White House press secretary Sarah Sanders urged reporters to responsibly report the news Wednesday, pointing to a discredited example of media malpractice as “one of the worst cases” of journalists harming national security.
Sanders, speaking in defense of Trump supporters heckling a CNN journalist the night before in Florida, said that the Trump administration was concerned about responsible and accurate reporting.
“The media routinely reports on classified information and government secrets that put lives in danger and risk valuable national security tools,” Sanders said at the daily White House press briefing. “One of the worst cases was the reporting on the U.S. ability to listen to Osama bin Laden’s satellite phone in the late ’90s. Because of that reporting, he stopped using that phone and the country lost valuable intelligence.”
The claim has been scrutinized since 2005, when it was publicly made by President George W. Bush, with his press team fingering an Aug. 21, 1998, article in the Washington Times as the reason bin Laden stopped using the phone.
The Washington Times story ran one day after a U.S. missile strike failed to kill the terrorist leader. Information about the satellite phone was in the 21st paragraph of the Washington Times article, and the article did not say the U.S. was listening to its calls.
The Times report profiled bin Laden, noting: “He keeps in touch with the world via computers and satellite phones and has given occasional interviews to international news organizations.”
Bush’s claim, also made in the 9/11 Commission report, was heavily scrutinized.
Additional reporting revealed that bin Laden’s use of a satellite phone was public knowledge since at least 1996, when Taliban officials told Time magazine he used the device to communicate with jihadis around the world.
The Washington Post declared Bush’s claim an apparent “urban myth,” and the Washington Times noted other news outlets had reported on bin Laden’s use of a satellite phone. CBS News reported at about the same time that bin Laden gave a BBC interview with a satellite phone.
In 2008, a report written by two former federal prosecutors for Human Rights First found that based on court records, bin Laden stopped using the phone on Oct. 9, 1998 — more than a month after the Washington Times article on Aug. 21.
“[T]he United States had launched a cruise missile attack on bin Laden the day before the article appeared and just missed him, reportedly, by hours,” the former prosecutors wrote. “This would have likely have caused him to be more circumspect about using the phone.”
The phone was used four times in September 1998 and for nine calls in October 1998, the report said. The phone use continued despite a Sept. 7, 1998, article in the Los Angeles Times that said U.S. officials “used their communications intercept capacity to pick up calls placed by bin Laden on his Inmarsat satellite phone, despite his apparent use of electronic ‘scramblers.'”
Sanders did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In her remarks at the daily press briefing, Sanders did not cite a more recent example, but said “it is now standard to abandon common sense ethical practices,” saying “we certainly support a free press, we certainly condemn violence against anybody but we also ask that people act responsibly and report accurately and fairly.”
