That seems to be the attitude of Whitaker and Isikoff behind these comments. From the New York Times: “In the interview, Mr. Whitaker expressed frustration at the Pentagon for not informing the magazine of questions about the accuracy of the original account until about 10 days after it was published.” And the paper quotes Isikoff: “The Pentagon saw the item before it ran, and then they didn’t move us off it for 11 days afterward.” But it was the responsibility of Newsweek to get it right in the first place, and not publish the item until it knew it was right. I wonder what Isikoff’s conversation with the original source was like. How certain did the source sound that the Koran incident was in the SouthCom report? He was obviously was working off memory. How long ago had he seen the report? And why didn’t Isikoff ask to see the relevant text or at the very least have the source read it to him, which is pretty standard practice? Also, if they were trying hard to confirm the Koran incident, why didn’t they ask the second source specifically whether he could confirm it or not, rather than taking his lack of comment on the Koran incident as implicit confirmation?