In a recent Sunday edition, the New York Times ran a sensational story claiming hundreds of innocent civilians have been mistakenly killed by U.S. air strikes in Afghanistan. The Times reports that these estimates come from "on-site reviews" at 11 locations throughout Afghanistan over a six-month period. The Times attributes these casualties to the military’s over reliance on high technology and a deep reluctance to mix it up in ground combat. The report alleges that the military is getting bad targeting data from Afghan warlords, out to settle old scores with political rivals, and consistently fails to verify the data before it strikes.

A closer look at the Times’ article, however, raises questions about the Times’ own reliance on highly questionable sources. The article is partly based on information provided by Global Exchange, identified only as an American organization that has sent survey teams into Afghan villages. Global Exchange predicts even more collateral damage as the war continues. So who or what is Global Exchange?

Thanks to the Wall Street Journal and an enterprising blogger, we learned that Global Exchange is a San Francisco-based human rights organization that sponsors reality tours of Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia. For example, Global Exchange will whisk you off to Guatemala where you can quote learn about the history of repression and political violence." But its web site assures visitors that they don’t have to leave the U.S. to learn about human rights abuses.

Cuba is a particular favorite of Global Exchange. Marla Ruzicka, a Global Exchange fundraiser and organizing member of the AIDS activist group ACT UP, laments that the U.S. blockade of Cuba is depriving the world of Castro’s "policy of humanitarian internationalism." Ruzicka says that Castro has sent thousands of trained professionals to serve in the poor countries of the world, especially sub-Sahara Africa. Like Cuban soldiers in Angola, maybe?

Ruzicka is now leading Global Exchange’s reality tour of Afghanistan and seems to be one of the Times’ only sources on collateral damage. The objective of the village survey, cited in the Times’ report, is to pressure the U.S. into compensating Afghans for collateral damage from air strikes. At a press conference outside the U.S. embassy in Kabul, Ruzicka demanded that the U.S. provide twenty million dollars in compensation immediately.

Ruzicka claims to have identified 812 civilian deaths, although other Global Exchange spokesmen put the numbers in the one to five thousand range. A caption on a front page map says that Times’ reporters visited the eleven sites "where civilians were said to be killed by American air strikes," but offered no independent verification of Global Exchange’s claims. The Times’ reliance on such a hard-left organization as a source for a story so critical of the Afghanistan campaign is shocking, but it is becoming the norm under the editorship of Howell Raines. Under Raines, the paper of record is taking a more pronounced turn to the left and advocacy journalism.

Reed Irvine can be reached at ri@aim.org