes:

With regard to the aluminum tubes, the I.A.E.A. has conducted a thorough investigation of Iraq's attempt to purchase large quantities of high-strength aluminum tubes. As previously reported, Iraq has maintained that these aluminum tubes were sought for rocket production. Extensive field investigation and document analysis have failed to uncover any evidence that Iraq intended to use these 81-millimeter tubes for any project other than the reverse engineering of rockets. The Iraqi decision-making process with regard to the design of these rockets was well documented. Iraq has provided copies of design documents, procurement records, minutes of committee meetings and supporting data and samples. ... Based on available evidence, the I.A.E.A. team has concluded that Iraq's efforts to import these aluminum tubes were not likely to have been related to the manufacture of centrifuge; and moreover, that it was highly unlikely that Iraq could have achieved the considerable redesign needed to use them in a revived centrifuge program.

Judith Miller may as well be receiving her pay checks from the White House. Notice how instrumental she is in shaping the framework and setting the agenda. But it's not the false aluminum tube assertion itself that is the goal of the piece. Notice what else she is able to cram in around it: Hussein has a "campaign against the West." "[A]cquiring nuclear arms is again a top Iraqi priority." "Mr. Hussein's dogged insistence on pursuing his nuclear ambitions...have brought Iraq and the United States to the brink of war." The aluminum tube issue simply gives Ms. Miller a jumping off point for state propaganda. It doesn't matter whether or not the basis for the story, Iraq's attempt to puchase aluminum tubes for enriched-uranium production, is false. It gives Miller and the New York Times an excuse to write about Hussein as a nuclear and chemical weapons pursuing madman intent on destroying the West. The point is to set the stage and let the fear seep into the American public. Bravo, Judith Miller. You serve power well.