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Contrast the skepticism with which reporters in Alabama treated the FBI's conduct of its raid. ABC's Gio Benitez had the fewest qualms, describing the use of lethal force as self-defense. CBS' Mark Strassmann used the caveat of "officials believe" when recounting the agents' tale that Dykes fired, and missed, first. NBC's Gabe Gutierrez made no mentioned of a gunfight preceding the killing.
At CBS, John Miller, a former member of FBI brass, was the only reporter to ascribe a political motive to Dykes, a survivalist one. Miller told us that Dykes was an activist against the federal government. Ultimately, it seems, the federal government was active against him, in spades.
As for the CIA's killer drones, ABC's Jonathan Karl made a telling point: if torture is such a violation of human rights that the Obama Administration bans its spies from waterboarding, how come it permits them to assassinate from the sky? Scooper Isikoff found himself in the odd position of obtaining a soundbite on the previously-secret memo from NBC News' in-house terrorism analyst Michael Leiter, who had had a hand in writing it.
This either makes Leiter the best source imaginable…or it places NBC News in an impossible conflict of interest…or the entire dilemma is buried by the most anodyne reflection possible. No prizes for guessing how that turned out.
Funnily enough, despite the scoop and despite the in-house expertise, NBC has covered the manhunts for al-Qaeda leaders less heavily than the other two newscasts over the years.
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