Alum contributes to research on misstatements about going to war in Iraq

J-School alum Matt Lewis (JBA '06) applied his journalism muscle to a new non-partisan effort to investigate public officials' comments in the time leading up to the war in Iraq, finding almost 1,000 false statements.

Titled "The War Card," the long-term project was released Jan. 22 by the Center for Public Integrity, an award-winning, non-profit, non-partisan and non-advocacy investigative journalism group in Washington D.C. CPI has released more than 275 reports
and 14 books since its founding in 1990.

Lewis took a position with the Fund for Independence in Journalism after graduating from UW-Madison, hoping to apply his journalism skills outside a traditional newsroom. TFIJ partnered with CPI on the project.

"As a recent graduate, I know that how prewar rhetoric was presented and allowed to go largely unchallenged has been discussed inside and certainly outside of journalism schools across the country," Lewis says. "What is interesting about this project, then, and even troubling, is that it took this many years and a nonprofit investigative group to really begin to paint a searchable, comprehensive portrait of just how all of this actually happened."

The 380,000-plus-word database at the heart of this project juxtaposes what President George W. Bush and seven of his top officials said publicly against what was known, or should have been known, at the time. This fully searchable database includes the public statements, drawn from both primary sources (such as official transcripts) and secondary sources (chiefly major news organizations) over two years beginning on Sept. 11, 2001. It also interlaces relevant information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches and interviews.

The Center dug into speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony and the like. The investigation revealed that on at least 532 separate occasions, Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda or both. During this two-year period, the administration made at least 935 provably false statements.

"The important thing to me about this report is not that it uncovers what were previously 'unknown unknowns,' to quote Rumsfeld," Lewis says. "That's not what it does. Regardless of your political persuasion or opinions on Iraq, what seems undeniable to me is that the administration's actual case as it was constructed at the time was based upon false pretenses. This in itself is not a controversial allegation."

Katy Culver, who worked with Lewis as an undergraduate in both Mass Media Practices and Magazine Publishing, says his current efforts are not only a public service but also a reminder to current students that the new media landscape offers them opportunities not available just a few short years ago.

"Matt always wanted to gather information and relay it impartially for public benefit," Culver says. "That used to mean a newsroom was his only option. But now, organizations engaging in non-profit investigative work open up a whole new world for students. It's a thrilling time to want to report."

Lewis says the months of hard work feel worthwhile, now that he sees the benefit citizens and other journalists can derive from the database he helped document.

Culver says beyond the immediate impact, the concept of "open sourcing" means others can use the data CPI assembled to mine and uncover new threads and themes.

"We believe this can be a very valuable public tool that will certainly be enhanced in the time to come," he says.

The database is publicly accessible. The effort is also being covered by NPR, Democracy Now, MSNBC, C-SPAN, BBC Radio, The New York Times or others, including conversations and interviews with CPI Founder Charles Lewis and current Executive Director of the Center, Bill Buzenberg.