Did fear of being sent to jail keep Woodward from coming forward? If so, this may be an instance of Patrick Fitzgerald’s aggressive approach to journalists backfiring on him in the worst possible way. If subpoenaed, Woodward, given his historic commitment to protecting sources, would almost certainly have refused to testify before the grand jury without a waiver of confidentiality from his source, whom he reports repeatedly refused to give him one. (The source continues to deny Woodward permission to name him publicly.) Which means that Woodward, had he come forward, may well have found himself imprisoned like Judith Miller.
I’d be extremely sympathetic to Bob’s fear of jail time, intrepid reporter that he is, except for this
If the judge would permit it, I would go serve some of her jail time, because I think the principle is that important, and it should be underscored. It’s not a casual idea that we have confidential sources. It is absolutely vital. And I’ll bet there are all kinds of reporters out there, if we could divvy up this four-month jail sentence — I suspect the judge would not permit that, but if he would, I’ll be first in line. It’s that important to our business.
It just breaks my heart that top reporters need to fear jail time for protecting powerful white house officials from being held accountable for their actions. I can hardly hold back the tears. The only thing I can think of for them to do is stop agreeing to listen to the White House’s lies under confidentiality agreements and force them to go on the record with their smears and character assassination. I know that’s a bold step in a new direction but it would alleviate all this fear and trepidation journalists like WoodMill feel when they are forced to “protect” the most powerful peopple on the planet from public disapproval and legal accountability for their actions.
Here’s a good rule of thumb. Don’t shield powerful government officials who use the press for sleazy partisan activity they know the public would disapprove of. Oh, and write the real story, not the sleazy partisan smear job your valued “sources” are feeding you for the privilege of future access. It will pay off in the long run. You’ll find yourself facing subpoenas and jail time far less often.
I urge everyone who can to tune into Hardball today. John Murtha is one of Tweety’s favorite manly pin-ups. He’ll be slavering all over the fact that Murtha has called for immediate withdrawal. (Count how many times he says “stand-up guy.”)
In all seriousness, this may be a turning point. Murtha has said the unthinkable: “It is evident that continued military action is not in the best interests of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf Region.” Yep. We’ve made a mess alright. But our continued presence is making things worse — for everybody.
And the Republicans are predictably lashing out wildly with shrill accusations of “surrender.” They are getting very nervous. This isn’t 2002 and the codpiece isn’t riding an 80% approval rating. The GOP still haven’t yet absorbed the fact that his manufactured popularity was always a mile wide and an eighth of an inch thick.
Their patented jingo schtick is suddenly as starkly out of fashion as The Macarena. Woodwardian Bushism is revealed to be nothing more than a fad that people are now vaguely embarrassed to have embraced in public.
What a shame about all the death and destruction. Thanks Bob.
Update: Uh oh. That hot manly flyboy, JJ McCain, is on. Tweety is squirmy — McCain is defending the administration on Iraq. It’s so hard to love a man when he’s full of shit.
It appears that Sally Quinn is more than just a society martinet. She’s DC’s Doyenne of Doom:
On the evening of Nov. 14, Quinn took her message to the grass roots, addressing approximately 70 folks at a meeting of the Citizens Association of Georgetown. Speaking from the pulpit of St. John’s Episcopal Church, Quinn said that she had gathered enough information to “scare you a lot.”
[…]
Your N95 Mask: The Building Block of Emergency Prep. At her talk, Quinn held this particle-filtering device to her mouth and said that she’s “never without it.” She also stuffs one into the briefcase of her husband, former Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee, who she says “grouses” about the precaution.
Pick a Room and Stock It. You need water and food to last a week, a battery-powered radio and flashlight, planned emergency routes, contact numbers for the family, the antibiotics Cipro and doxycycline, a first-aid kit, and plastic sheeting and duct tape. Quinn herself keeps all these things in her home’s laundry room, because it’s “easy to seal off.” Also, her food supply is heavy on the beans, “because they’re nutritious.”
Watch That Gas Gauge. If Quinn’s Georgetown neighbors have spotted her frequently at the gas station recently, it’s not necessarily because she’s doing a lot of traveling. The Postie always keeps her tank full in case catastrophe strikes. In practice, that means that when the needle on her Mercedes-Benz station wagon drops by a fourth, it’s back to the filling station. “Three-quarters is pretty much the rule,” she says.
Two Words: Peanut Butter. Along with a supply of water, Quinn keeps a “large jar” of peanut butter in her car, primarily for the protein. Even a small amount of this staple, says Quinn, will sustain the terrorism victim for quite some time.
Keep the Kayak in the Garage. In a 2003 Post piece, Quinn advocated the use of inflatable kayaks as an evacuation mode for those who live near water. The mass hysteria following Hurricane Katrina, though, has apparently soured Quinn on riparian retreat. “Somebody would stick you up with a gun,” said Quinn of an evacuee headed to the river with a portable craft.
Don’t Bother Putting Masks on Your Dog. At the Georgetown speech, an audience member suggested placing masks on pets to keep them from spreading contagions. Quinn responded that she’d tried putting an N95 on Sparky, her now-deceased Shih Tzu, but it didn’t work.
Don’t Trust Public Officials. In a wide-ranging critique of local and federal preparations for terrorist attacks, Quinn made the following contentions:
•Police and fire officials in the District don’t want to warn residents about the hazards posed by chlorine tankers on D.C. railroad tracks out of fear of causing hysteria.
•Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson’s contention that the nation is prepared for a biological or chemical weapons attack is “the biggest lie.”
•Federal emergency authorities “not only lie, they don’t tell the truth.”
My oh my. Somebody’s speaking a little bit out of turn on that lying business. I have it on good authoirity that all the best administrations lie to the little people for their own good. (Oh, and if Barney and Spot have trouble with their gas masks you can always wrap your pashmina over their little faces and rush them to the heli-pad. Paris and Nikki say it works like a charm.)
I’m a bit surprised that Sally didn’t share with her little Georgetown ladies club the single greatest terrorist precautionary device all the better people have — advance notice.
Via The Daou Report, I learned that courageous investigative journalist and Bush-fluffer Stephen Hayes is trying to obtain access to documents in Harmony, a database of purported Saddam-era documents from Iraq that was developed by the Pentagon. The documents have some very intriguing titles as they appear to be evidence of efforts by Saddam to hide wmd before the Bush invasion. Here are a few, according the intrepid Mr. Hayes:
Possible al Qaeda Terror Members in Iraq Money Transfers from Iraq to Afghanistan Iraqi Intel report on Kurdish Activities: Mention of Kurdish Report on al Qaeda–reference to al Qaeda presence in Salman Pak Locations of Weapons/Ammunition Storage (with map) Iraqi Effort to Cooperate with Saudi Opposition Groups and Individuals Formulas and information about Iraq’s Chemical Weapons Agents Denial and Deception of WMD and Killing of POWs Fedayeen Saddam Responds to IIS regarding rumors of citizens aiding Afghanistan Document from Uday Hussein regarding Taliban activity Chemical Gear for Fedayeen Saddam Memo from the IIS to Hide Information from a U.N. Inspection team (1997) Chemical Agent Purchase Orders (Dec. 2001) Correspondence between various Iraq organizations giving instructions to hide chemicals and equipment Cleaning chemical suits and how to hide chemicals Secret Meeting with Taliban Group Member and Iraqi Government (Nov. 2000)
Now, I know, folks, you think this is just moonbat nonsense. We’d have heard of this stuff by now if there was any there there and even Hayes admits that “most” of the documents retrieved in Iraq were forgeries. And I’ll bet some of you are even thinking, “Don’t let Hayes pollute the discourse any more than it’s already been by reprinting this trash.”
But I agree with Hayes for once, especially since most of these docs, he says, are unclassified. Let’s see them, all of them. Let’s see the originals. All the originals.
Now I’m not saying we will find copies of the Niger forgeries among these documents – I frankly doubt it. Nor am I saying that the Harmony database is evidence of a conspiracy to forge massive documentation to “prove” the Bush case for war, documentation which was never, or only partly, deployed. Or that Harmony was simply an organized campaign of disinformation. Or that the name of the collection supports that kind of interpretation as it sounds like one of those spy jokes: documents in “harmony” with the “case for war.”
But I wouldn’t dream of distrusting my Pentagon that much. I’d just like to see exactly what’s in Harmony. And if it turns out they are a collection of Pentagon forgeries – or more likely, simply category titles with no or little reliable or interesting documentation collected under them, I expect Stephen to tell us in the Weekly Standard loudly and clearly. And long before the next election.
Good luck, Stephen. Keep us posted. Oh, and if you come to New York, I’d love to take you on a tour of Times Square. We can play the shell game. You can make a fortune if you guess right!
UPDATE: Stephen Hayes has now been correctly credited with the information about Harmony.
It’s a sad day when Jonah Goldberg’s shallow little musings are in Robert Sheer’s space on the LA Times op-ed page. His first column features the word “moonbats” and compares FDR to Bush explaining that great presidents lie to us for our own good. He even tells us that we didn’t know WWII was a “good war” until the Holocaust and Hollywood showed us this was true. History, you see, will show that George W. Bush, like FDR, will be remembered as a great president even though he lied because of his bold action in the middle east.
Apparently, he remains blind to the fact that Iraq threatened no one at the time we invaded — and that post world war II, the main legal argument against Germany was that it engaged in a war of aggression. (Germans could have disagreed, of course, arguing that they were only following the “Hitler Pre-emption Doctrine.” We would not have found that persuasive.)
I think it’s rather sad that these doughy little boys dream so of being a Greater Generation that they have to pretend that Iraq, or even the threat of Islamic terrorism, is on the scale of WWII. If FDR lied about WWII, at least we knew at the time that the German and Japanese threat to Europe and China was real — they were invading all over the place; the argument was always about whether it was real to the US until Pearl Harbor. In those days “the national interest” was a fetish for the right. Today, not so much.
Juan Cole rounds up the latest about the consequences of all the lies and distortions that finally the msm noticed. “Noticed?” Hell, one of the most damning themes in the Woodward story is the extent to which the msm actively contributed to the lies, distortions, and serial failures of this administration. But I digress, here’s the latest from Iraq:
Al-Quds al-Arabi: First, the Pentagon was forced to admit that it had in fact used white phosphorus as a weapon (and not just as a smokescreen) in Fallujah, though it insisted that it was used only against combatants, not civilians. (When you attack a civilian city, how could you be sure who was who?)
Then there was more bad news when 8 GIs were killed within 24 hours. They included 5 Marines killed while fighting in al-Ubaidi in western Iraq near the Syrian border. The Marines killed 16 guerrillas in the battle. Also on Wednesday, the US Department of Defense announced that 3 GIs were killed in a roadside bombing in Baghdad.
In a third wave of bad news, the scandal of the tortured Iraqi prisoners has continued to grow. The Iraqi Islamic Party demanded an international investigation, and also called on Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the spiritual guide of the Shiites, to condemn the torture.
[Snip]
A major contracting scandal is breaking that involves enormous graft on the part of officials of the Coalition Provisional Administration, the American government of Iraq in 2003-2004
And that’s just one day’s news, from just one of the monumental catastrophes this administration has created. No one can claim the past five years have been boring. Nail biting, terrifying, infuriating but never a dull moment.
And still, slightly more than 1/3 of Americans approve of Bush. Think about it, like what that number actually means, mull it over in your mind, come up with thought experiments to make 34% concrete for you. And then marvel as full understanding of how incredibly high that number really is dawns upon you.
Man, that’s a shitload of ignorant morons running around.
Here’s a very nice essay by Will Bunch about Woodward and what he meant to a generation of reporters. I didn’t become a journalist like he did, but I became a political junkie, watching the Watergate hearings that summer so long ago. I too was a Watergate geek — and Woodstein were my heroes.
I haven’t revered Woodward in a long time. And I still mourn the loss of my youthful faith in what Woodstein stood for — that the truth will out. Woodmill (hat tip to my pal) has been the sad reality ever since.
I think it’s really great that Bob Woodward is such a stand up guy who refuses to divulge his sources no matter what the consequences. He has always shown excellent journalistic judgement in these things so we can trust him to know what is important and what isn’t.
For instance, in his examination of the presidency “Shadow : Five Presidents and the Legacy of Watergate” he discusses how dumb it was for Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton not to just tell what they knew right away and get it all over with:
After Watergate, I never expected another impeachment investigation in my lifetime, let alone an actual impeachment and a Senate trial. Nixon’s succesesors, I thought, would recognize the price of scandal and learn the two fundamental lessons of Watergate. First, if there is questionable activity, release the facts whatever they are, as early and completely as possible. Second, do not allow outside inquiries, whether conducted by prosecutors, congressmen or reporters, to harden into a permanent state of suspicion and warfare.
Good advice, I’m sure. Yet somehow this high minded cautionary tale devolved in the second half into a full-on insider tabloid expose of President Clinton’s dick. Literally:
“Bennett had tried … to obtain the details from the statement Jones had made about Clinton allegedly having ‘distinguishing characteristics’ in his genital area. It hadn’t worked, but Bennett wanted to make sure there were no such characteristics.
At first Bennett thought it might be a mole or birthmark. So he started asking longtime male Clinton friends who might have seen him in the shower at one point or another in his life. Had they seen anything? No one had.
Later, Bennett was in the Oval Office with Clinton, and the president had to go to the washroom. For a moment, Bennett thought of following the president into the Oval Office bathroom to see what he might see, but he decided against it. ‘We can’t have president of the United States’ penis on trial,’ Bennett finally said to Clinton directly. ‘There is an ugh factor in politics.’ ‘It’s an outrage,’ Clinton replied. ‘It’s totally not true. Go to all my doctors. It’s just false…[Bennett said]”The only step that was not taken was to ask the doctor to induce an erection to reduplicate the circumstances that Jones had alleged. That was unthinkable.”‘
That’s the good judgment I’m talking about. Woody’s very good at keeping secrets. He prides himself on it. But this particular bit of information was essential for the public to know. Apparently, he believed that if only Clinton had dropped his pants on national TV, he could have moved beyond his problems.
Frank Rich wrote a review of this book back in 1999 in which he excoriated Woodward for his insider bloviating, making the case that Woodward and the Quinn contingent were reflexive antagonists of every president. Little did he know that Woodward would take his criticism so to heart that he would become a mindless hagiographer for the most callow, vacuous leader this country would ever produce.
In his review he discusses at some length Woodward’s prudish judgmentalism toward the presidents:
Ford is chastised for bringing into the White House ”a Congressional lifestyle, which often included alcohol at lunch.” Woodward uncovers one scandalous occasion in Denver when the President ”skipped several dozen pages of his remarks because he had what his aides called a few ‘marts,’ for martinis, before speaking.” You’d think that Ford’s skipping several dozen pages of luncheon remarks would be a blessing for those in attendance, or at least something less than an indictable offense. But in ”Shadow,” it’s another cue for Woodward to seize the moral high ground and condemn a benighted President Who Did Not Escape the Shadow of Watergate.
Similarly, the Carter Administration becomes an excuse for Woodward to rehash ancient charges of cocaine possession against the White House aide Hamilton Jordan. Though Jordan was ultimately cleared, he was not ”totally innocent” after all — for he ”liked to drink beer and loved chasing women” and ”did go to places like . . . Studio 54,” where other patrons might have behaved naughtily, thereby making Jordan ”a magnet for allegations.” Jordan, it seems, is guilty by association with nightspots.
Under Woodward’s moral tutelage, Jordan recants his past in ”Shadow,” belatedly seeing the errors of his partying ways of two decades ago. But Jordan’s real problem back then, Woodward suggests without irony, may have been partying with noninsiders. ”Shadow” reports that Jordan ”stiffed the Washington establishment and its dinner-party circuit with particular relish” — apparently a hanging offense. The punishment, Woodward reports, was a long 1977 article in The Washington Post Style section ”about the strain between the Carterites and Washington.”
And then along came Clinton’s penis.
Woodward, like Broder and Sally and Richard Cohen and Cokie and the rest of the moribund DC establishment, are obsessed with the social and personal activities of their King (and their own relationships to him) and have absolutely no interest or insight into the corrupt, depraved, malevolent political force the Republican Washington establishment has become. (It’s hardball politics!) As long as they are getting their due deference and nobody’s slip is showing, they are more than happy to keep any behavior that the unwashed masses might find unpalatable under wraps — things like war or institutionalized character assassination. The only scandals worth reporting are “too many marts” and “trashing the place” — behaviors that imply the courtier’s social mores are unimportant. Tsk tsk tsk.
I’m reluctant to take the focus off Woodward’s incredible behavior – and for the record, I think Digby is absolutely right regarding his suspicions as to where Woody learned Plame’s name – but I want to urge folks to be on the lookout for the latest issue of Harper’s on the newsstand. They usually don’t post the articles online so you’re gonna have to buy it (or got to a library) but it’s worth it.
Lewis Lapham has a rant against the Bush Cheney administration’s corruption in the Katrina reconstruction that is so blisteringly furious it makes The Rude Pundit appear like that Gautama Buddha. Lapham collects in one place all the sickening details. The corruption is endemic, and the absence of simple human decency so profound, it’s enough to make a grown man weep.
In addition, Stanley Fish gives the clearest exposition I’ve come across of the intellectual and rhetorical hijinks behind the marketing of “intelligent design” creationism. He makes the point many of us have made, that there’s a cynical hijacking (and distortion) of postmodern arguments by the rightwing, but he is able to provide far more information on how this is accomplished than I’ve seen before. The article is probably similar to this lecture Fish has been giving entitled “Three on a Match: Intelligent Design, Holocaust Denial, Postmodernism.”
As I’ve discussed numerous times, the marketing techniques on display in the “intelligent design” wars are the template for numerous other far right cultural battles. Really, you shouldn’t miss what Fish has to say.
