"If you look at Whitewater and Wen Ho Lee there is a very disturbing pattern of not checking sources in terms of credibility and alleging wrongdoing when none exists," says Dave Leavy, who served as spokesman for the National Security Council from 1998 until earlier this year, and who responded on behalf of the government to press inquiries into Lee's case. "Lives and reputations are destroyed."

"It's clear the Times didn't learn a single thing from Whitewater," adds Gene Lyons, an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist and longtime critic of Gerth's Whitewater reporting. In his 1996 book, "Fools For Scandal: How the Media Invented Whitewater," Lyons detailed how much of Gerth's reporting was "provably false."

For example: In 1992, Gerth wrote about Beverly Bassett Schaffer, an Arkansas bank regulator appointed by then-Gov. Clinton and portrayed in the Times as a political crony who went easy on the Clinton-affiliated Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan. In his very first Whitewater article, Gerth told readers Schaffer "did not remember the federal examination of Madison." In truth, after reviewing her Madison file, Schaffer had faxed Gerth 20 pages of notes before he wrote his damning story. "There ought to be consequences when reporters screw up this badly," says Lyons.

So the question remains: Could the Wen Ho Lee fiasco have been averted if editors at the Times had cast a critical eye on its Whitewater coverage years ago instead of encouraging Gerth's often questionable brand of reporting?

"What happens the next time Gerth shows up with a long, impenetrable story that doesn't add up?" asks New York Daily News columnist Lars-Erik Nelson, who for the past year has been critical of the Times' China spy coverage.

Though Times editors were not available to answer that question, a Nexis database search shows that Gerth has had exactly five bylines in 2000. Earlier, Gerth had been writing approximately 40 stories each year. "He's been conspicuously silent," notes Steve Aftergood, senior analyst for the Federation of American Scientists. According to a Times spokesperson, Gerth has not taken a leave from the paper this year.

A Timesman for 23 years and one who has studiously avoided the TV talk show circuit, Gerth has been heralded as the paper's top investigative reporter. That image was reinforced when he won his first Pulitzer Prize last year for leading the paper's reporting on the alleged transfer of satellite technology to China by U.S. defense contractors Loral Space & Communications and Hughes Electronics Corp.

The guts of the story were that after a Chinese rocket carrying a Loral satellite exploded and crashed on Feb. 14, 1996, Loral engineers delivered a report on the mishap but may have given the Chinese too much sensitive information in the process. Those charges are still to be considered by a Washington grand jury.

But Gerth went further. His stories also implied that a crucial White House waiver needed by Loral to launch satellites in China may have been granted simply because Loral chairman Bernard Schwartz was a longtime contributor to the Democratic Party. Once granted that waiver, Gerth asserted, Loral leaked military secrets to the People's Republic of China.

Thanks to Gerth's stories, along with the paper's urgent unsigned editorials ("There is too much evidence of wrongdoing to be suppressed or ignored," read one) and repeated, over-the-top doomsday columns by longtime Gerth supporter William Safire (who accused Loral of "the sellout of American security"), the Department of Justice launched an investigation of Schwartz and his company, partly to quell the cries of Republican protests.

On May 23, the Los Angeles Times reported that just months after looking into the matter in 1998, Justice Department investigators became convinced the Loral chairman had done nothing wrong. A task force led by Charles Labella had been unable to turn up "a scintilla of evidence -- or information -- that the president was corruptly influenced by Bernard Schwartz." One federal investigator told the paper, "Poor Bernie Schwartz got a bad deal. There never was a whiff of a scent of a case against him."

Seventeen days later, on Page 24, the New York Times reported that Schwartz had been cleared. Gerth did not write that story.

So of the three-legged Chinese espionage story Gerth built over the past two years -- transferred satellite technology, Democratic contributor Bernie Schwartz and Wen Ho Lee -- two of the legs have been kicked out from underneath him and the paper.

"If you go back three or four years ago to the San Jose Mercury News series [on the CIA and cocaine dealing], I wrote about what an overblown bullshit story it was," says Pincus at the Washington Post. The Mercury News was widely discredited as a result of that series. "I think the series on communication satellites was of the same nature."

Nonetheless, Gerth won a Pulitzer last year for his stories on Loral. Yet there is a widespread feeling in Washington journalism circles that even though he officially won the prize for his satellite technology reporting, it was his initial March 6 story on Los Alamos, and the buzz it instantly created, that landed him the award. (There's also speculation that Safire lobbied the Pulitzer committee on Gerth's behalf, waving around the reporter's Wen Ho Lee story. Safire could not be reached for comment.)

The Pulitzer committee itself seemed slightly unsure of why it was honoring Gerth. In its official release, the organization singled out Gerth "for a series of articles that disclosed the corporate sales of American technology to China, with U.S. government approval despite national security risks." (The Times used that language verbatim in its own news account of the award.) Actually Gerth and the Times accused Loral, after landing its waiver, of giving technology to China free of charge and without U.S. government approval.

Recent Stories