Hoagland Begs, Don't Come after Me Next

by emptywheel

I said last week that Richard Cohen had made the case not for journalistic freedom but for journalistic impunity. Cohen was demanding that journalists not be held responsible for the consequences of their leaks. What is important, to Richard Cohen, is that he not be denied that good tables in restaurants that come from being an obedient leak recipient. It doesn't matter what collateral damage he causes in that pursuit of the good table.

Jim Hoagland, I suspect, is also hoping to make the case for journalistic impunity. Only he's not so much hoping to retain access to the good tables. Rather, he's hoping to prevent people from looking at his work with the kind of scrutiny Judy's work has received. Because he knows that his and Judy's Iraq work look to have been dictated by the same assignment editor. Hoagland, like Miller, was peddling the stories his DOD/Cheney sources wanted him to peddle. Perhaps it's not surprising, then, that his his defense of the culture of leaking tries to resucitate the threat of WMDs.

An even larger threat to a reasoned and comprehensive debate on the American agenda is emerging from the misuse of the Plame affair as a weapon of political and bureaucratic warfare in Washington. The leak case is becoming one more stand-in for a "smoking gun" needed to show that Bush and Vice President Cheney knew that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that they based the war on lies.

The case we made, he seems to be saying, was a serious one. We can be excused if we took that serious threat too seriously, if we didn't exercise enough critical judgement. No harm no foul.

I first realized that Hoagland had been drinking out of the same Kool-Aid bowl as Judy when I read the profile of Chalabi he wrote on April 9 2003 (a few days after DOD flew Chalabi and his militia to Nasariyah to pre-empt a State-funded exile militia). Hoagland's hero-worship and credulity exceed that of even Judy.

You are hearing a lot about Ahmed Chalabi right now. Much of it is not true. Worse, you are not hearing what you need to know about a man who is neither an Iraqi puppet for U.S. forces nor a conniving political fortune hunter taking the Bush administration for a ride.    

Who is Chalabi? The antiwar, anti-Bush, anti-change-in-Iraq crowd spreads the puppet version to smear this Iraqi exile leader, while State Department and CIA senior officials peddle the fortune-hunter image. Both groups use Chalabi as a dartboard to serve their own interests or those of their Arab clients. Their objections reveal more about their politics than his.

Hoagland goes on to tell a tearjerker about how Chalabi's interests in Iraq amount to wanting to bury his family members in Iraq. Perhaps that's part of it. But I hope with the perspective of two years and one double-agent-leak-to-Iran later, Hoagland can see that he was the one underestimating Chalabi, not the antiwar, anti-Bush, anti-change-in-Iraq (as if) crowd.

Even before Hoagland wrote this profile, however, he was intervening in the DOD feud against the CIA and State. Whereas Judy parroted INC attacks against the CIA-backed Saad al-Janabi, Hoagland  waxes philosophical, suggesting the CIA is not-yet-reformed-enough to intervene in choosing leaders for Iraq.

But the agency remains ill-suited to choosing, promoting and installing leaders who can be trusted to keep their promises -- first of all to their own people. That is a job for the Iraqi people, and particularly for those among them who have a long history of fighting for democracy.

Don't be fooled, though, into believing Hoagland is advocating democracy led by Iraqis in Iraq. Rather, he's making a (subtle) case for the INC. It gets less subtle when he criticizes the CIA and State for cutting off funding to Chalabi's group.

It joined the State Department's Near East Bureau in working to cut off U.S. funds for the Iraqi National Congress and other anti-Baathist movements that (rightly) urged a long process of starting the political education of the population and a low-intensity conflict against the regime.

Hoagland helped advance Chalabi's and DOD's interest again when he wrote an ardent column supporting de-Baathification. In late April, Hoagland writes a case for de-Baathification that relies on Free Iraqi Forces (Chalabi's militia) and Bernard Lewis as sources to justify his case. Which is not to say Hoagland doesn't make a compelling argument. It does, however, suggest who was asking him to make such a compelling argument.

Finally, Hoagland wrote a second profile of Chalabi in June, depicting him as the reigning leader of Iraq, accepting the tribute of any and all.

Chalabi sits at noon in a spacious reception hall, listening to a group of robed tribal sheiks from southern Iraq express support for the INC. A nuclear scientist who once worked for the regime sits waiting for a chance to lay out plans for a new science ministry.

Bobbing through the door next comes a wave of roly-poly Baghdadi businessmen in polyester suits to talk about the economy. Behind them are three Sudanese immigrants in jeans who are forming an association of political independents. And so it goes long after dusk, with visits from the Iranian and Turkish ambassadors thrown in for intrigue.

This is a scene that the Iraq experts at the State Department and the CIA said could never happen. They have consistently painted Chalabi and his organization as not having any local "roots."

I should point out the logic flaw here, where Hoagland argues that a nuclear scientist who appears to have been an exile (since Saddam didn't allow his nuclear scientists to just quit), three Sudanese immigrants, and Iranian and Turkish ambassadors prove his "roots" in Iraq.

No matter. Hoagland's goal here, in addition to saying "I told you so" to CIA and State was to depict Chalabi as the natural choice to lead Iraq, at a time when Bremer was still weighing whom to name to the Iraq Governing Council. It also probably helped to counter more skeptical portrayals some other WaPo journalists were writing.

Perhaps Hoagland is getting more material directly from Chalabi at the expense of DOD. But he's drawing on the same faction to make the same arguments. Admittedly, Hoagland tells his stories with much more intelligence and originality than Judy. But much of the time, he seems to have been reading from the same script she was. Much of the time, he was just another tactical weapon DOD used in its battle against CIA and State to control the reconstruction of Iraq.

No wonder Hoagland feels threatened by the legal attention Judy has been getting.

Comments

[DemFromCT]

Interesting story from RICHARD W. STEVENSON and DOUGLAS JEHL just appeared on the Times site. Gist is it's the war, stupid (Leak Case Renews Questions on War's Rationale). (See preceding post for Wilkerson discussion and links).

Mr. Wilkerson complained of a "cabal" between Mr. Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that bypassed normal decision-making channels when it came to Iraq and other national security issues. He described "real dysfunctionality" in the administration's foreign policy team and said that Mr. Powell's aides had thrown out "whole reams of paper" from the intelligence dossier developed by Mr. Cheney's staff for use in Mr. Powell's presentation of the case against Iraq to the United Nations in early 2003.

You'll see some familiar names. Bolton, Fleitz, Hannah, and of course Libby and cheney.

[DemFromCT]

as to Hoagland,

No one should advocate the reckless or malicious disclosure of the names of CIA agents or other properly classified, sensitive information. But Fitzgerald has wielded his prosecutorial discretion like a bludgeon, with scant regard for the need for a balance of official candor and journalistic responsibility that serves the public good.

Like his colleague Richard Cohen, the wise Hoagland knows what Fitz is going to do, and has already decided it's wrong. Hoagland seems to have as much respect for current facts as he did when profiling Chalabi. Which is to say, none. But he's right about one thing. After this there will be a reckoning of how the press covers the WH. And about time.

[John Casper]

Missed you emptywheel.

Swopa was all over Murray Waas' most recent article that confirms that you and Jane got it right with your Fitzmas "mousetrap" theory.

[DHinMI]

I read that Hoagland article on Thursday, and I think it might be the single worst article written by one of the press mandarins on the Plame investigation. Hoagland is a ponderous fool, his stentorian banalities covering the foreign affairs world while his equally ponderous and equally foolish partner David Broder handles domestic affairs. But Hoagland really outdid himself in this column, with bullshit like this:

Like the subplots and intrigues that divided post-World War I Berlin into hostile camps that reflexively rubbished any political idea, artistic creation or strategic proposal coming from another camp -- historian Walter Laqueur's "Weimar 1918-1933" describes that collective and destructive pigheadedness brilliantly -- the Fitzgerald investigation will be more important for its effect than for its cause.

This scandal's greatest importance lies, Weimar-like, in its ability to distract the public's attention, energy and commitment from more important questions. In this regard, Fitzgerald's investigation also resembles in spirit and effect the efforts to impeach Bill Clinton over his affair with a former intern.

Fitzgerald's most lasting legacy in this case will not be as a prosecutor. It will be as a censor. He has built his case around the discussion of possibly classified information -- Plame's name -- by government officials with journalists. He is sending a message -- one that President Bush fully endorses, even as it creates severe complications for him -- about the dangers of talking to journalists about national security matters.

I could write all day on the idiocy of those paragraphs; the complete failure to acknowledge that people's lives were put in danger, that it compromised our national security, that it wasn't about acts motivated or related directly related to national security, but to partisan political reprisals, that it was part of a disinformation campaign to lead the country into war, that it's irrelevant to his comparison to Wiemar culture, that he hasn't a fucking clue about Weimar culture, that Fitzgerald's investigation isn't about art or culture, and that it's unlikely to create or reflect partisan divides, but more likely to bring a strong reaction against the administration by many people who voted for it. And as Kagro has been predicting, he equated Starr's investigation with Fitzgerald's, which by implication means he thought the Starr investigation was wrong (but only in retrospect, because it was OK when it was directed against Clinton).

As someone who knows a little bit about Weimar culture, society and politics, it was the Wiemar comparison that made my blood boil. By the end of the Wiemar era, there was almost no significant political middle. The liberal, center and traditional conservative parties (but for the Catholic Center party) were almost completely irrelevant, and the country was split between a far left (the Communists were ascendent, taking votes and support from the Socialists) and the far right coalition, which after 1932 included the Nazis. By 1932, not only was Germany divided culturally--which seems to be Hoagland's entire basis for comparison--there was very little support for the continuation of democracy. A sizeable chunk of the country vocally (and often violently) supported either a rightwing dictatorship or a communist state.

Comparing American democracy in its 22nd decade to German democracy in its first is ludicrous, and shows Hoagland to be an idiot. By the end of Wiemar there was almost no political middle. In the US, the vast majority of the population is in the middle, but the GOP has been pulled far to the right, forcing them to conceal their true intentions in servicing their base and neccisitating symbolic nostrums (like compassionate conservativism) and actually delivering some goods (like not cutting entitlement spending or pork and passing the Medicare drug plan) which pisses off the right. And tools like Hoagland help paper over the policies, actions and intentions of the rightwing Republicans, who so often act in contradiction of the wishes of the American people.

Hoagland is an idiot, and I suppose somebody finds him a useful one.

[emptywheel]

Good to be missed, John.

I have to saw the mousetrap theory was one of my theories in which I have had the most confidence. Having read Judy's war reporting, there was no way she was on the up and up. Still isn't, in fact. I suspect Fitz has one or two surprises in store for her.

[emptywheel]

DH

Your comments about Weimar are right on (I had some similar thoughts myself, but you argue the case much better than I did in my head). But I wonder whether Hoagland wasn't instead invoking Weimar because he has a real fondness for Nazi metaphors. He used it in at least one of his previous articles I cited. And he has used it before. This time, it's the neat "impending Nazism" scare, rather than the claim we're fascists now. Doesn't excuse it, mind you. Or excuse the historical sloppiness. But it seems to be a conceit for him.

[DemFromCT]

David Corn refers to this:

TRUSTING LIBBY. Thanks to Michael Isikoff for the shout-out. On HuffingtonPost.com, he writes,

Forget the aspens turning in clusters--or, for at least the next couple of days, the prospect of indictments. (Nothing, it now seems, until next week.) The real story of last weekend's Judy Miller revelations is not what Scooter Libby may have told her about Joe Wilson's wife. It is how Libby clearly, and unequivocally, misrepresented the contents of the classified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) about Iraqi WMD. Save for the estimable David Corn of the Nation, nobody has picked up on this. But it's huge. At a time when questions about the Bush administration's case for war were beginning to mount, Libby assured Miller: Don't worry, there's still secret stuff out there that will prove we were right all along. As a Washington reporter who frequently writes about intelligence matters, I can assure you, this is the way it always works: "Trust me," the high level government official will tell you, "if you knew what I knew--if you could read the top secret reports I've read--you'd know why we're doing this." Only in this case, we know what Libby told Miller at their two hour breakfast at the Ritz Carleton Hotel on July 8, 2003, wasn't true.

For Isikoff's full examination of how Libby tried to mislead Miller (who seems to have been rather willing to be misled) about the prewar intelligence, see his "Terror Watch" column (written with Mark Hosenball) here.

With or without indictments, there’s reverberations. Hoagland and Cohen be damned. The rest of the media is writing about the manipulation of journalists, and life will not be quite the same again.

[nandrews3]

I used to like Hoagland's columns, before the war made clear what a poser, and what a tool, he really is. At least he was an opinion columnist all along, so it's not quite the same as with Miller. He did, however, have a certain amount of general credibility, which enabled him to do some of the same kinds of harm.

I don't really think, though, that he was pushing the INC mainly as a team player for Cheney and Rumsfeld. That's because I think he distinguished himself even among the neocons for his loyalty to Chalabi after the falling-out. I don't know if you were going to bring this up anyway, but check out his column from 5/21/04. He actually accuses the administration of trying to encourage Chalabi's assassination. Of course, it's all the CIA's fault for turning everyone against him. But Hoagland also explicitly blames Cheney for being "either powerless or not disposed to help him now."

For Hoagland, at least, I think the friendship that goes back to 1972 in Beirut, or whatever, takes precedence even over whatever tasks his administration contacts may have been assigning him. Then again, I guess other people seemed to feel strongly about Chalabi too based on friendship. There needs to be a book written about how that man managed to do what he did.

(What it reminds me of, actually -- one last thing -- is Ngo Dinh Diem, the ascetic non-Communist nationalist brought in from his exile in New Jersey, and how he had right-wing American Catholics wrapped around his finger for some years. We Americans seem to have a fatal willingness to let ourselves be suckered by exiled players.)

[emptywheel]

nandrew3

Good points, all around. Yes, I agree, Hoagland is actually shilling for Chalabi first and DOD second. Although the way that impacted the fight between DOD and State is negligible--Chalabi was following the DOD script so closely that Hoagland basically did too.

And yeah, we do fall for the exiled leader. The Neocons really played on that too, in portraits of Chalabi as a freedom fighter.