"The Information-Gathering Machine ... Shows Signs of Being Corrupted"

by emptywheel

On June 14, 2003, Bill Keller concluded a column (titled "The Boys Who Cried Wolfowitz") that gently criticized the way the Neocons took us to war with this sentence:

The truth is that the information-gathering machine designed to guide our leaders in matters of war and peace shows signs of being corrupted. To my mind, this is a worrisome problem, but not because it invalidates the war we won. It is a problem because it weakens us for the wars we still face.

Attytood claims the column may have followed some coaching from Paul Wolfowitz (there is a more moderate version of Attytood's column here), basing that claim on this New York Daily News report,

But we hear that Keller himself fell prey to the spin of former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. Word is that, well after many laughed off Miller's WMD tales, Keller had a series of private meetings with Wolfowitz, who assured him that Saddam was hiding something.

"Keller got snowed by Wolfowitz," says a source. "That's [Keller] who gave Miller the green light" to keep writing her piece.

Now, let me make something clear. I think both Attytood and the NYDN mischaracterize these meetings. The Daily News doesn't give dates for these meetings. But "well after many laughed off Miller's WMD tales" could have been quite early--most of Judy's laughable pre-war WMD tripe appeared in 2002 (from the beginning of 2003 she was already hot on the heels of Ahmed Chalabi, covering the INC's maneuvers). And if Wolfie was trying to convince Keller that Saddam was hiding something, the conversations probably occurred before Saddam started working full time hiding himself, during the war and after "Mission Accomplished." Finally, Bill Keller's profile of Wolfie was printed September 22, 2002. Which all suggests that Wolfie was courting Keller while Keller was still a columnist, and well before he became Executive Editor in July 2003. Indeed, in his more moderate version of this column, Attytood twice admits the chronology:

It certainly explains the convuluted pieces that Keller -- who was both a columnist and author of magazine pieces for the Times in 2002 and 2003, before he was called in to replace the ousted Howell Raines -- wrote offering his support for the military action before it was launched.
 
 [snip]
 
We don't doubt that Wolfowitz actually believed some of what he was spinning the future No. 1 editor at the Times, but he wasn't giving out the full story.

Wolfie snowed Keller while he was still a columnist, not while he was Executive Editor. So unless Keller's thinking didn't progress at all between September 2002 and June 2003 (and the gently critical column suggests it did), then Wolfie's courting not only had nothing to do with Keller's decisions about Miller's reporting, but they were no longer operative by the time Keller supervised Miller.

But it's an interesting line, about the information-gathering machine getting corrupted, no?

Indeed, I'm far more interested in this Wolfie connection for the parallel it sets up between the Neocons and the NYT. Keller said of Wolfie, way back in that September 2002 profile,

If the interventionists are right, America can reasonably expect to be more secure, respected and very, very busy -- and much of the foreign-policy old guard will have been proved wrong. But if Wolfowitz and those with him are wrong, if Iraq comes down around their ears, America will be standing deep in the rubble, very alone.

I think we can say Iraq came down around their ears. But while Wolfie is now safely ensconced in his World Bank job, Keller is the one standing (practically) alone in the rubble. Which has something to do with Judy's nature. As Franklin Foer suggests:

Despite everything she had written, and despite all the damage she had exacted on the institution, she had the Times by the nuts in these negotiations. The simple fact about Miller is that you can't stop her, you can't even hope to contain her. It's the exact reason you can't negotiate with a crazed dictator: Miller doesn't play by the same rules or operate under the same set of mores as the rest of us. She overflows with so much gumption and so much ambition that she will always claw her way back from whatever Elba-like bureaucratic beat the editors consign her to, back into the limelight. You will always live in fear of her breaking agreements and finding new, creative ways to burn you. Removing her from the building was Keller's only sane option.

But as yesterday's pre-Judy-sacking Observer article explains, it also has something to do with Keller's own actions (and Foer details some of this as well).

And Ms. Miller’s endurance suggested that the paper may have underestimated how much leverage she would have in negotiations. The most firing-worthy allegations against Ms. Miller—such as insubordination and misleading editors—could all be disputed, depending on how one interprets the evidence.

 

So Ms. Miller was disputing them.

 

Take Mr. Keller’s assertion that she had “drifted” back into off-limits reporting territory after her removal from the weapons-of-mass-destruction beat. Ms. Miller pointed out that her reassignment was to cover the United Nations oil-for-food program.

 

“And the themes, the oil-for-food theme, which was Iraq and weapons and counterterrorism,” Ms. Miller said. “How do you do counterterrorism in New York without talking about unconventional weapons or Iraq? [Every story was] approved at the highest levels of the paper—Mr. Keller and [managing editor Jill] Abramson.”

 

Ms. Abramson declined to comment. Mr. Keller didn’t return multiple calls seeking comment.

Which makes Keller partly responsible (and Raines even more so) for the corruption of the information-gathering machine that brought us to--and sustained the jingoistic support for--war.

In his gently critical article, Keller described the "tainted evidence," the "gild[ing] the lily," the "disseminating information that ranged from selective to preposterous," the stories "based on transparently fraudulent information"--all criticisms that could be made of Judy's reporting, even after Keller had taken over. The Neocons have yet to admit these lies (indeed, their own "information-gathering machine" offered a pretty awkward explanation for his lies yesterday). But with Judy's departure, the NYT effectively admitted that their information-gathering machine was just as corrupt as the Administration's. Corupt not because Keller once did a sympathetic profile of Wolfie. But corrupt because of a management failure.

It's time for Keller to do the same thing the Bush warmongers need to do. Admit they were wrong, wrong on all counts, not just on a "few points at which we wish we had made different decisions" (as Keller said in his memo to the NYT staffers). Keller needs to realize he is in precisely the same boat as the wolf-crying neocons, standing alone trying to piece together the rubble.

We still have need of a functioning press. Keller needs to stop making excuses. And start putting the information-gathering machinery back together.

Update: Stupid error corrected per eRiposte.

Comments

[dksbook]

This explains a hell of a lot of the NYT escalating downward spiral, dud'n it?

[emptywheel]

dksbook

I think it ultimately comes back to Pinch, not a profile Keller did of Wolfie. Foer had another interesting thing to say in his post:

I also hope that Pinch Sulzberger comes to terms with what just happened. While he may have defended Miller out of friendship, I doubt that's the whole case. Sulzberger jumped into the Miller fracas, because he wanted to prove himself. He was hungry for a crusade, eager to turn himself into a First Amendment crusader. And in a way, he shared the same weakness with Miller: a melodramatic urge to play the parts of Clark Kent and Lois Lane.

[Kagro X]

You know you've got a scandal on your hands when you have to invent new oxymorons to describe it. Welcome, "escalating downward spiral!"

Interesting, though, that Keller arrives at the conclusion quoted above, that there's real danger in corrupting the information-gathering machine, but that the danger is that it weakens us for the wars we still face.

It weakens us for everything we face, wars and otherwise.

Everyone has reason to be concerned when extra-legal methods of governance become routine. Conservative, liberal, what have you. If you've got an interest in the integrity and continuity of the civilian government of the United States of America, you've got an interest in rooting out this sort of corruption.

Interesting, then, to note who's working on that and who's not.

[eriposte]

EW, a minor point...its Attytood, not Attywood :)

[emptywheel]

Shew, thanks eR. I'm working on the reading lessons.

[Mimikatz]

That Wolfowitz profile was so very sympathetic, I remember it clearly, without realizing Keller wrote it. It explains a lot.

It is probably the case that those of us who don't live in NYC and/or have a cultural or personal interest in ME issues can never fully apprehend how much 9/11 colored peoples' thinking. But still. A newspaper just as much as a judge has to be scrupulous in being aware of biases and striving for true objectivity. The Times fell down just like a lot of other people who believed what they wanted to believe long after a healthy dose of skepticism should have warned them it just wasn't going to be true.

If there is anything we should ALL learn from this it is to constantly question conventional and received wisdom, and above all to stop making life so difficult for the serious questioners among us. The absolute vilification (truly puerile at times) that was visited on those who questioned the whole case for war, from WMD to Saddam's strength, was really beyond the bounds of acceptable discourse in a democracy, and it kept us from fully debating the case for war before it happened. It has cost the US very dearly in lives, treasure, prestige and allies. Although I do not by any means excuse the warmongering and deception by the Bush Administration, a special place should be reserved for those in politics, the punditry and the blogoshphere who were so partisan as to lose all perspective in vilifying those who were skeptical about the case for war. They (we) were right. Some of those voices had a great deal of expertise from which they were speaking and should NEVER have been dismissed with the disdain that was employed. That is the real lesson here--this isn't a playground game. There are real-world consequences, and right now they are downright ugly and getting uglier. There needs to be political accountability, but that isn't all.

[emptywheel]

One of the things that struck me about that profile, reading it now, is the degree to which Wolfie bought Keller's favor by bringing him along on all the mover and shaker visits:

The answer to that question remains a secret, if it has been decided at all. But on the way home from Fort Leavenworth at the end of July, we stopped at Scott Air Force Base, the military's main transportation dispatching hub, where Wolfowitz spent a couple of hours closeted with the men who, soon thereafter, began routing shipments of men and materiel to the gulf. Just in case.

This is an extreme form of embedding, to have a top columnist tote along with you on your war-launching trips. It strikes me as a quick way to get said columnist excited about the war.

[landreau]

The whole practice of embedding smelt of propoganda to me from the start. The show-businessification of the news. Of reality. If we don't know if what we're seeing, hearing and reading is real, we're all lost.

That's the essence of the Judy Miller story for me. And you're work in pulling back the curtain is a monument in blogdom, EW. Thank you.

[howard]

emptywheel and i are on the same page: the problem starts with Pinch.

were i a shareholder, i'd want his head for damaging the paper's most valuable asset: its reputation.

but since newspapers are a declining industry, i'm not a shareholder.

[Sibelius]

Kudos to Emptywheel for the best Judy & Pinch analyses, anywhere, period.

Agreed, the real problem is Pinch. Or, more properly, the Pinch Family. Which explains how Judy kept drifting back to things, supposedly all on her own.

To depart a little from the Emptywheel approach, here's a snippet (from the link below) that some may find especially helpful:

"As is well known, the New York Times is Jewish-owned, and has often been accused of slanting its coverage on issues of importance to Jews. It is perhaps another example of the legacy of Jacob Schiff, the Jewish activist/philanthropist who backed Adolph Ochs's purchase of the New York Times in 1896 because he believed he 'could be of great service to the Jews generally.'"

http://theoccidentalquarterly.com/vol4no2/km-understandIII.html

If this has been the case, it is not so much a "corruption" of the info-gathering machine, as it is an inbuilt modus operandi. Keller may have had a hard time keeping his job, much less staying in line for promotions, had he not allowed himself to be "snowed" by Wolfowitz and Miller.

In retrospect, of course, it's debatable whether or not the Iraq War performed the "great service" that many had anticipated. But it's too late now, for Keller. Though it might not be too late, not quite, for Syria and Iran.

[Jeremy Stephens]

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