Snow repeated falsehoods, offered new one in attempt to rebut Media Matters

On the April 20 broadcast of his Fox News Radio show, host Tony Snow made several false claims while attempting to rebut items from Media Matters for America's April 19 list of "numerous false and misleading claims advanced by Snow as a Fox News commentator." But in responding to the points, read by assistant Sean McGrane (ph), Snow repeated his previous false or misleading claims. In one case, as a result of a misreading by McGrane, Snow made a new false claim about former CIA operative Valerie Plame.

• Snow's assistant misread the first item on Media Matters' list. Media Matters wrote that "Snow falsely asserted that former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV said his wife, Valerie Plame, 'wasn't covert for six years' before she was exposed as a CIA operative by syndicated columnist Robert Novak." But when McGrane read it on the air, he incorrectly said that Media Matters had accused Snow of claiming that Plame herself had said she wasn't covert. From the April 20 broadcast of The Tony Snow Show:

  McGRANE: Snow falsely asserted that former ambassador Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame -- that Plame said "wasn't covert for six years" before she was exposed as a CIA operative.

  Snow responded, "Uh, no. That's not what I said. But I did say she was not covert when she was exposed because she had not been on foreign soil for six years." But the claim that "she had not been on foreign soil for six years" is also rebutted by the evidence. As Media Matters has previously noted, evidence indicates that Plame engaged in CIA business abroad between 1998 and 2003, even if she was not stationed abroad. An October 8, 2003, Washington Post article suggested that Plame remained undercover "in recent years" as an "energy consultant," while actually serving as a weapons-proliferation analyst for the CIA. She was known by friends and neighbors as someone who "traveled frequently overseas," according to the Post article. Moreover, on September 29, 2003, CNN national security correspondent David Ensor stated in a report: "All I can say is, my sources tell me that this [Plame] is a CIA operative. This is a person who did run agents. This is a person who was out there in the world collecting information."

• Snow repeated his false claim -- also flagged in the April 19 Media Matters item -- that evolution is not scientifically testable. Saying that "we're gonna get nerdy here for a moment," Snow asserted, "If you study the philosophy of science ... you have to be able to conduct like a test-tube experiment. You have to be able to falsify something. The theory of evolution may fit a whole string of facts. But can you do something that demonstrates that apes turned into men? The answer is no, you can't. You can't conduct that experiment. It's humanly impossible. So as a consequence, it's going to remain interesting, it'll remain speculative." He then stated that, similarly, "[y]ou don't have the intelligent-design test tube." As Media Matters noted when it first documented this claim by Snow, the theory of evolution has, in the process of its acceptance by the scientific community, been subject to extensive testing and rigorous scrutiny. Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences (National Academies Press, June 1999), documents more evidence in support of evolution -- such as physical and embryonic similarities among seemingly divergent species. The book also refutes Snow's assertion that evolutionary theory "isn't verifiable or testable." From Science and Creationism:

  Evolutionary theory explains that biological diversity results from the descendants of local or migrant predecessors becoming adapted to their diverse environments. This explanation can be tested by examining present species and local fossils to see whether they have similar structures, which would indicate how one is derived from the other. Also, there should be evidence that species without an established local ancestry had migrated into the locality. Wherever such tests have been carried out, these conditions have been confirmed.

• Snow also repeated his false criticism in response to Media Matters' claim that "Snow peddled the baseless Republican National Committee talking point that 2004 presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) had blamed U.S. troops for the explosives looted from the Al Qaqaa military installation following the invasion of Iraq. Snow said, '[T]he Kerry campaign is not criticizing the president here. They're criticizing our troops.' " Snow said "the whole point" was that Kerry said "they're [the administration] guilty of malfeasance by letting the weapons get away. Well, you can't say that I'm criticizing the fact that the weapons got away and not criticize the people who let the weapons get away, in your opinion. You can't say that George Bush was standing right there."

  But, as Media Matters noted, Kerry did in fact blame the administration and not the military personnel who were there: "After being warned about the danger of major stockpiles of explosives in Iraq," Kerry said, "this administration failed to guard those stockpiles -- where nearly 380 tons of highly explosive weapons were kept."

  As the October 25, 2004, The New York Times reported, the administration was repeatedly warned about Al Qaqaa being left unguarded -- but did nothing about it:

  The International Atomic Energy Agency publicly warned about the danger of these explosives [at Al Qaqaa] before the war, and after the invasion it specifically told United States officials about the need to keep the explosives secured, European diplomats said in interviews last week. Administration officials say they cannot explain why the explosives were not safeguarded, beyond the fact that the occupation force was overwhelmed by the amount of munitions they found throughout the country.

From the April 20 broadcast of Fox News Radio's The Tony Snow Show:

McGRANE: And, then, finally -- well, two quick ones if we have time. Media Matters lists the many falsehoods of Tony Snow.

SNOW: Oh yeah, I love this one. I love this one.

McGRANE: You want to hear a couple of your falsehoods? Or is that --

SNOW: Yeah, actually -- because I've actually -- what's happened is, the creative readers of that site have actually been thoughtful enough to cut and paste the entire thing for me.

McGRANE: Oh, really?

SNOW: Yeah, so --

McGRANE: The vast list of your falsehoods.

SNOW: The vast list of falsehoods. So let's, yeah, let's hear some of those, and then we're gonna take a break and I will share with you some of the emails too.

McGRANE: "From his statement that evolutionary theory is a 'hypothesis' to his defense of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, Media Matters for America has documented numerous false and misleading claims advanced by Snow as a Fox News commentator" --

SNOW: Wow. That's dangerous. Let's hear them.

McGRANE: -- including "Snow falsely asserted that former ambassador Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame -- that Plame said 'wasn't covert for six years' before she was exposed as a CIA operative."

SNOW: Uh, no. That's not what I said. But I did say that she was not covert when she was exposed because she had not been on foreign soil for six years.

[...]

McGRANE: "Snow put forward numerous falsehoods to argue that 'evolutionary theory, like intelligent design, isn't verifiable or testable. It's pure hypothesis.' "

SNOW: Yeah, well, here's --

McGRANE: Don't they call it the theory of evolution?

SNOW: Well, here's the deal. In science -- if you study the philosophy of science -- we're gonna get nerdy here for a moment. You have to be able to conduct like a test-tube experiment. You have to be able to falsify something. The theory of evolution may fit a whole string of facts. But can you do something that demonstrates that apes turned into men? The answer's no, you can't. You can't conduct that experiment. It's humanly impossible. So as a consequence, it's gonna remain interesting, it'll remain speculative. Similarly with an intelligent design. I mean, intelligent design says, there's a design behind everything. Well, yeah, OK, we seem to have natural laws and all that that seem to vindicate it, but, you can't prove it. You don't have the intelligent-design test tube. That's all I was saying.

McGRANE: "Snow peddled the baseless RNC talking point that 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry had blamed U.S. troops for the explosives looted from the Al Qaqaa military installation following the invasion of Iraq. Snow said, '[T]he Kerry campaign is not criticizing the president here. They're criticizing our troops.' "

SNOW: OK, well, John Kerry says that they're guilty of malfeasance by letting the weapons get away. Well, you can't say that I'm criticizing the fact that the weapons got away and not criticize the people who let the weapons get away, in your opinion. You can't say that George Bush was standing right there, that was the whole point. Here's -- that's pretty weak stuff.

McGRANE: Yeah, there's not a whole lot here. I hope maybe they're saving their best stuff for if you do decide to do it.

SNOW: Somebody's going to read through all these columns, they're going to find out -- Remember, you said this about the president? I'll just have to say, yeah, sure do.

McGRANE: You can blame -- blame that on [producer] Griff [Jenkins].