Gerstman has satisfied me that the interview was indeed posted on the Times site on December 1, thanks to an email version of it that he retained at the time. And anyone can see by querying the archives that it is not there now. Gerstman has copied me on all his correspondence with Okrent's assistant Arthur Bovino. Here is Gerstman's latest email to Bovino, which nicely sums up the situation. I have made only minor grammatical and formatting edits.

Dear Mr. Bovino,

At the beginning of December I blogged an item about the New York Times interview with President Bashar Assad of Syria. When I posted my blog, I put in a link to the online interview but discovered that it had been moved or removed as I received a "Page Not Found" message. This was strange because usually articles are available for a week after publication before they are put into the paid archive, and this was only two or three days after publication.

At the time I contacted the office of the Public Editor of the NY Times and you responded that if I wanted the article for free I could go to the library and if there was a technical problem I could e-mail the webmaster of the NY Times site. Though I was convinced that this was not a technical error, I eventually sent an e-mail to the address you provided. The e-mail bounced.

When I informed you that I was not successful, you suggested a different e-mail address. I sent a message to that address and have not heard anything in nearly a week.

The office of the public editor was established by the New York Times in order to restore a measure of credibility and accountability to the paper after the scandals of the past year. To some degree, I understand that the added scrutiny of your office has helped the paper restore some of its damaged reputation.

Yet my dealings with your office have been, to put it mildly, frustrating and unsatisfying. Your newspaper had an interview with a world leader and now it is no longer available with no explanation as to why it is gone.

When the NY Times published the interview on December 1, 2003, it featured 3 items related to the interview.

• Item #1 was a story of how Iraq and North Korea made a connection in Syria. In the interview, President Assad denied such connections.
• Item #2 were excerpts from the interview.
• Item #3 was a story "Syrian Pressing for Israel Talks" in which your reporter claimed, "In discussing possible renewed Israeli-Syrian peace negotiations, Mr. Assad said he had no preconditions. But given the progress made before they foundered in March 2000 over the issue of borders, it would be a waste of time to start from scratch, he said."

What's important here is that in the interview President Assad, in discussing Syria's support of Hezbollah there was the following exchange:

Question: But Sheba' farms are outside Lebanon, right?

Answer: It's a small part inside Lebanon. They say it's Syrian and we say `No, it's Lebanese and not Syrian.' It's a very small area. All the operations of Hezbollah now take place on Lebanese territories not outside, while the Israeli airplanes violate Lebanese airspace on a daily basis. There is no exchange of shelling between the Lebanese and the Israelis although Israel, unlike the Lebanese, every now and then shells Lebanese territories.

Instead of challenging the dictator, the Times's interviewer let him off the hook. The UN Security Council certified Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon as complete in 2000. Thus by pretending that it is only Israel that claims Sheba' farms is Syrian, President Assad is the one defying the will of the United Nations. (See "Saudi Peace Plan Is Finding Resistance in U.N." by Barbara Crossette March 29, 2002 for example.) But the interviewer let him get away with it.

I doubt that a matter as arcane as this is of interest to most people but consider the following. In the paper's introduction to the interview stated:

"The president's office transcribed and translated the interview, during which the president spoke in Arabic and English. The Times trimmed some text from the questions."

This is potentially damaging to the paper. The paper, here, is admitting that it allowed a dictator to dictate terms of his coverage.

Another possibility is that President Assad was unhappy with the discovery of an enterprising Syrian newspaperman. The MEMRI website reports that Syrian journalist Subhi Hadidi criticized the omission of extensive segments in the official Syrian Arabic version of President Bashar Al-Assad's lengthy November 30, 2003 interview:

"The Syrian president granted a lengthy interview to the American paper The New York Times, which revealed the mentality of Bashar Al-Assad directing all his words, deeds, and ways. This is Al-Assad's most important interview to the American press, as it gives a good example of the philosophy that prevails in the presidential palace...

"Is it conceivable that the president makes statements for quoting to the American press (which is the international press, since the interview was published in English), but that these statements aren't exactly the same as the ones published in the Syrian media? And if so - and this is more than the sick mind imagines - how can this president be young, modern, and a reformist (even in a very remote sense), and how can he possibly be seen as a president who is in charge?

"Let us begin with the numbers: The English version, as published on The New York Times website, had 11,280 words... The Syrian news agency Sana and the official Syrian press published what it called the 'full version' but this had only 5,500 words. The London paper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat published the 'full Arabic translation' of the interview, which was 7,667 words long.

"Where did the 2,200 words vanish to, if, as the American press said, it was the president's office that prepared the English translation? What did Al-Assad tell America and the entire world yet at the same time thought not fitting to tell the Syrians?"

Is it possible that President Assad prevailed upon the New York Times to drop the interview because it embarrassed him?

What I have established is this:

• 1) On December 1, 2003 the New York Times published an interview with President Assad on its website.
• 2) It announced the publication of the interview in its print version.
• 3) Sometime that week the interview was removed from the website.
• 4) Doing a search for Bashar Assad on the NY Times website for the first week in December nets a few articles, but none of them include the interview. (Now even the excerpts from the interview are missing from the search.)

I have established that a feature that was on the NY Times website is gone. I would like to know why.

Thank you,

David Gerstman

Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 12:00 AM | link    

Sunday, January 11, 2004