Over the last week, there has been an increasing body of evidence that W. Mark Felt, recently identified by both his own family and the Washington Post as Deep Throat, was almost certainly not acting alone in leaking sensitive Watergate information to the press, but was rather working in concert with, or the lead of, a band of several other then-senior FBI officials who sought to provide details of the FBI investigation's investigation of Watergate to the press.
The Albany Times Union last Sunday a week ago broke a major story quoting Paul Daly, a former FBI high-ranking manager, as saying that at least three other senior FBI officials worked closely with Felt in leaking Watergate information to the press as a means of keeping the Nixon's White House at bay.
Last night, I believe that I significantly advanced the story, reporting new information as a Web exclusive to the Village Voice (a newspaper for which I was a staff reporter back in the day in my wayward twenties). I think my new account clearly provides additional credence to Daly's claims. Additionally, over the next few days, both here on my blog, online at the Voice, and perhaps elsewhere, I will provide other new evidence making the case that Felt was actually acting with a group of senior FBI officials.
In short, Deep Throat was less of an individual than a committee of sorts.
For the last thirty years, Deep Throat was the public face to the man in the parking garage that Bob Woodward knew to be W. Mark Felt. Now apparently, though, even though it was Felt in the parking garage, he in turn might have been acting as the face to Woodward in concealing the role of a circle of other senior FBI officials. Felt was playing much more a complicated game than apparently Woodward knew, and one that might not be fully understood because Felt is 91 and most of the other key players in the FBI are now deceased.
In my view, the revelation that Felt was co-ordinating his activities with other senior FBI officials is as important or even more important a revelation that Felt was Deep Throat. It enlightens and informs our understanding of Watergate in ways much more significant than that the man who met Bob Woodward in a parking garage and became known as Deep Throat was Felt. (I will be further explaining why in future blog entries.)
What is also extraordinary about this episode so far is this: The Albany Times Union story has been out there a week now and virtually nobody has picked up it. In the days when only a few large newspapers, wire services, newsmagazines, and television networks decided what was news-- say when Watergate was originally in the news-- this would not seem that extraordinary. But we live in the day of blogs and the Internet and the such!
Yet other than my advance of the story in the Voice, the story has not been reported upon, commented upon, or advanced upon by a single major newspaper. All of the nation's very largest newspapers-- the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal-- have been silent. Newsweek, which devoted an entire cover story to the revelation that Felt was Deep Throat, is yet to publish a word. No pundit has taken up the case. And also silent has been the online press. Timothy Noah and Jack Shafer of Slate have obsessively and relentlessly written recently about Watergate and Deep Throat so much that even people like me haven't read half of it! But they too have yet to write their first words about this. (Update: In the original of this post, I mistakenly wrote that Mickey Kaus, who blogs for Slate, did not write or blog at all about Paul Daly's allegations. As he pointed out to me in an email, he did in fact briefly mention Daly's disclosures and link to the Albany Times Union story as well. Apologies to both Mickey and my numerous readers.)
And then there are the bloggers, the supposed and vaunted last line of defense when an important story disappears beneath the radar! All that I conclude at this moment (this comment is made somewhat tongue-in-cheek in that bloggers can sometimes be oh so too sensitive at times): Bloggers suck!
This story is meant for bloggers, but yet somehow they are missing it.
One of the reasons that this tale is tailor-made for bloggers is that perhaps the major newspapers have not been covering this is because it doesn't make them look so good.
The new narrative that emerges from this important new information is that the Washington Post's Watergate coverage was perhaps not as heroic or integral as both the Post and much of the rest of the elite press corps have portrayed it over the course of the last three decades.
Most historians of the Nixon era have long ago developed a consensus that it has been myth to believe that the Washington Post brought down a President of the United States. It has even been an even greater myth that the Post's reporting solved the Watergate mystery.
At best, the Post and other newspapers acted as a catalyst in spurring on others to act: the FBI; the federal prosecutors investigating the burglary, funding of it, and subsequent coverup; the special prosecutors Archibald Cox and Leon Jaworski who took over the case from the U.S. Attorney; the Senate Watergate Committee; and finally the House Judiciary Committee, which drafted articles of impeachment against Nixon.
In reality, the historical record clearly has shown for some time that there was little published in the Washington Post in the initial days of Watergate that already was not known by the FBI or federal prosecutors. The Post largely relied on leaks from the FBI, or pursued leads based on tips from other governmental investigators. Much of what the newspaper reported was simply leaks as to what the FBI was telling Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. There was virtually nothing that the Post published that had not already long been known to the FBI.
That the That Deep Throat turns out to be W. Mark Felt, then the FBI's deputy director, only seems to further show that this was the case. T he new revelations that Felt was likely the leader of, or simply one of, a group of four FBI agents who decided to leak to the press only further seems to illustrate the point further.
At best, the Washington Post kept the Watergate issue alive, amplified the findings of the FBI and other official government investigators, and lead the way for the rest of the press. Some historians have even argued that without the Post's Watergate coverage the outcome might have very likely been the same. But that is uncertain, and there is no way of knowing.
What the newspaper might have actually accomplished-- and deserves our gratitude for-- was paving the way and elevating the issue to the point whereupon the Senate formed a special committee to investigate and a special prosecutor was named to take up the case from a possibly compromised Department of Justice. Historians and journalists have long considered and argued whether the Post's reporting was responsible for those key developments. Others have said that that is not so. It is, of course, unknowable whether that was the case or not.
But without the formation of a Senate investigating committee and the appointment of a Watergate special prosecutor, the outcome of Watergate could have been very different. But if the Post's coverage kept the heat on for those developments to occur, then their role was crcucial, although hardly paramount among the major institutional players.
Those were no small developments and they led to the resignation of Richard Nixon. And if a newspaper's reporting served as a catalyst, that was and remains no small accomplishment. And no-one is saying that the paper's Watergate coverage was not exemplary, and Post publisher Katharine Graham was any less a brave woman, even if they did not play that role. Thus, it is has been hard for many journalists such as myself to uderstand why the reporters or the newspaper that published their work have perpetuated a myth that they brought down a President or that their own detective work broke the Watergate case.
The new revelations that W. Mark Felt was not working alone but rather with several other FBI senior officials to release sensitive details regarding the FBI's investigation of Watergate to the press on its surface appears to undermine the Washington Post's own mythology of its Watergate role. (Once again, out of fairness, I want to underscore that the newspaper's coverage was historic, at times brave, and a watershed event for American journalism, which makes the newspaper's mythmaking to overstate it own role both so disquieting and puzzling.)
Over the course of the last several days I have been able to interview a number of FBI agents and senior officials, including Daly, who were knowledgeable about the role of Felt and other senior FBI officials in getting the Watergate story out to protect the integrity of their criminal investigation, and see to it that their prosecutions were not to be hampered and justice were not done. Some of those are talking for the record, and I will report their comments in the days to come.
In the meantime, however, one former FBI agent told me: "It was an unspoken thing... but there was almost an unspoken directive [to the agents working the Watergate case] that it was all right to talk about certain things to certain reporters... the Washington Post, Sandy Smith [then of Time magazine], and [Seymour] Hersh." For those not familiar with all things Watergate, Sandy Smith was a Time reporter, whose Watergate stories have been considered by many journalists and historians (including among them, David Halberstam) of almost as great an importance as those of Woodward and Bernstein. Seymour Hersh, then writing for the New York Times, came to covering Watergate late, but once he was on the case, was competitive and often ahead of the Post. (Disclosure: Hersh is a friend of mine on several days of a week. On the other days during-- those on which he teases me-- it is unclear.)
More than one of the FBI officials I have spoken to, as well other key participants, suggest that Felt and other FBI officials wanted the word out regarding Watergate and that that they would have found ways to do so had not Bob Woodward confessed his twenty-something angst to Felt and Felt befriended him. Felt, after all, as Paul Daly has revealed, was working closely with other senior FBI officials to get the Watergate story out. And Felt was only too familiar with so many other reporters, as this story in USA Today and this recent New Yorker "Talk of the Town" piece by Seymour Hersh both demonstrate.
In short, the historical outcome might very well have been the same without the role of role of Woodward and Bernstein and the Post and its courageous publisher Katharine Graham. The FBI officials appear to already have had a game plan and they would have simply found another outlet.
For those who will interpret these new and forthcoming revelations that Watergate was simply another story that came out solely because of leaks from senior officials, that would be too much a simplification. But the emerging evidence is that while the reporters engaged in many of the tools of the tools of traditional investigative reporting and understood the use of shoe leather, the story very likely well have emerged through other media outlets and the outcome might have been the same.
But coversely, the simplistic myth that detective work of Washington Post reporters broke the Watergate case or that the newspaper or the press brought down a President are and have been dangerous and wrongheaded myths sometimes perpetuated by those involved for their own aggrandizement or profit. No serious historian or other student of Watergate has believed that to be the case for some time.
That Deep Throat was most probably a committee rather than a single person-- or rather more specifically in that W. Mark Felt very likely co-ordinates a campaign of leaks with other senior FBI officials-- and that they had available any other number of means to get their story out only further undermines the myth of "All the President's Men." That is perhaps why you are not reading anything about this so far in the Washington Post.
Saturday, June 11, 2005
Thursday, June 02, 2005
Some initial thoughts about W. Mark Felt and Watergate
First, apologies to my many readers. I have not been blogging lately because I have a major investigative story coming out next week, and am about to become a twice published author very soon. (When I say that I am about to become a twice published author, I do not mean thatI have a book that is going to sell two copies, but rather that I am going to be an author of two books.)
I am going to blog a lot about W. Mark Felt and Watergate in the days ahead, but have a few comments in the meantime: For us old school journalists, who actually have spent time in the county courthouses and on the phone and on the road developing sources, the entire episode has made us feel good about journalism once again. Whatever one thinks about the current day Bob Woodward, the Washington Post's Watergate reporting was a watershed event in American journalism. Now that we know that Mark Felt was Deep Throat, I believe that history's verdict will lead to him (rightfully) receiving more credit for Nixon's downfall while the credit awarded the Post will be somewhat less. But revisionists who want to diminish the role of the newspaper entirely by this new disclosure are doing so unjustly.
But besides the revelations of Deep Throat reminding us of a better time for American journalism, there is an undercurrent still present that can not be ignored: the current state of American journalism.
It is perhaps sad to say that many of us are also simply grateful for the fact that Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein did not fabricate the existence of Deep Throat.
Many at the Washington Post have felt the same way, as Post Style reporter/stunt man/funny man Hank Stuever wrote: "Perhaps Deep Throat's lovely (and daring) parting gift to Washington, especially to reporters, is simple: He actually exists. He is not fabrication or composite. He is one man, a fact not easily proved had he taken his secret to the grave. That in itself, in an era where trust has been shredded beyond recognition, is something to behold."
While many in journalism were waxing nostalgic and high-fiving, many of us were also pointing out that Watergate was thirty plus years ago, and the journalism of today is very different. David Sirota perhaps was speaking for many of us when he wrote today:
"Upon the news this week that Watergate source `Deep Throat' had come forward, CNN's Judy Woodruff waxed nostalgic about the golden rule of muckracking journalism. `It is so hard, I think for young people we know who work here at CNN and other news organizations to even imagine what Watergate was like,' she said. `To have a White House come undone, an administration come undone, because of some news reporting.' Coming from a lead reporter at one of America's largest cable networks, it was truly a sad moment.
"First and foremost, it was sad because she was right-- American journalism today has lost its confrontational, hold-their-feet-to-the-fire attitude that gave it a reputation as our government's fourth check and balance. Young reporters can't imagine what kind of reporting that really is because they never experienced it.
"Certainly there was a Whitewater and the Monica Lewinsky scandal, but those were cheap attempts by journalists to recreate Watergate without actually doing the investigative work. They were pathetic journalists' attempt to grab the sizzle of scandal without doing the hard work that uncovers serious crimes like Watergate. Though there are certainly some very fine investigative reporters left, they have become a rare breed, usually replaced by blow-dried blowhards who spent more time sucking up to power than challenging it."
My own comments: Whitewater was not Watergate. Michael Isikoff and Susan Schmidt were not Woodward and Bernstein. Len Downie is not and will never be Ben Bradlee. Henry Hyde was not Peter Rodino. And Kenneth W. Starr was not Archibald Cox.
And finally, Bob Woodward is not Bob Woodward, at least anymore-- meaning that the Bob Woodward who broke Watergate stories is not the same reporter today than he was back then.
Back to Sirota here to drive home the point:
"[O]ne of the much-lauded reporters who broke Watergate, Bob Woodward, actually epitomizes these problems. More than any other, his career charts the decline of the national press corps to the laughingstock it is today. Here was a tough-nosed reporter who made his name doing the gritty, unglamorous work that eventually exposed one of the more egregious abuses of power in American history. But instead of using the credibility he earned from Watergate to build a career exposing corruption, he quickly dove into the Beltway culture, where that kind of thing is looked down upon. He used fame to suck up to those in power, and then wrote books like Bush at War that simply told power's story, ultimately becoming just another bloviating cutout on the pundit circuit."
The comment about Woodward being just another "bloviating cutout on the pundit circuit" in my opinion is unfair. Whatever one thinks of Woodward's reporting itself, he is still doing reporting.
As to Sirota's comment that Woodward's reporting has become one of simply telling power's story, I would add that, unfortunately, it has become not only one of simply telling power's story, but celebrating power's story.
First, apologies to my many readers. I have not been blogging lately because I have a major investigative story coming out next week, and am about to become a twice published author very soon. (When I say that I am about to become a twice published author, I do not mean thatI have a book that is going to sell two copies, but rather that I am going to be an author of two books.)
I am going to blog a lot about W. Mark Felt and Watergate in the days ahead, but have a few comments in the meantime: For us old school journalists, who actually have spent time in the county courthouses and on the phone and on the road developing sources, the entire episode has made us feel good about journalism once again. Whatever one thinks about the current day Bob Woodward, the Washington Post's Watergate reporting was a watershed event in American journalism. Now that we know that Mark Felt was Deep Throat, I believe that history's verdict will lead to him (rightfully) receiving more credit for Nixon's downfall while the credit awarded the Post will be somewhat less. But revisionists who want to diminish the role of the newspaper entirely by this new disclosure are doing so unjustly.
But besides the revelations of Deep Throat reminding us of a better time for American journalism, there is an undercurrent still present that can not be ignored: the current state of American journalism.
It is perhaps sad to say that many of us are also simply grateful for the fact that Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein did not fabricate the existence of Deep Throat.
Many at the Washington Post have felt the same way, as Post Style reporter/stunt man/funny man Hank Stuever wrote: "Perhaps Deep Throat's lovely (and daring) parting gift to Washington, especially to reporters, is simple: He actually exists. He is not fabrication or composite. He is one man, a fact not easily proved had he taken his secret to the grave. That in itself, in an era where trust has been shredded beyond recognition, is something to behold."
While many in journalism were waxing nostalgic and high-fiving, many of us were also pointing out that Watergate was thirty plus years ago, and the journalism of today is very different. David Sirota perhaps was speaking for many of us when he wrote today:
"Upon the news this week that Watergate source `Deep Throat' had come forward, CNN's Judy Woodruff waxed nostalgic about the golden rule of muckracking journalism. `It is so hard, I think for young people we know who work here at CNN and other news organizations to even imagine what Watergate was like,' she said. `To have a White House come undone, an administration come undone, because of some news reporting.' Coming from a lead reporter at one of America's largest cable networks, it was truly a sad moment.
"First and foremost, it was sad because she was right-- American journalism today has lost its confrontational, hold-their-feet-to-the-fire attitude that gave it a reputation as our government's fourth check and balance. Young reporters can't imagine what kind of reporting that really is because they never experienced it.
"Certainly there was a Whitewater and the Monica Lewinsky scandal, but those were cheap attempts by journalists to recreate Watergate without actually doing the investigative work. They were pathetic journalists' attempt to grab the sizzle of scandal without doing the hard work that uncovers serious crimes like Watergate. Though there are certainly some very fine investigative reporters left, they have become a rare breed, usually replaced by blow-dried blowhards who spent more time sucking up to power than challenging it."
My own comments: Whitewater was not Watergate. Michael Isikoff and Susan Schmidt were not Woodward and Bernstein. Len Downie is not and will never be Ben Bradlee. Henry Hyde was not Peter Rodino. And Kenneth W. Starr was not Archibald Cox.
And finally, Bob Woodward is not Bob Woodward, at least anymore-- meaning that the Bob Woodward who broke Watergate stories is not the same reporter today than he was back then.
Back to Sirota here to drive home the point:
"[O]ne of the much-lauded reporters who broke Watergate, Bob Woodward, actually epitomizes these problems. More than any other, his career charts the decline of the national press corps to the laughingstock it is today. Here was a tough-nosed reporter who made his name doing the gritty, unglamorous work that eventually exposed one of the more egregious abuses of power in American history. But instead of using the credibility he earned from Watergate to build a career exposing corruption, he quickly dove into the Beltway culture, where that kind of thing is looked down upon. He used fame to suck up to those in power, and then wrote books like Bush at War that simply told power's story, ultimately becoming just another bloviating cutout on the pundit circuit."
The comment about Woodward being just another "bloviating cutout on the pundit circuit" in my opinion is unfair. Whatever one thinks of Woodward's reporting itself, he is still doing reporting.
As to Sirota's comment that Woodward's reporting has become one of simply telling power's story, I would add that, unfortunately, it has become not only one of simply telling power's story, but celebrating power's story.
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Plame news for tonight: Time considers capitulation
The blogger/proprietor of this website, blog, parody of a blog, or whatever this is, has taken off the entire three-day Memorial Day weekend to pursue ornithological pursuits and interests...
I will have more news, ornithological and otherwise, during the week.
As any regular reader of this blog knows, I have been looking to hire a copy editor for some time now. But we are also now interviewing First Amendment attorneys as well. For details, see the post directly below this one.
I will have more news, ornithological and otherwise, during the week.
As any regular reader of this blog knows, I have been looking to hire a copy editor for some time now. But we are also now interviewing First Amendment attorneys as well. For details, see the post directly below this one.
Thursday, May 26, 2005
I have invoked the reporter's privilege of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution
As my several readers of this blog know, I often write about the Valerie Plame grand jury, and First Amendment issues. The latter are hardly abstract subjects for me. I have a dog in this fight.
I have on more than one occasion in the past been subpoenaed to testify regarding sources. One such instance is described in this post on Salon.com.
In another instance, an overzealous assistant U.S. Attorney in Miami, named Frank Tamen, was determined to find out who leaked information to me from a grand jury investigation he had headed... and empaneled a entirely brand new, second federal grand jury to investigate who leaked me information from his first grand jury. (Hopefully, the poor man is either retired, or not reading this blog. Otherwise, he might empanel an entirely new and third grand jury to investigate the leak about the second.)
Thankfully, in that case, Tamen's investigation went nowhere. My sources remained hidden and safe. And Main Justice, as it is known, shut him down: Justice Department officials in Washington D.C. at the time weighed the potential damage to the First Amendment and expense to the taxpayer and instructed the him to stand down. Back then there were actually law enforcement officials who respected the First Amendment.
Now to my more recent news:
Only this last week, I firmly asserted my First Amendment privilege. The papers aren't yet formally filed in court. Rather for the time being, I invoked my privilege via the U.S. Postal Service in response to demands for information in what are known as "interrogatories" from some very, very mean lawyers, in turn, representing some other very, very bad people. (They represent private parties, and not the U.S. government.) The trial judge will consider the matter a long time from now. In the meantime, I will attempt to continue to enjoy my freedom the rest of the summer, First Amendment and otherwise.
Here is exactly what I asserted in the court papers: "[Waas] objects to these Interrogatories to the extent that they request information covered by reporters privilege of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution and the Free Flow of Information Act of 1992, D. C. Code 16-4701-04."
If Floyd Abrams reads this blog, call dude. In that I am not exactly a big time reporter who works for Time magazine, and Floyd Abrams doesn't readily return my calls....
Cousin Harvey.... call dude. I haven't heard from my cousin Harvey since he moved to Georgia, and am not certain as to whether he is still actively practicing law. Indeed, the last time we spoke he spoke of giving up the law entirely to farm instead. I am not even sure he is still licensed to practice in the District of Columbia. But he is family.
Cous, I know that you are busy and have plenty of other things going on in your life. But Floyd Abrams is just not returning my calls. And you owe me, dude. Remember that time we drove all the way to Madison, Wisconsin for that bat mitzvah and I entertained your three year old in the back seat of the Minivan for the entire trip, without any complaint whatsoever? I am now calling in all my chits!
Although disposition of my invocation of the First Amendment is a long way from now, the case is likely to lead to new case law regarding the reporter's privilege. I will keep y'all informed as the case proceeds, right here on this blog. (I know that I just linked to my own blog once again, but nobody else seems to be linking to me.... *sadness* Another shout-out to Bidisha Banerjee!)
Regarding the Valerie Plame affair: A new column by former Nixon White House counsel John W. Dean argues that Matt Cooper of Time and Judith Miller of the New York Times should disclose their sources to special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald. He writes:
"[C]ooper and Miller will very probably have to decide whether to defy the law-- and go to jail-- or testify before the grand jury. They should testify: What a shame it would be if they were to go to jail to protect law-breakers in the White House."
"Indeed, if they do not testify, they are arguably complicit in the crimes that the Special Counsel believes have occurred. There must be a line: At some point, in protecting sources committing crimes, newspersons themselves become complicit in those crimes. Protecting a source whom a reporter learns has lied (or obstructed justice) strikes me as being across the line. If Miller and Cooper have not crossed the line, they certainly have their toes on it."
I couldn't disagree more, as readers of this blog already know. (It is true once again for anyone who just clicked on to that link that I again just linked to my own blog, but with dwindling readers, any link at all helps-- which just once more raises the question whether this is a blog or a parody of a blog.)
John Dean should know better than anyone: If it were not for confidential sources, and a reporter's ability to protect them, Richard Nixon quite possibly might never have been forced to resign his presidency. And Nixon might have been successful in having someone else be the fall guy for Watergate. If my reading of history is correct, the person that Nixon hoped to take the fall for him was an ambitious White House counsel named John Wesley Dean.
I have on more than one occasion in the past been subpoenaed to testify regarding sources. One such instance is described in this post on Salon.com.
In another instance, an overzealous assistant U.S. Attorney in Miami, named Frank Tamen, was determined to find out who leaked information to me from a grand jury investigation he had headed... and empaneled a entirely brand new, second federal grand jury to investigate who leaked me information from his first grand jury. (Hopefully, the poor man is either retired, or not reading this blog. Otherwise, he might empanel an entirely new and third grand jury to investigate the leak about the second.)
Thankfully, in that case, Tamen's investigation went nowhere. My sources remained hidden and safe. And Main Justice, as it is known, shut him down: Justice Department officials in Washington D.C. at the time weighed the potential damage to the First Amendment and expense to the taxpayer and instructed the him to stand down. Back then there were actually law enforcement officials who respected the First Amendment.
Now to my more recent news:
Only this last week, I firmly asserted my First Amendment privilege. The papers aren't yet formally filed in court. Rather for the time being, I invoked my privilege via the U.S. Postal Service in response to demands for information in what are known as "interrogatories" from some very, very mean lawyers, in turn, representing some other very, very bad people. (They represent private parties, and not the U.S. government.) The trial judge will consider the matter a long time from now. In the meantime, I will attempt to continue to enjoy my freedom the rest of the summer, First Amendment and otherwise.
Here is exactly what I asserted in the court papers: "[Waas] objects to these Interrogatories to the extent that they request information covered by reporters privilege of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution and the Free Flow of Information Act of 1992, D. C. Code 16-4701-04."
If Floyd Abrams reads this blog, call dude. In that I am not exactly a big time reporter who works for Time magazine, and Floyd Abrams doesn't readily return my calls....
Cousin Harvey.... call dude. I haven't heard from my cousin Harvey since he moved to Georgia, and am not certain as to whether he is still actively practicing law. Indeed, the last time we spoke he spoke of giving up the law entirely to farm instead. I am not even sure he is still licensed to practice in the District of Columbia. But he is family.
Cous, I know that you are busy and have plenty of other things going on in your life. But Floyd Abrams is just not returning my calls. And you owe me, dude. Remember that time we drove all the way to Madison, Wisconsin for that bat mitzvah and I entertained your three year old in the back seat of the Minivan for the entire trip, without any complaint whatsoever? I am now calling in all my chits!
Although disposition of my invocation of the First Amendment is a long way from now, the case is likely to lead to new case law regarding the reporter's privilege. I will keep y'all informed as the case proceeds, right here on this blog. (I know that I just linked to my own blog once again, but nobody else seems to be linking to me.... *sadness* Another shout-out to Bidisha Banerjee!)
Regarding the Valerie Plame affair: A new column by former Nixon White House counsel John W. Dean argues that Matt Cooper of Time and Judith Miller of the New York Times should disclose their sources to special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald. He writes:
"[C]ooper and Miller will very probably have to decide whether to defy the law-- and go to jail-- or testify before the grand jury. They should testify: What a shame it would be if they were to go to jail to protect law-breakers in the White House."
"Indeed, if they do not testify, they are arguably complicit in the crimes that the Special Counsel believes have occurred. There must be a line: At some point, in protecting sources committing crimes, newspersons themselves become complicit in those crimes. Protecting a source whom a reporter learns has lied (or obstructed justice) strikes me as being across the line. If Miller and Cooper have not crossed the line, they certainly have their toes on it."
I couldn't disagree more, as readers of this blog already know. (It is true once again for anyone who just clicked on to that link that I again just linked to my own blog, but with dwindling readers, any link at all helps-- which just once more raises the question whether this is a blog or a parody of a blog.)
John Dean should know better than anyone: If it were not for confidential sources, and a reporter's ability to protect them, Richard Nixon quite possibly might never have been forced to resign his presidency. And Nixon might have been successful in having someone else be the fall guy for Watergate. If my reading of history is correct, the person that Nixon hoped to take the fall for him was an ambitious White House counsel named John Wesley Dean.
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right... Isikoff v. McClellan
White House spokesman Scott McClellan has done the impossible: He somehow has transformed Michael Isikoff into a sympathetic figure of sorts for otherwise discerning people. A friend who will remain anonymous emailed to say that if he was forced to choose between Isikoff and McClellan, he would take the former. But because the friend is still asleep at this very early hour, and I cannot respond, his comments have instead inspired this post.
My response: There is no reason to choose up sides, dude!
We can condemn Isikoff's sloppy and reckless reporting without buying into the White House line. At the end of the day, two wrongs don't make a right.
The White House is undoubtedly exploiting the Newsweek incident for its own ends, as Josh Marshall has already persuasively argued: "What I see [here] is a pattern of a White House focusing in on particular instances of vulnerable reporting and exploiting them to set new de facto rules for the national political press."
And the White House is hardly in a position to be casting stones. As Greg Mitchell eloquently writes in his column in Editor & Publisher:
"There's nothing funny about riots and torture, but it's not hard to find the dark humor in certain aspects of the uproar over Newsweek's regrettable Koran-flushing item. Only one of the comedic highlights was White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan lecturing the media on Monday about losing `credibility,' given the administration's track record on WMDs in Iraq and other critical issues.
"Just last week, McClellan suggested to the same reporters that President Bush had been informed about the D.C. evacuation scare, only to admit later that the president had been out of the loop. This is the man who brought us Mr. Credibility himself, Jim Guckart, a. k. a. Jeff Gannon.
"Even more ironic, this is an administration that helped sell a war on intelligence often based (as in Newsweek's case) on a single source. Remember `Curveball'? The mobile biological labs? Now McClellan reminds the media about standards that `should be met' before running a story.
"Reporters at today's press briefing pressed McClellan on why he now denounces the idea of articles based on a single source when he routinely demands that they rely on just the White House backgrounders. Or as one put it, `it sounds like you're saying your single anonymous sources are okay and everybody else's aren't.'
"Now this is not to say that Newsweek did not do harm, and relying on a single source's say-so was (as per ususal) stupid..."
In a previous post, I criticized Isikoff for spending too much time in the green room, instead of on the phone with sources. I was wrong. As it turns out, the green room is exactly the right place to be if you commit an egregious, career-threatening journalistic error. Journalistic reputations apparently are now made or lost sometimes less on the substance of what you might or might not have done wrong than by what is said about you by the babbling and blathering bloviators and carnival barkers of the cable shows.
To be a journalist today is becoming more and more like being a politician: One has to have and maintain constituencies. One of Isikoff's key constituencies are those who must fill their green rooms every night. Among those defending Isikoff yesterday on the cable shows were Chris Matthews, Fred Barnes, Ed Rogers, L. Brent (Bazooka) Bozell III, Brit Hume, and... Bob Novak. (This is perhaps stating the all too obvious: If your journalistic credibility and ethics are under fire, it is maybe best not to have Bob Novak out there arguing your brief.)
As these posters at Media Matters for America interpret events, these defenses are directly "related to [Isikoff's] investigation into President Bill Clinton's sex scandal."
Indeed, there does appear to be some evidence of this: L. Brent Bozell III, the president of the right wing Media Research Center (not to be confused with the anti-right wing Media Matters for America) had this to say on Fox:
"One would be hard-pressed to lay the blame directly at the feet of Michael Isikoff. Michael Isikoff is also the reporter who broke the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky story for Newsweek magazine."
The anti-Clinton crowd is an Isikoff constituency, and a reason that his career will not only survive, but flourish.
But there is also evidence of something else at work with all of the cable barkers defending Isikoff. Consider this statement made by Brit Hume on Fox:
"This is Michael Isikoff, the veteran investigative journalist, a guy we all know, who has been on the program, somebody who has compiled a pretty good record over the years." [emphasis added by blogger, indeed emphasized by both italicizing and placing in bold the words the blogger wants to emphasize, so that they are italicized and in bold, so there is no possible way that the point is not made.)
A guy we all know... who has been on the program. That says it all.
Gary Webb was a guy who we all didn't know, a guy who had not been on the program. There is no doubt that his reporting on the contras and drugs in the San Jose Mercury was flawed in too many ways, and I am not going to debate the merit of his work here, but his mistakes hardly were of the scale of Newsweek's error. Isikoff, the green room regular, appears to be going to receive a pass. The journalistic establishment appears to be circling the wagons on his behalf.
In this New York Times bouquet to Isikoff, the only person quoted saying an unkind word of any kind was Bill Kovach, a founding director of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, and former Washington bureau chief for the Times: "Here is a reporter who can shake stuff out of deaf and dumb people, but can't let it go at that. The material has to be edited and verified and lawyered if necessary. As the course of events in this particular event has shown, you can't play fast and loose with even a one-paragraph item."
In contrast, Gary Webb paid for his mistakes not only with his career, but also his life. He should have spent more time in the green room.
I have changed my mind: Green room skills apparently should not only be a top priority, but as this episode demonstrates, essential for any young, aspiring journalist.
Indeed, being a journalist today is becoming more and more about everything except being a journalist. An aspiring twenty-something journalist today need not bother learning how to read court records, develop sources, conduct interviews, or write copy. They need not attend boring school board meetings, bother to learn the conventions of their craft, spend time on the street with cops, or have to endure sleeping alone (or with the wrong person) in bad motels on the campaign trail. They are entitled to proceed directly to the green room! Instead, all that one need to do today to succeed as a "journalist" is blog, appear on the right cable shows, network with your college alumni, have your book blurbed by Tucker Carlson, hire the right publicist (every aspiring twenty-something "journalist" should always " have [a] publicist in tow"!), and soon be an editor and media critic... without having even written their very first news story. (If anyone objects to those comments, they can sue me!)
Now more pressing news: I am reading an extraordinary book, "The Paradox of Southern Progressivism: 1880-1930", by William A. Link, a professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. The book was published by the University of North Carolina Press.... in 1992.
I guess I just lost most of my ever dwindling traffic by saying that I wanted to comment about an obscure academic book that was written more than a decade ago. In this age of Wonkette and Drudge and Google News, anything older than two hours ago is like sooooo, like over. But I hope that someday the currently prevailing ethic that everything older than like two hours ago... is going to be like, soooo totally over. (Thanks to Amy for teaching me Valley Girl speak.)
I am going to interview Professor Link for this very blog in the near future.
(Because of my dwindling traffic, I have taken to pandering to specific readers, by naming them in my posts, and placing their names in bold, as if I were writing some gossip column for the New York Post.)
Here are some gems from Professor Link's book:
"Post-Republican southerners shared a common tradition of governance. Imbued with rural republican traditions, they despised concentrated power... Like their parents and grandparents, they tolerated the functioning of local, state, and federal governments only under strict constraints."
Another gem:
"In the nineteenth century the cultural setting [in the South] for social policy-- broadly defined as any exercise of governance designed to shape individual and community behavior-- was distinctive. Aside from postmasters and an occasional tax collector, the federal government rarely touched the lives of southerners in the isolated rural communities and villages that the great majority of them inhabited. The role of sate and local governments was no greater. In such areas as public health, the regulation of moral behavior, and public welfare, state and local officials scrupulously respected home rule and the sanctity of local autonomy."
I know my traffic is now dwindling even further, but if my most devoted readers will just stay with me here a while longer...
I hope my girlfriend is still reading.
Link also writes: "[W]elfare policy was rooted in a traditional view of charity that sought to discourage dependency, assumed that poverty was the product of individual character flaws rather than social environment, and stigmatized relief recipients."
And also: "Whether in education, health, or public poor relief, southern state and local governments exercised social policy in a manner that most late twentieth-century Americans would consider strange, even alien... Few features of social policy were compulsory or coercive; except for grave emergencies, the sanctity of the individual and of personal liberty remained sacrosanct."
And that was all by page 7....
One only has to only read this compelling social and political history to understand why the Democratic party does worse and worse every election in the South, and that the only Democrats that seem to have any kind of success at all are the DLC types. I will write more about this later, and lose even more readers...
Another pander to a specific reader to stem the tide of my dwindling audience, I do a shout-out to Bidisha Banerjee, an editorial assistant at Slate, who sometimes writes the morning blog feature for the magazine. Bidisha sent me a very nice email saying he enjoys reading this very blog, but he and an editor are not sure whether or not to link to it because they are unsure whether it is a blog or a parody of a blog, as I say atop.
I hope this morning's post clears up the confusion!
A somewhat lengthier version of my Washington Examiner column on Baron Edward Von Kloberg III is on the front page of Alternet.org this morning. The column is also going to appear over the next few days in a small number of other newspapers. In this particular case, the pandering, putting his name in bold face, is not going to gain me any new readers. For those who are really, really interested in the him, I wrote about him still earlier in this blog.
One wonders what advice the Baron might offer up to Newsweek and Michael Isikoff.
I promise that I will stop writing about Von Kloberg anymore.
Once again, I hope my girlfriend is still reading.
Tomasky, I will lend you my copy of "The Paradox of Southern Progressivism" when I am done reading it. I am probably going to force this book upon all of my friends.
Finally, Dad, happy birthday this morning.
My response: There is no reason to choose up sides, dude!
We can condemn Isikoff's sloppy and reckless reporting without buying into the White House line. At the end of the day, two wrongs don't make a right.
The White House is undoubtedly exploiting the Newsweek incident for its own ends, as Josh Marshall has already persuasively argued: "What I see [here] is a pattern of a White House focusing in on particular instances of vulnerable reporting and exploiting them to set new de facto rules for the national political press."
And the White House is hardly in a position to be casting stones. As Greg Mitchell eloquently writes in his column in Editor & Publisher:
"There's nothing funny about riots and torture, but it's not hard to find the dark humor in certain aspects of the uproar over Newsweek's regrettable Koran-flushing item. Only one of the comedic highlights was White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan lecturing the media on Monday about losing `credibility,' given the administration's track record on WMDs in Iraq and other critical issues.
"Just last week, McClellan suggested to the same reporters that President Bush had been informed about the D.C. evacuation scare, only to admit later that the president had been out of the loop. This is the man who brought us Mr. Credibility himself, Jim Guckart, a. k. a. Jeff Gannon.
"Even more ironic, this is an administration that helped sell a war on intelligence often based (as in Newsweek's case) on a single source. Remember `Curveball'? The mobile biological labs? Now McClellan reminds the media about standards that `should be met' before running a story.
"Reporters at today's press briefing pressed McClellan on why he now denounces the idea of articles based on a single source when he routinely demands that they rely on just the White House backgrounders. Or as one put it, `it sounds like you're saying your single anonymous sources are okay and everybody else's aren't.'
"Now this is not to say that Newsweek did not do harm, and relying on a single source's say-so was (as per ususal) stupid..."
In a previous post, I criticized Isikoff for spending too much time in the green room, instead of on the phone with sources. I was wrong. As it turns out, the green room is exactly the right place to be if you commit an egregious, career-threatening journalistic error. Journalistic reputations apparently are now made or lost sometimes less on the substance of what you might or might not have done wrong than by what is said about you by the babbling and blathering bloviators and carnival barkers of the cable shows.
To be a journalist today is becoming more and more like being a politician: One has to have and maintain constituencies. One of Isikoff's key constituencies are those who must fill their green rooms every night. Among those defending Isikoff yesterday on the cable shows were Chris Matthews, Fred Barnes, Ed Rogers, L. Brent (Bazooka) Bozell III, Brit Hume, and... Bob Novak. (This is perhaps stating the all too obvious: If your journalistic credibility and ethics are under fire, it is maybe best not to have Bob Novak out there arguing your brief.)
As these posters at Media Matters for America interpret events, these defenses are directly "related to [Isikoff's] investigation into President Bill Clinton's sex scandal."
Indeed, there does appear to be some evidence of this: L. Brent Bozell III, the president of the right wing Media Research Center (not to be confused with the anti-right wing Media Matters for America) had this to say on Fox:
"One would be hard-pressed to lay the blame directly at the feet of Michael Isikoff. Michael Isikoff is also the reporter who broke the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky story for Newsweek magazine."
The anti-Clinton crowd is an Isikoff constituency, and a reason that his career will not only survive, but flourish.
But there is also evidence of something else at work with all of the cable barkers defending Isikoff. Consider this statement made by Brit Hume on Fox:
"This is Michael Isikoff, the veteran investigative journalist, a guy we all know, who has been on the program, somebody who has compiled a pretty good record over the years." [emphasis added by blogger, indeed emphasized by both italicizing and placing in bold the words the blogger wants to emphasize, so that they are italicized and in bold, so there is no possible way that the point is not made.)
A guy we all know... who has been on the program. That says it all.
Gary Webb was a guy who we all didn't know, a guy who had not been on the program. There is no doubt that his reporting on the contras and drugs in the San Jose Mercury was flawed in too many ways, and I am not going to debate the merit of his work here, but his mistakes hardly were of the scale of Newsweek's error. Isikoff, the green room regular, appears to be going to receive a pass. The journalistic establishment appears to be circling the wagons on his behalf.
In this New York Times bouquet to Isikoff, the only person quoted saying an unkind word of any kind was Bill Kovach, a founding director of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, and former Washington bureau chief for the Times: "Here is a reporter who can shake stuff out of deaf and dumb people, but can't let it go at that. The material has to be edited and verified and lawyered if necessary. As the course of events in this particular event has shown, you can't play fast and loose with even a one-paragraph item."
In contrast, Gary Webb paid for his mistakes not only with his career, but also his life. He should have spent more time in the green room.
I have changed my mind: Green room skills apparently should not only be a top priority, but as this episode demonstrates, essential for any young, aspiring journalist.
Indeed, being a journalist today is becoming more and more about everything except being a journalist. An aspiring twenty-something journalist today need not bother learning how to read court records, develop sources, conduct interviews, or write copy. They need not attend boring school board meetings, bother to learn the conventions of their craft, spend time on the street with cops, or have to endure sleeping alone (or with the wrong person) in bad motels on the campaign trail. They are entitled to proceed directly to the green room! Instead, all that one need to do today to succeed as a "journalist" is blog, appear on the right cable shows, network with your college alumni, have your book blurbed by Tucker Carlson, hire the right publicist (every aspiring twenty-something "journalist" should always " have [a] publicist in tow"!), and soon be an editor and media critic... without having even written their very first news story. (If anyone objects to those comments, they can sue me!)
Now more pressing news: I am reading an extraordinary book, "The Paradox of Southern Progressivism: 1880-1930", by William A. Link, a professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. The book was published by the University of North Carolina Press.... in 1992.
I guess I just lost most of my ever dwindling traffic by saying that I wanted to comment about an obscure academic book that was written more than a decade ago. In this age of Wonkette and Drudge and Google News, anything older than two hours ago is like sooooo, like over. But I hope that someday the currently prevailing ethic that everything older than like two hours ago... is going to be like, soooo totally over. (Thanks to Amy for teaching me Valley Girl speak.)
I am going to interview Professor Link for this very blog in the near future.
(Because of my dwindling traffic, I have taken to pandering to specific readers, by naming them in my posts, and placing their names in bold, as if I were writing some gossip column for the New York Post.)
Here are some gems from Professor Link's book:
"Post-Republican southerners shared a common tradition of governance. Imbued with rural republican traditions, they despised concentrated power... Like their parents and grandparents, they tolerated the functioning of local, state, and federal governments only under strict constraints."
Another gem:
"In the nineteenth century the cultural setting [in the South] for social policy-- broadly defined as any exercise of governance designed to shape individual and community behavior-- was distinctive. Aside from postmasters and an occasional tax collector, the federal government rarely touched the lives of southerners in the isolated rural communities and villages that the great majority of them inhabited. The role of sate and local governments was no greater. In such areas as public health, the regulation of moral behavior, and public welfare, state and local officials scrupulously respected home rule and the sanctity of local autonomy."
I know my traffic is now dwindling even further, but if my most devoted readers will just stay with me here a while longer...
I hope my girlfriend is still reading.
Link also writes: "[W]elfare policy was rooted in a traditional view of charity that sought to discourage dependency, assumed that poverty was the product of individual character flaws rather than social environment, and stigmatized relief recipients."
And also: "Whether in education, health, or public poor relief, southern state and local governments exercised social policy in a manner that most late twentieth-century Americans would consider strange, even alien... Few features of social policy were compulsory or coercive; except for grave emergencies, the sanctity of the individual and of personal liberty remained sacrosanct."
And that was all by page 7....
One only has to only read this compelling social and political history to understand why the Democratic party does worse and worse every election in the South, and that the only Democrats that seem to have any kind of success at all are the DLC types. I will write more about this later, and lose even more readers...
Another pander to a specific reader to stem the tide of my dwindling audience, I do a shout-out to Bidisha Banerjee, an editorial assistant at Slate, who sometimes writes the morning blog feature for the magazine. Bidisha sent me a very nice email saying he enjoys reading this very blog, but he and an editor are not sure whether or not to link to it because they are unsure whether it is a blog or a parody of a blog, as I say atop.
I hope this morning's post clears up the confusion!
A somewhat lengthier version of my Washington Examiner column on Baron Edward Von Kloberg III is on the front page of Alternet.org this morning. The column is also going to appear over the next few days in a small number of other newspapers. In this particular case, the pandering, putting his name in bold face, is not going to gain me any new readers. For those who are really, really interested in the him, I wrote about him still earlier in this blog.
One wonders what advice the Baron might offer up to Newsweek and Michael Isikoff.
I promise that I will stop writing about Von Kloberg anymore.
Once again, I hope my girlfriend is still reading.
Tomasky, I will lend you my copy of "The Paradox of Southern Progressivism" when I am done reading it. I am probably going to force this book upon all of my friends.
Finally, Dad, happy birthday this morning.
Sunday, May 15, 2005
Newsweek retracts story, after seventeen are dead by rioting inspired by apparently erroneous report.
Seventeen people are dead tonight. One apparent cause of death: sloppy and inaccurate journalism.
As I write this post, still very little is known as of yet, but Newsweek is retracting a report that a Pentagon inquiry had determined that interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba desecrated the Koran. The Newsweek report, by reporters Michael Isikoff and John Barry, although principally reported by Isikoff, also claimed that an interrogator flushed a copy of the Koran down the toilet in attempting to get one terror suspect to talk. Newsweek is now reporting that the story might not have any truth to it.
In the meantime, 17 people have died in Afghanistan, after riots broke out provoked by the Newsweek account. Newsweek's editor Mark Whitaker has posted this editor's note online about the erroneous report:
"Although other major news organizations had aired charges of Qur'an desecration based only on the testimony of the detainees, we believed our story was newsworthy because a U.S. official said government investigators turned up this evidence. So we published the item. After several days, newspapers in Pakistan and Afghanistan began running accounts of our story. At that point, as Even Thomas, Ron Moreau, and Sam Yousafzai report this week, the riots started and spread across the country, fanned by extremists and unhappiness over the economy."
"Last Friday, a top Pentagon spokesman told us that a review of the probe cited in our story showed that it was never meant to look into charges of Qur'an desecration. The spokesman also said the Pentagon had investigated other desecration charges by detainees and found them 'not credible.' Our original source later said he couldn't be certain about reading of the alleged Qur'an incident in the report we cited, and said it might have been in other investigative documents or drafts. Top administration officials have promised to continue looking into the charges, and so will we. But we regret that we got any part of the our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in the midst." [emphasis added.]
Some comments: The source for Newsweek's story hardly seems credible at this point. Whitaker's statement now quoting his magazine's anonymous source as saying that allegations of Koran desecration "might have been in other investigative documents or drafts" than the specific one reported by the magazine is pure speculation. Both the anonymous source and Newsweek are recklessly only continuing to fan the flames.
The magazine should obviously continue to report the story, and if it turns out that there indeed are other credible allegations of Koran desecration in some other secret government document, it would seem the magazine has got an incredible scoop. If the Pentagon and White House have lied about this, the credibility of the Bush administration would stand little chance to recover-- and rightfully-- coming on the heels of no WMD found in Iraq. And it is also more than reasonable that the magazine and its source want to vindicate themselves, but they won't achieve that by continuing in reckless public speculation as to what might or might not be true.
The predominant journalistic culture now apparently is that it does not matter anymore whether what journalists report is accurate or not. One hopes-- although they would be naive to do so-- that this particular incident would be the one that would lead to higher journalistic standards. (After all, nobody died because of Jayson Blair.)
But don't count on it. Wonkette will soon be holding forth once again on Charlie Rose as to why it doesn't matter if any of the gossip she reports on her website is true or not. The Drudge Report will print the latest unsubstantiated gossip on whichever public figure, as he is wont to do.
Isikoff, the principal author of the Newsweek story in question, is also hardly your traditional "investigative journalist." He is perhaps best known for his zealous pursuit of Bill Clinton's sexual escapades. In that pursuit, he certainly had done as much harm to himself and his profession than the President whom he was pursuing. Former New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis persuasively argued in the New York Review of Books that Isikoff was more a participant in the events to bring down Clinton than an objective observer. Jeffrey Toobin, a staff writer for the New Yorker, and the author of a book about the Clinton impeachment crisis, "A Vast Conspiracy" had this to say of Isikoff in the New York Review of Books: "Isikoff appears to recognize that we are moving toward a first historical consensus about the meaning of these tumultuous events: that Clinton's impeachment, and the events leading to it, amounted to a constituional and cultural disgrace for this country... In light of this, Isikoff seeks... to portray himself as a `level-headed observer' who was merely acting out of `good faith' and for a `legitimate professional purpose.' But try as he might to pretend that he only had a seat in the stands for this epochal contest, the truth is that Isikoff was down on the field-- performing, as it turns out, for the losing side." (In fairness to Isikoff, one can find posted here his response to both Lewis and Toobin in the New York Review.)
After Sept. 11, Isikoff, who had admitted to having been obsessed with green room appearances and presidents' personal lives for too long, swore that he, like so many other Washington journalists, would become more serious minded (as if an impeachment and trial of the President by the United States Senate were never really serious matters). But this latest episode raises doubt as to whether that has been the case.
Instead of earning his redemption, Isikoff's editor is offering on behalf of Newsweek to "extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst."
Tonight, it is difficult to see the line between Wonkette and Drudge and Newsweek. If the line was once blurred, it feels at least as of this writing, to have all but disappeared.
Until now, all the erroneous reports and reckless rumor-mongering was always only done without any bad intentions! No innocents are ever hurt, and if they were, not too badly. Wonkette's Ana Marie Cox has said famously that anything she writes will only ruin someone's day, and not their life. Unfortunately, that is the new ethic for much of journalism.
In this case, the Afghan death toll stands at seventeen, and no story correction will ever do justice for the harm already done so many. (What can ruin someone's day can indeed ruin their life, perhaps even rob them of it entirely.) And the worse might still not be over. Protests against America have not only broken out in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but all throughout the Arab world including among other places, Yemen and the Gaza Strip. Also as a result, U.S. servicemen now already in harm's way stand in even greater harm's way.
Update, 10:49 P.M: Since my original posting, the Washington Post has posted a story online to appear tomorrow on its front page story about the Newsweek saga. A Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, is quoted in the newspaper as calling Newsweek's report "irresponsible" and "demonstrably false."
Whitman further said: ""Unfortunately, they cannot retract the damage they have done to this nation or those who were viciously attacked by those false allegations."
Addendum: Wonkette, in this post, actually had done a public service a while back, in naming Isikoff as one of Washington's journalists who has a cable television problem. No call by an MSNBC booker ever apparently went unreturned. Advice for young journalists: stay away from the green room and instead stay late at the office and double check the details of your stories with your sources.
A biography of Isikoff on Newsweek's web site has this to say: "Isikoff's exclusive reporting on the Monica Lewinsky scandal gained him national attention in late 1998, including profiles in the Washington Post and the New York Times and guest appearances on the `Late Show with David Letterman.'" I knew there was a reason that as a young man I aspired to be a journalist...
As I write this post, still very little is known as of yet, but Newsweek is retracting a report that a Pentagon inquiry had determined that interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba desecrated the Koran. The Newsweek report, by reporters Michael Isikoff and John Barry, although principally reported by Isikoff, also claimed that an interrogator flushed a copy of the Koran down the toilet in attempting to get one terror suspect to talk. Newsweek is now reporting that the story might not have any truth to it.
In the meantime, 17 people have died in Afghanistan, after riots broke out provoked by the Newsweek account. Newsweek's editor Mark Whitaker has posted this editor's note online about the erroneous report:
"Although other major news organizations had aired charges of Qur'an desecration based only on the testimony of the detainees, we believed our story was newsworthy because a U.S. official said government investigators turned up this evidence. So we published the item. After several days, newspapers in Pakistan and Afghanistan began running accounts of our story. At that point, as Even Thomas, Ron Moreau, and Sam Yousafzai report this week, the riots started and spread across the country, fanned by extremists and unhappiness over the economy."
"Last Friday, a top Pentagon spokesman told us that a review of the probe cited in our story showed that it was never meant to look into charges of Qur'an desecration. The spokesman also said the Pentagon had investigated other desecration charges by detainees and found them 'not credible.' Our original source later said he couldn't be certain about reading of the alleged Qur'an incident in the report we cited, and said it might have been in other investigative documents or drafts. Top administration officials have promised to continue looking into the charges, and so will we. But we regret that we got any part of the our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in the midst." [emphasis added.]
Some comments: The source for Newsweek's story hardly seems credible at this point. Whitaker's statement now quoting his magazine's anonymous source as saying that allegations of Koran desecration "might have been in other investigative documents or drafts" than the specific one reported by the magazine is pure speculation. Both the anonymous source and Newsweek are recklessly only continuing to fan the flames.
The magazine should obviously continue to report the story, and if it turns out that there indeed are other credible allegations of Koran desecration in some other secret government document, it would seem the magazine has got an incredible scoop. If the Pentagon and White House have lied about this, the credibility of the Bush administration would stand little chance to recover-- and rightfully-- coming on the heels of no WMD found in Iraq. And it is also more than reasonable that the magazine and its source want to vindicate themselves, but they won't achieve that by continuing in reckless public speculation as to what might or might not be true.
The predominant journalistic culture now apparently is that it does not matter anymore whether what journalists report is accurate or not. One hopes-- although they would be naive to do so-- that this particular incident would be the one that would lead to higher journalistic standards. (After all, nobody died because of Jayson Blair.)
But don't count on it. Wonkette will soon be holding forth once again on Charlie Rose as to why it doesn't matter if any of the gossip she reports on her website is true or not. The Drudge Report will print the latest unsubstantiated gossip on whichever public figure, as he is wont to do.
Isikoff, the principal author of the Newsweek story in question, is also hardly your traditional "investigative journalist." He is perhaps best known for his zealous pursuit of Bill Clinton's sexual escapades. In that pursuit, he certainly had done as much harm to himself and his profession than the President whom he was pursuing. Former New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis persuasively argued in the New York Review of Books that Isikoff was more a participant in the events to bring down Clinton than an objective observer. Jeffrey Toobin, a staff writer for the New Yorker, and the author of a book about the Clinton impeachment crisis, "A Vast Conspiracy" had this to say of Isikoff in the New York Review of Books: "Isikoff appears to recognize that we are moving toward a first historical consensus about the meaning of these tumultuous events: that Clinton's impeachment, and the events leading to it, amounted to a constituional and cultural disgrace for this country... In light of this, Isikoff seeks... to portray himself as a `level-headed observer' who was merely acting out of `good faith' and for a `legitimate professional purpose.' But try as he might to pretend that he only had a seat in the stands for this epochal contest, the truth is that Isikoff was down on the field-- performing, as it turns out, for the losing side." (In fairness to Isikoff, one can find posted here his response to both Lewis and Toobin in the New York Review.)
After Sept. 11, Isikoff, who had admitted to having been obsessed with green room appearances and presidents' personal lives for too long, swore that he, like so many other Washington journalists, would become more serious minded (as if an impeachment and trial of the President by the United States Senate were never really serious matters). But this latest episode raises doubt as to whether that has been the case.
Instead of earning his redemption, Isikoff's editor is offering on behalf of Newsweek to "extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst."
Tonight, it is difficult to see the line between Wonkette and Drudge and Newsweek. If the line was once blurred, it feels at least as of this writing, to have all but disappeared.
Until now, all the erroneous reports and reckless rumor-mongering was always only done without any bad intentions! No innocents are ever hurt, and if they were, not too badly. Wonkette's Ana Marie Cox has said famously that anything she writes will only ruin someone's day, and not their life. Unfortunately, that is the new ethic for much of journalism.
In this case, the Afghan death toll stands at seventeen, and no story correction will ever do justice for the harm already done so many. (What can ruin someone's day can indeed ruin their life, perhaps even rob them of it entirely.) And the worse might still not be over. Protests against America have not only broken out in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but all throughout the Arab world including among other places, Yemen and the Gaza Strip. Also as a result, U.S. servicemen now already in harm's way stand in even greater harm's way.
Update, 10:49 P.M: Since my original posting, the Washington Post has posted a story online to appear tomorrow on its front page story about the Newsweek saga. A Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, is quoted in the newspaper as calling Newsweek's report "irresponsible" and "demonstrably false."
Whitman further said: ""Unfortunately, they cannot retract the damage they have done to this nation or those who were viciously attacked by those false allegations."
Addendum: Wonkette, in this post, actually had done a public service a while back, in naming Isikoff as one of Washington's journalists who has a cable television problem. No call by an MSNBC booker ever apparently went unreturned. Advice for young journalists: stay away from the green room and instead stay late at the office and double check the details of your stories with your sources.
A biography of Isikoff on Newsweek's web site has this to say: "Isikoff's exclusive reporting on the Monica Lewinsky scandal gained him national attention in late 1998, including profiles in the Washington Post and the New York Times and guest appearances on the `Late Show with David Letterman.'" I knew there was a reason that as a young man I aspired to be a journalist...
Saturday, May 14, 2005
Bolton News for Saturday
As the journalist I.F. Stone has taught us, sometimes there are great stories not necessarily buried in archives of classified government files, but right there already in the public record. The instance cited below is an even more extreme example. The comments that I am going to report on, and comment about, below, were made by Senator Voinovich on Friday in opposing John R. Bolton's nomination to be U.N. ambassador.
If one was watching C-Span on Friday, they might have heard these comments. But the New York Times, the Washington Post, and all three television networks did not report a word of these particular assertions by the Senator.
There was no political agenda or sloppy reporting in the omission. Rather, it was most likely a result of reporters not only racing to meet not only a daily deadline, but also now being required to finish stories much earlier in their day to be posted on their newspaper's website, or to broadcast several times a day. In the process, they missed a gem.
I am going to forego any comment whatsoever ahead of time (such un-blogger like behavior!) and simply allow you to decide for yourselves (our slogan here is "I blog, you decide.") whether Senator Voinovich's comments are of some significance. Here is what he said:
"When discussing [various] concerns with Secretary Rice-- John Bolton's propensity to get off message, his lack of interpersonal skills, his tendency to abuse others who disagree with him-- I was informed by the secretary of state that she understood all these things and in spite of them still feels that John Bolton is the best choice and that she would be in frequent communication with him and he would be closely supervised. My private thought at the time, and I should have expressed it to her, is: `Why in the world would you want to send somebody up to the U.N. that has to be supervised?'"
Now some thoughts of my own: These were extraordinary comments for a Secretary of State to make about her President's nominee to be Ambassador to the United Nations. A State Department spokesman did not return a call on Friday seeking comment.
If Rice does not dispute the Senator's version of events, expect this to be a central issue in the Senate debate. (That last assertion was not based on discussion with sources, but rather... common sense.) If conversely Rice disputes the Senator's recounting of her conversation with the Senator, expect that to become a major news story. Of course, some news organization more important than this blog has to report the comments first.
I think Rice's comments raise more questions than they answer: For example, what exactly will the supervision entail? Will the United States ambassador to the United Nations receive a regular personnel review, and who will conduct it? Will they install a nannycam in the U.N?
Moreover, Rice's predecessor as Secretary of State, Colin Powell, and his chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, have made much of the fact that Bolton attempted to circumvent them at every opportunity. Perhaps she believes that she will succeed where they haven't.
Other Bolton news:
According to this Boston Globe account, Sen. Voinovich told reporters that he is not the only Republican who might vote against the Bolton nomination on the Senate floor: "The fact of the matter is that no one is really excited about him going forward," Voinovich said.
I would like to write more for you, but it is such a beautiful spring day outside.
Random notes: The Washington Examiner published a column I wrote-- an appreciation of sorts, of the late Baron Edward Von Kloberg III-- on May 12. It is quite different than my earlier blog posting on the same subject, in that I had a few extra days to think about what I wanted to say. The Examiner column is not posted online, but the column is going to be reprinted in other newspapers, one of which I hope posts it online, so I can link to it here-- for my several blog readers.
In the meantime, here was my lede:
"Baron Edward Von Kloberg III was a man given to grand entrances and exits. The former public relations man to Saddam Hussein and Mobutu Sese Seko, while recently on vacation in Rome, flung himself in full fury off a parapet of the Castel Sant'Angelo, the site of Tosca's suicide in the Puccini opera. He wanted us to notice him one last time."
As the journalist I.F. Stone has taught us, sometimes there are great stories not necessarily buried in archives of classified government files, but right there already in the public record. The instance cited below is an even more extreme example. The comments that I am going to report on, and comment about, below, were made by Senator Voinovich on Friday in opposing John R. Bolton's nomination to be U.N. ambassador.
If one was watching C-Span on Friday, they might have heard these comments. But the New York Times, the Washington Post, and all three television networks did not report a word of these particular assertions by the Senator.
There was no political agenda or sloppy reporting in the omission. Rather, it was most likely a result of reporters not only racing to meet not only a daily deadline, but also now being required to finish stories much earlier in their day to be posted on their newspaper's website, or to broadcast several times a day. In the process, they missed a gem.
I am going to forego any comment whatsoever ahead of time (such un-blogger like behavior!) and simply allow you to decide for yourselves (our slogan here is "I blog, you decide.") whether Senator Voinovich's comments are of some significance. Here is what he said:
"When discussing [various] concerns with Secretary Rice-- John Bolton's propensity to get off message, his lack of interpersonal skills, his tendency to abuse others who disagree with him-- I was informed by the secretary of state that she understood all these things and in spite of them still feels that John Bolton is the best choice and that she would be in frequent communication with him and he would be closely supervised. My private thought at the time, and I should have expressed it to her, is: `Why in the world would you want to send somebody up to the U.N. that has to be supervised?'"
Now some thoughts of my own: These were extraordinary comments for a Secretary of State to make about her President's nominee to be Ambassador to the United Nations. A State Department spokesman did not return a call on Friday seeking comment.
If Rice does not dispute the Senator's version of events, expect this to be a central issue in the Senate debate. (That last assertion was not based on discussion with sources, but rather... common sense.) If conversely Rice disputes the Senator's recounting of her conversation with the Senator, expect that to become a major news story. Of course, some news organization more important than this blog has to report the comments first.
I think Rice's comments raise more questions than they answer: For example, what exactly will the supervision entail? Will the United States ambassador to the United Nations receive a regular personnel review, and who will conduct it? Will they install a nannycam in the U.N?
Moreover, Rice's predecessor as Secretary of State, Colin Powell, and his chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, have made much of the fact that Bolton attempted to circumvent them at every opportunity. Perhaps she believes that she will succeed where they haven't.
Other Bolton news:
According to this Boston Globe account, Sen. Voinovich told reporters that he is not the only Republican who might vote against the Bolton nomination on the Senate floor: "The fact of the matter is that no one is really excited about him going forward," Voinovich said.
I would like to write more for you, but it is such a beautiful spring day outside.
Random notes: The Washington Examiner published a column I wrote-- an appreciation of sorts, of the late Baron Edward Von Kloberg III-- on May 12. It is quite different than my earlier blog posting on the same subject, in that I had a few extra days to think about what I wanted to say. The Examiner column is not posted online, but the column is going to be reprinted in other newspapers, one of which I hope posts it online, so I can link to it here-- for my several blog readers.
In the meantime, here was my lede:
"Baron Edward Von Kloberg III was a man given to grand entrances and exits. The former public relations man to Saddam Hussein and Mobutu Sese Seko, while recently on vacation in Rome, flung himself in full fury off a parapet of the Castel Sant'Angelo, the site of Tosca's suicide in the Puccini opera. He wanted us to notice him one last time."
Thursday, May 12, 2005
Profile in Courage: A Senator votes his conscience on the Bolton nomination.
With the White House all but declaring victory yesterday, and the always wrong Washington punditocracy asserting that the outcome was decided long before the vote, the unthinkable occurred: A United States Senator, at some personal and political price to himself, voted his conscience.
Senator George V. Voinovich, Republican of Ohio, voiced opposition this morning to the nomination of John R. Bolton to be Ambassador to the United Nations. In fairness to the White House, Voinovich declined to prevent the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from forwarding the Bolton nomination to the Senate floor for a vote by the full Senate.
As a result of Voinovich's action, the Senate Foreign Relations committee took the extraordinary step of forwarding Bolton's nomination to the full Senate without a favorable recommendation. Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, the Republican chairman of the SFRC, brokered a deal with Voinovich by which Voinovich wouldn't prevent a vote by the full Senate in exchange for the committee voting Bolton's nomination out of committee without an endorsement.
Besides displaying political courage, Voinovich engaged in some extraordinary gamesmanship as well-- at least that is the spin by Lugar's staff. According to congressional sources, Voinovich never intended in the first place to prevent a vote by the full Senate; the agreement by Lugar to not favorably recommend Bolton in exchange for Voinovich allowing the vote out of committee was something that Voinovich did not even originally intend to ask for from Lugar. Only when Lugar displayed a weak hand did Voinovich ask that the committee not endorse Bolton's nomination.
Other senior congressional sources, who have first-hand knowledge of the private discussions between Lugar and Voinovich, speculate that Lugar himself has privately been lukewarm to Bolton's nomination all along, despite the public displays of affection, and that Lugar was more than willing not only to grant this "concession" in the first place, but may have even suggested it to Voinovich.
(I have attempted to reach spokesmen for both Senators for comment. I will update this post if I obtain comment from either.)
In his remarks during the committee's debate this morning, Voinovich made it clear that he did not want to "impose my judgment" on the full Senate by preventing a vote. He also stated "we owe it to the president to give Bolton an up-or-down vote."
Among other things, Voinovich said that Bolton's conduct as a senior State Department official would have lead him to be "fired if he worked for a private corporation." He also said that Bolton was the "poster child for what someone in the diplomatic corps shouldn't be."
Beyond those sound bites, here is some more of the substance of what Voinovich had to say this morning:
"It was not long ago when American's love of freedom was a force of inspiration to the world and America was admired for its democracy, generosity, and its willingness to help others in need of protection. Today the United States is criticized for what the world calls arrogance, unilateralism and for failing to listen and to seek the support of its friends and allies. There has been a drastic change in the attitude of our friends and allies in such organizations as the United Nations and NATO and in the countries of leaders that we need to rely upon for help...
"If we cannot win over the hearts and minds of the world community and work together... our goals will be more difficult to achieve. Additionally, we will be unable to reduce the burden on our own resources. The most important of those resources are the human resources, the lives of the men and women of our armed forces, who are leaving their families every day to serve their country overseas."
These I believe were the most important words spoken by Voinovich today:
"What message are we sending to the world community when in the same breath we have sought to appoint an ambassador to the United Nations who himself has been accused of being arrogant, or not listening to his friends, of acting unilaterally, of bullying those who do not have the ability to properly defend themselves? These are the very characteristics that we're trying to dispel in the world community."
Even Lugar, the Republican chairman of the SFRC, was not entirely glowing this morning in his remarks in recommending Bolton's confirmation: "Secretary Bolton's actions were not always exemplary," Lugar said, "On several occasions, he made incorrect assumptions about the behavior and motivations of subordinates. At other times, he failed to use proper managerial channels or unnecessarily personalized internal disputes.... But there is no evidence that he has broken laws or engaged in serious ethical misconduct."
So that's all that it now takes to be confirmed as U.N. ambassador? That you have not broken any laws or engaged in serious ethical misconduct? By that standard, I am just as much qualified for the post.. or my cab driver for that matter... or most anyone.
(Update: My father has pointed that it is long overdue that I get regular work-- instead of writing and blogging-- and by Sen. Lugar's standards I do qualify for the U.N. position. Memo to the White House: If things with Bolton don't work out...)
(So that I do not take Sen. Lugar's words out of context, he also said: "I have no doubts that Secretary Bolton is extremely well qualified.")
Even staunch Republicans should applaud Senator Voinovich for acting on the courage of his convictions-- even if they think they are wrongheaded. The White House would be well served to do the same. There does not seem to have been any political upside or personal gain by Voinovich in taking the stand that he did today. This was about one Senator's personal convictions.
Both Republican Senators Lincoln Chaffee, of Rhode Island, and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, had much less to lose than Voinovich by breaking with their party. (see my post from yesterday below.) By remaining silent, they made what Voinovich did this morning all the more difficult.
Lugar, it appeared, ever so subtly came more to Voinovich's aid this morning than either Chaffee or Hagel. For his part, Chaffee had attempted to have it both ways by expressing qualms about Bolton, but voting in favor of his nomination by saying a President has the right to have his nominee considered. Voinovich adroitly lead the way for Chaffee to oppose Bolton but still uphold the constitutional perogatives of the President. But Chaffee did not follow, leaving Sen. Voinovich to so unfortunately-- but bravely-- hang out there all by himself.
Senator George V. Voinovich, Republican of Ohio, voiced opposition this morning to the nomination of John R. Bolton to be Ambassador to the United Nations. In fairness to the White House, Voinovich declined to prevent the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from forwarding the Bolton nomination to the Senate floor for a vote by the full Senate.
As a result of Voinovich's action, the Senate Foreign Relations committee took the extraordinary step of forwarding Bolton's nomination to the full Senate without a favorable recommendation. Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, the Republican chairman of the SFRC, brokered a deal with Voinovich by which Voinovich wouldn't prevent a vote by the full Senate in exchange for the committee voting Bolton's nomination out of committee without an endorsement.
Besides displaying political courage, Voinovich engaged in some extraordinary gamesmanship as well-- at least that is the spin by Lugar's staff. According to congressional sources, Voinovich never intended in the first place to prevent a vote by the full Senate; the agreement by Lugar to not favorably recommend Bolton in exchange for Voinovich allowing the vote out of committee was something that Voinovich did not even originally intend to ask for from Lugar. Only when Lugar displayed a weak hand did Voinovich ask that the committee not endorse Bolton's nomination.
Other senior congressional sources, who have first-hand knowledge of the private discussions between Lugar and Voinovich, speculate that Lugar himself has privately been lukewarm to Bolton's nomination all along, despite the public displays of affection, and that Lugar was more than willing not only to grant this "concession" in the first place, but may have even suggested it to Voinovich.
(I have attempted to reach spokesmen for both Senators for comment. I will update this post if I obtain comment from either.)
In his remarks during the committee's debate this morning, Voinovich made it clear that he did not want to "impose my judgment" on the full Senate by preventing a vote. He also stated "we owe it to the president to give Bolton an up-or-down vote."
Among other things, Voinovich said that Bolton's conduct as a senior State Department official would have lead him to be "fired if he worked for a private corporation." He also said that Bolton was the "poster child for what someone in the diplomatic corps shouldn't be."
Beyond those sound bites, here is some more of the substance of what Voinovich had to say this morning:
"It was not long ago when American's love of freedom was a force of inspiration to the world and America was admired for its democracy, generosity, and its willingness to help others in need of protection. Today the United States is criticized for what the world calls arrogance, unilateralism and for failing to listen and to seek the support of its friends and allies. There has been a drastic change in the attitude of our friends and allies in such organizations as the United Nations and NATO and in the countries of leaders that we need to rely upon for help...
"If we cannot win over the hearts and minds of the world community and work together... our goals will be more difficult to achieve. Additionally, we will be unable to reduce the burden on our own resources. The most important of those resources are the human resources, the lives of the men and women of our armed forces, who are leaving their families every day to serve their country overseas."
These I believe were the most important words spoken by Voinovich today:
"What message are we sending to the world community when in the same breath we have sought to appoint an ambassador to the United Nations who himself has been accused of being arrogant, or not listening to his friends, of acting unilaterally, of bullying those who do not have the ability to properly defend themselves? These are the very characteristics that we're trying to dispel in the world community."
Even Lugar, the Republican chairman of the SFRC, was not entirely glowing this morning in his remarks in recommending Bolton's confirmation: "Secretary Bolton's actions were not always exemplary," Lugar said, "On several occasions, he made incorrect assumptions about the behavior and motivations of subordinates. At other times, he failed to use proper managerial channels or unnecessarily personalized internal disputes.... But there is no evidence that he has broken laws or engaged in serious ethical misconduct."
So that's all that it now takes to be confirmed as U.N. ambassador? That you have not broken any laws or engaged in serious ethical misconduct? By that standard, I am just as much qualified for the post.. or my cab driver for that matter... or most anyone.
(Update: My father has pointed that it is long overdue that I get regular work-- instead of writing and blogging-- and by Sen. Lugar's standards I do qualify for the U.N. position. Memo to the White House: If things with Bolton don't work out...)
(So that I do not take Sen. Lugar's words out of context, he also said: "I have no doubts that Secretary Bolton is extremely well qualified.")
Even staunch Republicans should applaud Senator Voinovich for acting on the courage of his convictions-- even if they think they are wrongheaded. The White House would be well served to do the same. There does not seem to have been any political upside or personal gain by Voinovich in taking the stand that he did today. This was about one Senator's personal convictions.
Both Republican Senators Lincoln Chaffee, of Rhode Island, and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, had much less to lose than Voinovich by breaking with their party. (see my post from yesterday below.) By remaining silent, they made what Voinovich did this morning all the more difficult.
Lugar, it appeared, ever so subtly came more to Voinovich's aid this morning than either Chaffee or Hagel. For his part, Chaffee had attempted to have it both ways by expressing qualms about Bolton, but voting in favor of his nomination by saying a President has the right to have his nominee considered. Voinovich adroitly lead the way for Chaffee to oppose Bolton but still uphold the constitutional perogatives of the President. But Chaffee did not follow, leaving Sen. Voinovich to so unfortunately-- but bravely-- hang out there all by himself.
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
More Bolton news: Profiles in Courage, or rather the lack thereof. (updated since this morning, see bottom.)
Senator Lincoln Chaffee, Republican of Rhode Island, today says that he will vote in favor of the nomination of John R. Bolton to be the new ambassador to the United Nations. As both the most moderate and independent of Republican Senators on the SFRC, he was long considered the most likely member of the committee to vote against Bolton's nomination.
"I won't deny a lot of information certainly brings great pause, but I fight the administration on so many issues; this is one of those that I've been with them on-- to appoint their team," Chaffee said, in making his decision.
Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska was considered the second most likely to vote against Bolton, but he has indicated in recent days that he too would vote for Bolton.
It now appears all but certain that Bolton's nomination will be voted favorably out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and he will be confirmed by the Senate.
The only Republican who has not yet to say how he would vote is Senator George Voinovich, of Ohio. In recent days, it has been this Senator whom the White House was the most worried. One reason was that his decision to postpone the original vote on Bolton's nomination on April 19 so that the SFRC could gather more information was done without his informing the White House ahead of time, at a time that they believed they already had his support.
Of all the Senators considering voting against Bolton, Voinovich, however, would have the most to lose. Chaffee is a Republican from the bluest of states, Rhode Island, and in many ways a vote against Bolton would have assisted in his re-election bid by making him more attractive to Democrats and Independent voters. Hagel is so popular and wins by such lopsided margins in his native state of Nebraska that he had less to lose politically by an anti-Bolton vote than virtually any other Republican Senator. (The last time Hagel ran for re-election, in 20002, he received 83% of the vote. That was the largest margin of victory ever by a Nebraska Senator.)
Now with Chaffee and Hagel both apparently going to vote for Bolton, it would obviously be that much more difficult for Voinovich to be the sole Republican to vote against the nomination. A vote against Bolton by either Chaffee or Hagel, or both of them, would have provided Voinovich the opportunity to make a decision more free of politics.
Update, May 11, 5: 16 P.M.: Told that White House spokesman Scott McClellan had said the Bush administration was "in close contact with members" of the SFRC, and as a result had concluded "that John Bolton will be voted out of committee and that he will be confirmed on the floor of the Senate," Senator Voinovich has made it known that he has become more than a tad bit testy that his vote was being taken for granted.
He told home state reporters this afternoon: "I don't know how anybody knows what's going on in this guy's head." Voinovich appeared to point in the direction of his own head as he made the comments. But it was not entirely clear if he was referring to himself or McClellan.
In private discussions with other Senators, Voinovich has complained about what he has considered to be heavy handed lobbying by supporters of Bolton and President Bush. Whether that, combined with the voluminous evidence assembled against Bolton, would lead him to not only break with his own party, but also with all of his fellow Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and vote against Bolton's nomination, remains to be seen. It is unlikely he would do so, no matter how irritated he has become, and how incriminating he believes the evidence against Bolton has become.
But the Senator was clearly showing signs today that he has felt besieged by the White House. And those in the White House who are already declaring victory may very well be doing so prematurely.
In the meantime, Democrats hold out hope, however slim, that Voinovich is the Republican Senator who just might vote against Bolton. Norm Kurz, a spokesman for Senator Joe Biden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told journalist extraordinaire Laura Rosen: "Voinovich is the guy who might just has his conscience pricked again. I wouldn't bet on it happening, but I wouldn't say the game is over."
Senator Lincoln Chaffee, Republican of Rhode Island, today says that he will vote in favor of the nomination of John R. Bolton to be the new ambassador to the United Nations. As both the most moderate and independent of Republican Senators on the SFRC, he was long considered the most likely member of the committee to vote against Bolton's nomination.
"I won't deny a lot of information certainly brings great pause, but I fight the administration on so many issues; this is one of those that I've been with them on-- to appoint their team," Chaffee said, in making his decision.
Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska was considered the second most likely to vote against Bolton, but he has indicated in recent days that he too would vote for Bolton.
It now appears all but certain that Bolton's nomination will be voted favorably out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and he will be confirmed by the Senate.
The only Republican who has not yet to say how he would vote is Senator George Voinovich, of Ohio. In recent days, it has been this Senator whom the White House was the most worried. One reason was that his decision to postpone the original vote on Bolton's nomination on April 19 so that the SFRC could gather more information was done without his informing the White House ahead of time, at a time that they believed they already had his support.
Of all the Senators considering voting against Bolton, Voinovich, however, would have the most to lose. Chaffee is a Republican from the bluest of states, Rhode Island, and in many ways a vote against Bolton would have assisted in his re-election bid by making him more attractive to Democrats and Independent voters. Hagel is so popular and wins by such lopsided margins in his native state of Nebraska that he had less to lose politically by an anti-Bolton vote than virtually any other Republican Senator. (The last time Hagel ran for re-election, in 20002, he received 83% of the vote. That was the largest margin of victory ever by a Nebraska Senator.)
Now with Chaffee and Hagel both apparently going to vote for Bolton, it would obviously be that much more difficult for Voinovich to be the sole Republican to vote against the nomination. A vote against Bolton by either Chaffee or Hagel, or both of them, would have provided Voinovich the opportunity to make a decision more free of politics.
Update, May 11, 5: 16 P.M.: Told that White House spokesman Scott McClellan had said the Bush administration was "in close contact with members" of the SFRC, and as a result had concluded "that John Bolton will be voted out of committee and that he will be confirmed on the floor of the Senate," Senator Voinovich has made it known that he has become more than a tad bit testy that his vote was being taken for granted.
He told home state reporters this afternoon: "I don't know how anybody knows what's going on in this guy's head." Voinovich appeared to point in the direction of his own head as he made the comments. But it was not entirely clear if he was referring to himself or McClellan.
In private discussions with other Senators, Voinovich has complained about what he has considered to be heavy handed lobbying by supporters of Bolton and President Bush. Whether that, combined with the voluminous evidence assembled against Bolton, would lead him to not only break with his own party, but also with all of his fellow Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and vote against Bolton's nomination, remains to be seen. It is unlikely he would do so, no matter how irritated he has become, and how incriminating he believes the evidence against Bolton has become.
But the Senator was clearly showing signs today that he has felt besieged by the White House. And those in the White House who are already declaring victory may very well be doing so prematurely.
In the meantime, Democrats hold out hope, however slim, that Voinovich is the Republican Senator who just might vote against Bolton. Norm Kurz, a spokesman for Senator Joe Biden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told journalist extraordinaire Laura Rosen: "Voinovich is the guy who might just has his conscience pricked again. I wouldn't bet on it happening, but I wouldn't say the game is over."
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
Exclusive: Bolton was recipient of NSA intercepts of IAEA chief.
John R. Bolton, President Bush's designate to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was one of more than a half dozen senior Bush administration officials who received highly classified NSA intercepts of private phone conversations of Mohammed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, according to government officials familiar with the matter. The IAEA is the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency.
That the NSA was intercepting the phone calls of IAEA officers, particularly ElBaradei, is in and of itself hardly big news. IAEA officials have known about the eavesdropping for more than a decade, and have made it a point not to conduct sensitive diplomacy over the telephone. An IAEA spokesman told reporters in Dec. of last year, for example: "We've always assumed that this kind of thing goes on. We wish it were otherwise, but we know the reality."
But Bolton differed from other consumers of the intelligence, according to two senior government officials familiar with the matter, in that when the intercepts proved all but useless to his cause to oust ElBaradei from his IAEA post, he privately encouraged more aggressive intelligence gathering operations against the IAEA, the United Nations, and other international organizations.
The Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Pat Roberts, of Kansas, and the committee's ranking Democrat, John D. Rockefeller IV, of West Virginia, are expected to be briefed today by senior Bush administration officials on specific NSA intercepts Bolton requested to read while he served as a senior State Department official. An unconfirmed report by the Associated Press said yesterday that Deputy National Intelligence Director Gen. Michael Hayden, who is a former head of the NSA, would conduct the briefing.
In an interview with the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Friday, Lawrence S. Wilkerson, a chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, said that Bolton "overstepped his bounds" through "his moves and gyrations" in attempting to prevent the reappointment of ElBaradei as head of the IAEA.
"Now, what do I mean by that?" Mr. Wilkerson said. "I mean, going out of his way to bad-mouth him, to make sure that everybody knew that the maximum power of the United States would be brought to bear against them if he were brought back in." (For more information on Wilkerson's interview with the SFRC staff, one should read this New York Times story.)
While it is hardly unusual for senior State Department officials to task intelligence agencies with specific requests for information, one official told me that the requests of Bolton and similar minded officials "stuck out like a sore thumb" because of Bolton's activist role in attempting to oust ElBaradei. Moreover, the request appeared to target ElBaradei in particular, while ordinarily intelligence information is sought concerning policy and issues. One official told me: "You don't request on individuals."
Bolton's effort to oust ElBaradei was also a contentious issue within the State Department. The efforts to oust ElBarbadei were opposed by, among others, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, then- deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage, and the then-assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation, John Wolf.
Update 7:46 A.M, May 10: In this morning's Los Angeles Times, reporter Mary Curtius, in an exemplary example of political reporting, explains why it is increasingly more likely than not that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will favorably vote out Bolton's nomination on Thursday.
Here are some excerpts:
"For all three Republican senators who have expressed reservations about John R. Bolton's nomination as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, the committee vote set for Thursday is about much more than whether he is the best man for the job...
"With the administration putting on a full-court press, Democrats say they would be surprised if [Sens.] Voincovich, Hagel, or Chaffee were to break ranks and hand Bush an embarrassing political setback.
"In the end, both sides say, the questions raised about Bolton's personality and management style may prove less important to the wavering senators than issues of... political pragmatism.
"A vote against Bolton, said Tony Fabrizio, a Republican pollster, `poses the most danger for Hagel,' who is widely believed to be laying groundwork for a 2008 presidential race.
"Bolton... has publicly criticized the United Nations-- one reason he has has received strong support from party's conservative base, Fabrizio said...
"The three senators must also take into account that Bolton's nomination `is perceived by the party base as an ideological fight' and by the Senate Republican majority as a challenge from Democrats to its control of the chamber, said David Keene, head of the American Conservative Union, a lobbying group.
"For Hagel's hopes of support from party conservatives in a possible presidential bid, Keene said, `it would not be particularly beneficial to be seen as having knifed Bolton in the back.'"
A few comments and observations of my own:
First, what has gone unreported in this story and in others about Republican efforts to confirm Bolton, is that the White House has very effectively lobbied potentially wavering Republican Senators on the SFRC by arguing that a vote against Bolton would also endanger the Bush administration's agenda on social security, judicial nominations, and crucial foreign policy issues. One congressional staffer sums up this very effective White House lobbying stratagem this way: "A vote for or against Bolton is not about Bolton."
Second, is it really that unbelievable that Lincoln Chaffee or John Hagel would vote their conscience, and actually vote against Bolton? Or that they would put the national interest ahead of the their own political interests or that of their party?
Finally, I still believe it is too early for anyone to be sure which way the vote is going to come down. Curtius credibly makes the case as to why Bolton be voted out, but although it is less likely today than in the past that a Senator will vote his or her conscience, it is not entirely unheard of for him or her to do so. At least we can still hold out hope that that still is the case.
Hagel, for one, has indicated that he will now probably vote for Bolton. Hagel wants to run for President, and the White House and conservative activists have assiduously tied a vote against Bolton as a poke in the eye to the Republican base as the vote nears.
Increasingly, the Republican Senator to watch is George Voinovich of Ohio, who is now most likely to be spoiler. Voinovich would alienate both the base of the Republican party and the White House, obviously, by voting against Bolton. Thus a vote against Bolton would come with a high cost. The upside would be that he would almost instantaneously become a national figure, be heralded for voting for conscience, and pick up both Democratic and swing votes in his next re-election bid.
That the NSA was intercepting the phone calls of IAEA officers, particularly ElBaradei, is in and of itself hardly big news. IAEA officials have known about the eavesdropping for more than a decade, and have made it a point not to conduct sensitive diplomacy over the telephone. An IAEA spokesman told reporters in Dec. of last year, for example: "We've always assumed that this kind of thing goes on. We wish it were otherwise, but we know the reality."
But Bolton differed from other consumers of the intelligence, according to two senior government officials familiar with the matter, in that when the intercepts proved all but useless to his cause to oust ElBaradei from his IAEA post, he privately encouraged more aggressive intelligence gathering operations against the IAEA, the United Nations, and other international organizations.
The Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Pat Roberts, of Kansas, and the committee's ranking Democrat, John D. Rockefeller IV, of West Virginia, are expected to be briefed today by senior Bush administration officials on specific NSA intercepts Bolton requested to read while he served as a senior State Department official. An unconfirmed report by the Associated Press said yesterday that Deputy National Intelligence Director Gen. Michael Hayden, who is a former head of the NSA, would conduct the briefing.
In an interview with the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Friday, Lawrence S. Wilkerson, a chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, said that Bolton "overstepped his bounds" through "his moves and gyrations" in attempting to prevent the reappointment of ElBaradei as head of the IAEA.
"Now, what do I mean by that?" Mr. Wilkerson said. "I mean, going out of his way to bad-mouth him, to make sure that everybody knew that the maximum power of the United States would be brought to bear against them if he were brought back in." (For more information on Wilkerson's interview with the SFRC staff, one should read this New York Times story.)
While it is hardly unusual for senior State Department officials to task intelligence agencies with specific requests for information, one official told me that the requests of Bolton and similar minded officials "stuck out like a sore thumb" because of Bolton's activist role in attempting to oust ElBaradei. Moreover, the request appeared to target ElBaradei in particular, while ordinarily intelligence information is sought concerning policy and issues. One official told me: "You don't request on individuals."
Bolton's effort to oust ElBaradei was also a contentious issue within the State Department. The efforts to oust ElBarbadei were opposed by, among others, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, then- deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage, and the then-assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation, John Wolf.
Update 7:46 A.M, May 10: In this morning's Los Angeles Times, reporter Mary Curtius, in an exemplary example of political reporting, explains why it is increasingly more likely than not that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will favorably vote out Bolton's nomination on Thursday.
Here are some excerpts:
"For all three Republican senators who have expressed reservations about John R. Bolton's nomination as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, the committee vote set for Thursday is about much more than whether he is the best man for the job...
"With the administration putting on a full-court press, Democrats say they would be surprised if [Sens.] Voincovich, Hagel, or Chaffee were to break ranks and hand Bush an embarrassing political setback.
"In the end, both sides say, the questions raised about Bolton's personality and management style may prove less important to the wavering senators than issues of... political pragmatism.
"A vote against Bolton, said Tony Fabrizio, a Republican pollster, `poses the most danger for Hagel,' who is widely believed to be laying groundwork for a 2008 presidential race.
"Bolton... has publicly criticized the United Nations-- one reason he has has received strong support from party's conservative base, Fabrizio said...
"The three senators must also take into account that Bolton's nomination `is perceived by the party base as an ideological fight' and by the Senate Republican majority as a challenge from Democrats to its control of the chamber, said David Keene, head of the American Conservative Union, a lobbying group.
"For Hagel's hopes of support from party conservatives in a possible presidential bid, Keene said, `it would not be particularly beneficial to be seen as having knifed Bolton in the back.'"
A few comments and observations of my own:
First, what has gone unreported in this story and in others about Republican efforts to confirm Bolton, is that the White House has very effectively lobbied potentially wavering Republican Senators on the SFRC by arguing that a vote against Bolton would also endanger the Bush administration's agenda on social security, judicial nominations, and crucial foreign policy issues. One congressional staffer sums up this very effective White House lobbying stratagem this way: "A vote for or against Bolton is not about Bolton."
Second, is it really that unbelievable that Lincoln Chaffee or John Hagel would vote their conscience, and actually vote against Bolton? Or that they would put the national interest ahead of the their own political interests or that of their party?
Finally, I still believe it is too early for anyone to be sure which way the vote is going to come down. Curtius credibly makes the case as to why Bolton be voted out, but although it is less likely today than in the past that a Senator will vote his or her conscience, it is not entirely unheard of for him or her to do so. At least we can still hold out hope that that still is the case.
Hagel, for one, has indicated that he will now probably vote for Bolton. Hagel wants to run for President, and the White House and conservative activists have assiduously tied a vote against Bolton as a poke in the eye to the Republican base as the vote nears.
Increasingly, the Republican Senator to watch is George Voinovich of Ohio, who is now most likely to be spoiler. Voinovich would alienate both the base of the Republican party and the White House, obviously, by voting against Bolton. Thus a vote against Bolton would come with a high cost. The upside would be that he would almost instantaneously become a national figure, be heralded for voting for conscience, and pick up both Democratic and swing votes in his next re-election bid.
Sunday, May 08, 2005
Bolton News Over the Weekend
The Bush administration is continuing to refuse to provide the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with intercepts from the National Security Agency related to the confirmation of John Bolton to be Ambassador to the United Nations. In his current position as Under Secretary of State for International Security and Arms Control, Bolton had requested to read NSA intercepts in which U.S. government officials and other American citizens were overheard. Besides the very obvious civil liberties issues, there have been allegations, as I have previously reported, that Bolton was requesting access to such NSA intercepts to find damaging information to use against policy rivals in the State Department and elsewhere in the bureaucracy.
This morning's Washington Note contains an extraordinarily thorough account about this latest important development. Steve Clemons has a strong point of view in opposing Bolton, but he wears his bias on his sleeve-- or rather in his blog-- and more importantly, I have yet to find anything he has reported on Bolton or anything else for that matter that has not later proved to be accurate.
Meanwhile, on Friday, Bolton's cause was hardly advanced when Larry Wilkerson, the chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, questioned Bolton's fitness to serve during formal questioning by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff. Wilkerson said that he believed that Bolton was "an extremely poor leader" and "not an effective diplomat."
Wilkerson insisted that he was speaking for himself nor acting as a proxy for Powell, his former boss. Powell himself has not publicly opposed Bolton's nomination, telling friends that he believes it would be undignified for a former Secretary of State to do so, and also because he does not want to repudiate President Bush in such a public fashion. Instead, Powell has privately expressed his reservations to two Republican Senators on the SFRC, promptly had details of those "private" conversations leaked to the press, and encouraged Wilkerson and other State Department officials to speak their mind in public.
If Powell wants to get the word out more prominently that he opposes the Bolton nomination, and do so without suffering the indignity making a formal public statement, I recommend that he proceed in a manner that has proved to be most effective for him in the past: channel his innermost thoughts through Bob Woodward. Powell knows Woodward to be a most reliable reporter to write the story the way he would want it to be written; the story would be played more prominently on the Post's front page than it ordinarily would because of Woodward's byline; and the role of Woodward and the Post would signal to just the right people that the Washington establishment opposes the Bolton nomination.
We have all disapprovingly witnessed the above described process employed in the past by all the various parties to their mutual benefit, at the expense of the public good. While I ordinarily would decry such practices, in this particular instance, the ends might just for once justify the means. To expedite the process, I can even recommend to Woodward and Powell a suitable parking garage.
Also on Friday the SFRC also released a transcript of a formal staff interview of the CIA's former deputy director, John E. McLaughlin, who did little to bolster the hopes of supporters of Bolton's nomination.
(SFRC is the acronym for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Any respectable blogger such as Mickey Kaus utilizes insider acronyms-- such as SFRC, Potus, or Washpo-- to display their own insider knowledge and status, and thus make their readers feel similarly in the know. Therefore, following Mickey's lead, I have adopted the practice as well! On the other hand, I also want to actually draw in readers to my blog not ordinarily interested in politics, instead of alienating them. What to do?! What to do?!... I will have it both ways!)
McLaughlin sharply criticized an attempt by Bolton to oust a CIA analyst from his position after Bolton and the analyst clashed over a speech alleging that Cuba was pursuing a program to produce biological weapons. The analyst, Fulton Armstrong, the CIA's national intelligence officer for Latin America, had previously told the committee that he believed Bolton attempted to purposely mislead the public in furtherance of Bolton's personal and political objectives.
Recalling the effort to have Armstrong removed from his position, McLaughlin reportedly told the committee: "It's perfectly right for a policy maker to express disagreement with an N.I.O. or an analyst, and it's perfectly all right for them to challenge such an individual vigorously, challenge their work vigorously. But I think it's different to then request [the officer] be transferred. And-- unless their is malfeasance involved here, and in this case, I had a high regard for the individual's work-- therefore, I had a strong negative reaction to the suggestion about moving them." For those desiring more details, I recommend that they read this particular New York Times story.
Update, Sunday Night, 10:37 P.M., May 8
Sen. Lugar, the chairman of the SFRC, said on CBS' "Meet the Press" this morning that he expects that Bolton' s nomination will be voted upon favorably by his committee, and that the vote will most likely be along a straight party line.
Making that outcome appear even more likely, Sen. Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, said on ABC's "This Week" that although he still has yet to make a final decision as to how he might vote on the Bolton nomination, "I know nothing as of this moment that would stop him from being voted out of committee."
Those comments clearly bode well for Bolton's chances to be voted out of the SFRC, and confirmed by the full Senate. Aside from Sen. Lincoln Chafee, of Rhode Island, Hagel was the most likely Republican on the SFRC to vote against Bolton. Moreover, if Hagel were to vote against Bolton, it was thought to be more likely that Chafee would vote the same way.
The outcome of the vote, however, is still very much in doubt. And at this blog we do not pretend to be soothsayers, nor aspire to be one of the McLaughlin Group or Capital Gang.
(If I were to ever appear on one of those programs, I grant my readers permission ahead of time, and even encourage them, to bitch-slap some sense into me. For any of my readers who are offended by my use of the word "bitch-slap", I apologize, but the marketing/focus group people have encouraged me to use such slang and hipster-speak to appeal to that valuable 18-24 demographic which reads blogs.)
Meanwhile, USA Today weighs in with a political analysis examining how a win or loss by the President on the Bolton nomination would affect the Bush administration's agenda on social security and judicial nominations. Although there was no consensus among those queried by the newspaper, the majority opinion was that a defeat on the Bolton nomination would lead to further setbacks on all fronts for the Bush administration.
Leon Panetta, a former chief of staff to President Clinton, told the newspaper: "Any time you show your weariness and vulnerability, it is an opportunity for your opponents."
The article also quotes Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, but does so without disclosing to USA Today's readers that Kristol has a dog in this fight: Bolton was a long time director of the Project for the New American Century, which was at the time, and still is, chaired by Kristol. For his part, Kristol has hardly attempted to hide the relationship: For example, Kristol himself made note of his ties to Bolton in this Weekly Standard editorial in which his magazine endorsed Bolton's nomination to be U.N. ambassador.
(It should be interesting to see if USA Today corrects or amplifies its article to reflect the relationship between Bolton and Kristol. I will update this post when I find out.)
To his credit, Kristol does not pull any punches for the home team, saying: "If Bush loses a man he wants and a man he knows, it will be a blow, and it will weaken him."
On a personal note, it is also good to see the newspaper query experts beyond the usual suspects. (I don't really care or want to know what Norman Ornstein thinks of the Bolton nomination, no disrespect to him.) I was pleasantly surprised to see that among those interviewed for the story was Stephen Wayne, a political science professor at Georgetown. Back in the day (while I was in college) I took Wayne's course on the modern presidency, and in and of itself, the class was worth a full year's tuition. I took Wayne's class, of course, a few years ago, a good five to seven years ago... er, maybe a decade ago... er, perhaps twelve to fifteen years ago.... (At this time, the blogger invokes his Fifth Amendment privilege as to how long ago it was that he attended college.)
If by chance there are any Georgetown students who read this blog, take Wayne's class. I am convinced that a Georgetown alumnus named William Jefferson Clinton would have had a smoother first term had he had the opportunity to take Wayne's class. Whether Clinton would have showed up regularly for class, taken good notes, turned his papers in on time, and the such is another matter...
Random notes on other topics: CNBC has canceled Tina Brown's television show. *sadness* What to do?! Where will we get our news?! According to this published report, only 4,000 viewers in the key 25-54 demographic were even tuning in. It is almost impossible to have numbers any lower than that. A certain percentage of a viewership that small would include, one might surmise, people who were watching the program from the previous hour and fell asleep; or absentmindedly left the room or their house, without turning their television off. (Ever since the Washington Post's Richard Leiby praised this blog for its civility, I have attempted to live up to that high standard. I apologize to my readers for perhaps failing in this particular instance. I pledge that it will not happen again all that soon.) I should note that this blog has way more than 4,000 readers, and I'm not really even trying that hard...
The Bush administration is continuing to refuse to provide the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with intercepts from the National Security Agency related to the confirmation of John Bolton to be Ambassador to the United Nations. In his current position as Under Secretary of State for International Security and Arms Control, Bolton had requested to read NSA intercepts in which U.S. government officials and other American citizens were overheard. Besides the very obvious civil liberties issues, there have been allegations, as I have previously reported, that Bolton was requesting access to such NSA intercepts to find damaging information to use against policy rivals in the State Department and elsewhere in the bureaucracy.
This morning's Washington Note contains an extraordinarily thorough account about this latest important development. Steve Clemons has a strong point of view in opposing Bolton, but he wears his bias on his sleeve-- or rather in his blog-- and more importantly, I have yet to find anything he has reported on Bolton or anything else for that matter that has not later proved to be accurate.
Meanwhile, on Friday, Bolton's cause was hardly advanced when Larry Wilkerson, the chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, questioned Bolton's fitness to serve during formal questioning by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff. Wilkerson said that he believed that Bolton was "an extremely poor leader" and "not an effective diplomat."
Wilkerson insisted that he was speaking for himself nor acting as a proxy for Powell, his former boss. Powell himself has not publicly opposed Bolton's nomination, telling friends that he believes it would be undignified for a former Secretary of State to do so, and also because he does not want to repudiate President Bush in such a public fashion. Instead, Powell has privately expressed his reservations to two Republican Senators on the SFRC, promptly had details of those "private" conversations leaked to the press, and encouraged Wilkerson and other State Department officials to speak their mind in public.
If Powell wants to get the word out more prominently that he opposes the Bolton nomination, and do so without suffering the indignity making a formal public statement, I recommend that he proceed in a manner that has proved to be most effective for him in the past: channel his innermost thoughts through Bob Woodward. Powell knows Woodward to be a most reliable reporter to write the story the way he would want it to be written; the story would be played more prominently on the Post's front page than it ordinarily would because of Woodward's byline; and the role of Woodward and the Post would signal to just the right people that the Washington establishment opposes the Bolton nomination.
We have all disapprovingly witnessed the above described process employed in the past by all the various parties to their mutual benefit, at the expense of the public good. While I ordinarily would decry such practices, in this particular instance, the ends might just for once justify the means. To expedite the process, I can even recommend to Woodward and Powell a suitable parking garage.
Also on Friday the SFRC also released a transcript of a formal staff interview of the CIA's former deputy director, John E. McLaughlin, who did little to bolster the hopes of supporters of Bolton's nomination.
(SFRC is the acronym for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Any respectable blogger such as Mickey Kaus utilizes insider acronyms-- such as SFRC, Potus, or Washpo-- to display their own insider knowledge and status, and thus make their readers feel similarly in the know. Therefore, following Mickey's lead, I have adopted the practice as well! On the other hand, I also want to actually draw in readers to my blog not ordinarily interested in politics, instead of alienating them. What to do?! What to do?!... I will have it both ways!)
McLaughlin sharply criticized an attempt by Bolton to oust a CIA analyst from his position after Bolton and the analyst clashed over a speech alleging that Cuba was pursuing a program to produce biological weapons. The analyst, Fulton Armstrong, the CIA's national intelligence officer for Latin America, had previously told the committee that he believed Bolton attempted to purposely mislead the public in furtherance of Bolton's personal and political objectives.
Recalling the effort to have Armstrong removed from his position, McLaughlin reportedly told the committee: "It's perfectly right for a policy maker to express disagreement with an N.I.O. or an analyst, and it's perfectly all right for them to challenge such an individual vigorously, challenge their work vigorously. But I think it's different to then request [the officer] be transferred. And-- unless their is malfeasance involved here, and in this case, I had a high regard for the individual's work-- therefore, I had a strong negative reaction to the suggestion about moving them." For those desiring more details, I recommend that they read this particular New York Times story.
Update, Sunday Night, 10:37 P.M., May 8
Sen. Lugar, the chairman of the SFRC, said on CBS' "Meet the Press" this morning that he expects that Bolton' s nomination will be voted upon favorably by his committee, and that the vote will most likely be along a straight party line.
Making that outcome appear even more likely, Sen. Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, said on ABC's "This Week" that although he still has yet to make a final decision as to how he might vote on the Bolton nomination, "I know nothing as of this moment that would stop him from being voted out of committee."
Those comments clearly bode well for Bolton's chances to be voted out of the SFRC, and confirmed by the full Senate. Aside from Sen. Lincoln Chafee, of Rhode Island, Hagel was the most likely Republican on the SFRC to vote against Bolton. Moreover, if Hagel were to vote against Bolton, it was thought to be more likely that Chafee would vote the same way.
The outcome of the vote, however, is still very much in doubt. And at this blog we do not pretend to be soothsayers, nor aspire to be one of the McLaughlin Group or Capital Gang.
(If I were to ever appear on one of those programs, I grant my readers permission ahead of time, and even encourage them, to bitch-slap some sense into me. For any of my readers who are offended by my use of the word "bitch-slap", I apologize, but the marketing/focus group people have encouraged me to use such slang and hipster-speak to appeal to that valuable 18-24 demographic which reads blogs.)
Meanwhile, USA Today weighs in with a political analysis examining how a win or loss by the President on the Bolton nomination would affect the Bush administration's agenda on social security and judicial nominations. Although there was no consensus among those queried by the newspaper, the majority opinion was that a defeat on the Bolton nomination would lead to further setbacks on all fronts for the Bush administration.
Leon Panetta, a former chief of staff to President Clinton, told the newspaper: "Any time you show your weariness and vulnerability, it is an opportunity for your opponents."
The article also quotes Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, but does so without disclosing to USA Today's readers that Kristol has a dog in this fight: Bolton was a long time director of the Project for the New American Century, which was at the time, and still is, chaired by Kristol. For his part, Kristol has hardly attempted to hide the relationship: For example, Kristol himself made note of his ties to Bolton in this Weekly Standard editorial in which his magazine endorsed Bolton's nomination to be U.N. ambassador.
(It should be interesting to see if USA Today corrects or amplifies its article to reflect the relationship between Bolton and Kristol. I will update this post when I find out.)
To his credit, Kristol does not pull any punches for the home team, saying: "If Bush loses a man he wants and a man he knows, it will be a blow, and it will weaken him."
On a personal note, it is also good to see the newspaper query experts beyond the usual suspects. (I don't really care or want to know what Norman Ornstein thinks of the Bolton nomination, no disrespect to him.) I was pleasantly surprised to see that among those interviewed for the story was Stephen Wayne, a political science professor at Georgetown. Back in the day (while I was in college) I took Wayne's course on the modern presidency, and in and of itself, the class was worth a full year's tuition. I took Wayne's class, of course, a few years ago, a good five to seven years ago... er, maybe a decade ago... er, perhaps twelve to fifteen years ago.... (At this time, the blogger invokes his Fifth Amendment privilege as to how long ago it was that he attended college.)
If by chance there are any Georgetown students who read this blog, take Wayne's class. I am convinced that a Georgetown alumnus named William Jefferson Clinton would have had a smoother first term had he had the opportunity to take Wayne's class. Whether Clinton would have showed up regularly for class, taken good notes, turned his papers in on time, and the such is another matter...
Random notes on other topics: CNBC has canceled Tina Brown's television show. *sadness* What to do?! Where will we get our news?! According to this published report, only 4,000 viewers in the key 25-54 demographic were even tuning in. It is almost impossible to have numbers any lower than that. A certain percentage of a viewership that small would include, one might surmise, people who were watching the program from the previous hour and fell asleep; or absentmindedly left the room or their house, without turning their television off. (Ever since the Washington Post's Richard Leiby praised this blog for its civility, I have attempted to live up to that high standard. I apologize to my readers for perhaps failing in this particular instance. I pledge that it will not happen again all that soon.) I should note that this blog has way more than 4,000 readers, and I'm not really even trying that hard...
Thursday, May 05, 2005
Senators Try to Reach Compromise on Bolton probe
The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), tonight privately reached out to at least one Democratic Senator, pledging that he would more forcefully press the Bush administration to comply with requests for information as the committee readies to vote on the nomination of John R. Bolton to be ambassador to the United Nations, according to senior congressional staff. Lugar's staff has also relayed the same message to foreign policy staffers for other Democratic Senators, the same sources told me tonight.
"Everyone wants this resolved," one senior congressional staffer told me, "There is a lot more to the appearance of gamesmanship than the actual thing-- or so we hope." A senior Democratic staffer was less hopeful, but told me that there was room for a compromise and for the vote to go forward as scheduled.
The effort by Lugar to reach out to his Democratic counterparts came as the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) suggested that he might attempt to delay a vote on Bolton's nomination if the Bush administration does not turn over critical documents Democrats on the committee requested last week. As things stand, the committee is scheduled to vote on Bolton's nomination on May 12.
Bolton's chances for Senate confirmation are further not expected to be advanced tomorrow morning as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee formally interviews former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff, Larry Wilkerson. Powell himself has previously expressed strong reservations about Bolton's fitness to serve in private conversations with two Republican members of the panel, Sen. Lincoln Chafee, of Rhode Island, and Chuck Hagel, of Nebraska. Wilkerson in the past has been quoted as saying that Bolton would make an "abysmal ambassador" to the United Nations.
The information sought by Biden includes details of several instances in which Bolton had requested intercepts by the National Security Agency of the private conversations of U.S. government officials. There has been speculation that Bolton requested access to the intercepts to obtain derogatory information on his rivals in the the State Department and elsewhere in the bureaucracy. A Democratic staffer told me: "If what Bolton did was so routine and there was nothing sinister to going on, why don't they just turn over everything that they have and dispel everyone's suspicions? They're the ones who can put this to rest and aren't."
In a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Biden wrote: "My Democratic colleagues and I would consider the failure to produce the requested documents in a timely manner a lack of cooperation." Biden also underscored that he only agreed to schedule a vote on May 12 "predicated on my expectation... that the executive branch will cooperate in providing access to witnesses and documents." Implicit in his comments was a threat that Democrats might attempt to delay the vote.
In direct contradiction of what my sources have told me, the New York Times has posted a story on its website tonight reporting that Lugar has "declined to endorse a Democratic request that the State Department turn over documents" requested by Biden.
Lugar has said requests for documents by Democrats on the committee have been "extremely broad" and "may have marginal relevance to specific allegations".
The Times story also informs: "The move was a blow to Democrats on the panel, who have focused on the dispute as a central part of their effort to defeat Mr. Bolton's nomination."
So are my sources wrong if the Times story is correct? Not so fast.
Nobody really has a clue right now what is going to happen. There is a good cop, bad cop aspect to the contradictory posturing by both Democrats and Republicans on the committee, and also between the White House and the Hill. The conventions of journalism dictate that journalists speak with authority; the conceit and agenda of sources also leads them to intimate they are in the know as to what is going to happen.
So all that I am going to say here to my blog readers is that right now I have absolutely no clue what the outcome is going to be. It is next to impossible to know anything when none of the key players do either-- as they preen and posture-- in part for the media.
Perhaps it is best that the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Associated Press, and other major news organizations not feel obligated to report every insignificant development of this saga and similar ones... as if they were bloggers or something! In the end, we are not better informed. And if they really must behave like bloggers, perhaps they would be best served to drop the voice of authority.
I for one am more than willing to enjoy the Bolton saga for now for what it is-- a cliffhanger. Events are currently so fluid that not only does anyone know whether or not Bolton will be confirmed but even whether or not the vote on his nomination will go forward as scheduled. If anyone claims otherwise, absent a Republican Senator saying he or she will vote against Bolton, pay no attention.
Besides, cliffhangers are from my point of view-- and should be to journalists-- the desired state of being.
The indefatigable Steve Clemons of the Washington Note earlier today spoke to Lugar press secretary Andy Fisher, who told him: "We anticipate that sufficient discovery, information and due diligence will be completed in a timely manner for the vote to occur next Thursday as agreed."
That clears things up once and for all!
One of Clemons' well informed readers makes this observation regarding Lugar's press secretary's comments: "This sounds like the equivalent of a non-denial denial.
"Do we have an immovable and irresistible force? Will somebody blink?"
"How many Republicans on the SFRC really care about the perogatives and responsibilities of the United States Senate?"
Another of his readers posted this comment: "The clock is ticking and the suspense mounts."
And what is so wrong about that?
The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), tonight privately reached out to at least one Democratic Senator, pledging that he would more forcefully press the Bush administration to comply with requests for information as the committee readies to vote on the nomination of John R. Bolton to be ambassador to the United Nations, according to senior congressional staff. Lugar's staff has also relayed the same message to foreign policy staffers for other Democratic Senators, the same sources told me tonight.
"Everyone wants this resolved," one senior congressional staffer told me, "There is a lot more to the appearance of gamesmanship than the actual thing-- or so we hope." A senior Democratic staffer was less hopeful, but told me that there was room for a compromise and for the vote to go forward as scheduled.
The effort by Lugar to reach out to his Democratic counterparts came as the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) suggested that he might attempt to delay a vote on Bolton's nomination if the Bush administration does not turn over critical documents Democrats on the committee requested last week. As things stand, the committee is scheduled to vote on Bolton's nomination on May 12.
Bolton's chances for Senate confirmation are further not expected to be advanced tomorrow morning as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee formally interviews former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff, Larry Wilkerson. Powell himself has previously expressed strong reservations about Bolton's fitness to serve in private conversations with two Republican members of the panel, Sen. Lincoln Chafee, of Rhode Island, and Chuck Hagel, of Nebraska. Wilkerson in the past has been quoted as saying that Bolton would make an "abysmal ambassador" to the United Nations.
The information sought by Biden includes details of several instances in which Bolton had requested intercepts by the National Security Agency of the private conversations of U.S. government officials. There has been speculation that Bolton requested access to the intercepts to obtain derogatory information on his rivals in the the State Department and elsewhere in the bureaucracy. A Democratic staffer told me: "If what Bolton did was so routine and there was nothing sinister to going on, why don't they just turn over everything that they have and dispel everyone's suspicions? They're the ones who can put this to rest and aren't."
In a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Biden wrote: "My Democratic colleagues and I would consider the failure to produce the requested documents in a timely manner a lack of cooperation." Biden also underscored that he only agreed to schedule a vote on May 12 "predicated on my expectation... that the executive branch will cooperate in providing access to witnesses and documents." Implicit in his comments was a threat that Democrats might attempt to delay the vote.
In direct contradiction of what my sources have told me, the New York Times has posted a story on its website tonight reporting that Lugar has "declined to endorse a Democratic request that the State Department turn over documents" requested by Biden.
Lugar has said requests for documents by Democrats on the committee have been "extremely broad" and "may have marginal relevance to specific allegations".
The Times story also informs: "The move was a blow to Democrats on the panel, who have focused on the dispute as a central part of their effort to defeat Mr. Bolton's nomination."
So are my sources wrong if the Times story is correct? Not so fast.
Nobody really has a clue right now what is going to happen. There is a good cop, bad cop aspect to the contradictory posturing by both Democrats and Republicans on the committee, and also between the White House and the Hill. The conventions of journalism dictate that journalists speak with authority; the conceit and agenda of sources also leads them to intimate they are in the know as to what is going to happen.
So all that I am going to say here to my blog readers is that right now I have absolutely no clue what the outcome is going to be. It is next to impossible to know anything when none of the key players do either-- as they preen and posture-- in part for the media.
Perhaps it is best that the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Associated Press, and other major news organizations not feel obligated to report every insignificant development of this saga and similar ones... as if they were bloggers or something! In the end, we are not better informed. And if they really must behave like bloggers, perhaps they would be best served to drop the voice of authority.
I for one am more than willing to enjoy the Bolton saga for now for what it is-- a cliffhanger. Events are currently so fluid that not only does anyone know whether or not Bolton will be confirmed but even whether or not the vote on his nomination will go forward as scheduled. If anyone claims otherwise, absent a Republican Senator saying he or she will vote against Bolton, pay no attention.
Besides, cliffhangers are from my point of view-- and should be to journalists-- the desired state of being.
The indefatigable Steve Clemons of the Washington Note earlier today spoke to Lugar press secretary Andy Fisher, who told him: "We anticipate that sufficient discovery, information and due diligence will be completed in a timely manner for the vote to occur next Thursday as agreed."
That clears things up once and for all!
One of Clemons' well informed readers makes this observation regarding Lugar's press secretary's comments: "This sounds like the equivalent of a non-denial denial.
"Do we have an immovable and irresistible force? Will somebody blink?"
"How many Republicans on the SFRC really care about the perogatives and responsibilities of the United States Senate?"
Another of his readers posted this comment: "The clock is ticking and the suspense mounts."
And what is so wrong about that?
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