Newspapers often don't like to call public figures liars or dissemblers. But read this passage from the Washington Post article on the recent attempt of the McCain camp to portray Obama as weak on terrorism because he praised how Islamic terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 were prosecuted:

Tuesday, the McCain team drew a direct line between the prosecution of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, saying that submitting the bombers to the criminal justice system was, in the words of former Navy secretary and 9/11 Commission member John Lehman, "a material cause" of the 2001 attacks. Lehman participated in the McCain conference call.

Lehman said grand jury evidence in the 1993 bombing was "put under seal" and not made available to the CIA, thus denying the agency timely access to information that "would have enabled many of the dots to be connected well before 9/11 and . . . give a good chance to have prevented" the later attack. In particular, he cited information concerning a connection between Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged ringleader of the 2001 attacks who is imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, and the bombing.

But both the report of the 9/11 Commission, which investigated intelligence failures leading to the 2001 strikes, and the prosecutor of the 1993 case disagreed with Lehman's version of history. The commission's final report, which Lehman endorsed as a member of the panel, gives no indication that any failure to share information on the bombing with the intelligence community had "significance for the story of 9/11."

Instead, the report cites political and intelligence failures to understand the scope of the terrorist threat after the 1993 attack, as well as a failure to fully analyze the implications of the available information. It also blames the FBI and the CIA for failing to effectively communicate with each other, problems that were later addressed in the USA Patriot Act and the reorganization of the intelligence community.

Grand jury secrecy "could have operated in these cases as a barrier to information flowing from law enforcement to intelligence," former U.S. attorney Mary Jo White, who successfully prosecuted six major terrorism cases including the 1993 bombing, said Tuesday. But, she added, "as a matter of fact it did not."

White and several people involved in the 9/11 Commission disputed Lehman's assertion that "the CIA was not allowed to see that evidence." Lehman also described then-CIA Director George J. Tenet as "flabbergasted at what he found in that material" once it was made available to him. But Tenet made no such claim in his 2007 book.

Bottom line: the McCain campaign attacked Obama falsely. It made up facts. It distorted history.

But this was not the focus on the Post's article which was headlined, "Candidates Clash on Terrorism: In Sharp Exchange, Each Side Calls Other's Position a Risk." The story led with the cat fight: McCain attacks Obama; Obama attacks McCain. The yadda-yadda-yadda of political coverage. Yet the reporters--Anne Kornblut and Karen DeYoung--did the heavy lifting and demonstrated that the McCain squad was stretching the truth to make its case, and they placed this information at the end of the article.

But how about breaking out of the he said/he said box? Here's an alternative lead: "On Tuesday, the McCain campaign accused Barack Obama of having a weak position on terrorism, though it partly based its charge on assertions that were not accurate." That is, don't even give a candidate the room to make a charge that is supported by false information.

Throughout the media, there has been an increase in the factchecking of candidates' claims. The Post does this in a regular feature and awards Pinocchios to fib-telling pols. (Remember Hilary Clinton and the sniper fire in Bosnia?) But such vetting hasn't stopped politicians from playing with the truth. Perhaps it's time for the MSM to escalate and call out the truth-manglers in a direct manner within the news coverage. I don't know if that will slow down the flow of political lies. But it sure ain't likely to increase them.

Some political endorsements are not that impressive. In fact, they can be frightening.

On Tuesday, John McCain's campaign announced that former FBI chief Louis Freeh was backing McCain. In a statement, McCain said,

Louis Freeh's service stands as a testament to his belief that as Americans we are called to serve a cause greater than ourselves. For more than thirty years, Louie has served the people of this great country admirably, and I am grateful to count him as a supporter.

Does McCain want to go back to the Freeh days at the FBI? During Freeh's tenure at the FBI (1993 to 2001), the bureau was a basket case when it came to doing anything about terrorism. As the 9/11 Commission report noted,

Those working counter-terrorism matters [at the FBI] did so despite limited intelligence collection and strategic analysis capabilities, a limited capacity to share information both internally and externally, insufficient training, an overly complex legal regime and inadequate resources

Freeh did little to improve the situation. After the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, Freeh's FBI did not step up to the challenge and significantly improve its capabilities to counter jihadist terrorism. During his tenure, two-thirds of the FBI intelligence analysts were not qualified to perform their duties. And, of course, the FBI computer system in the Freeh years was a legendary mess. Set up in 1995, it was based on 1990s technology. At one point, the system was essentially scrapped. Hundreds of millions of dollars were wasted. Worse, FBI agents were not able to share information with other agents or even retrieve public information off the Internet. Freeh himself was famous--or infamous--for shunning email and computers, sending a message throughout the bureau: modern-day communications technology is not for us G-men. (Yet Republicans on the Hill fancied Freeh because he was willing to investigate the Clinton White House during the 1990s.)

So McCain can have him. But American citizens should hope that McCain did not promise Freeh any jobs in a McCain administration--unless, of course, Freeh has finally learned how to use email.