The I-Can't-Believe-I'm-a-Hawk Club
On February 8, 2003, Bill Keller, then a New York Times columnist, declared his support for the looming Iraq war. Apparently to his own surprise. In a somewhat veiled manner he listed other well known liberal hawks who had come around as 'grudging allies' supporting a government they did not particularly like.
It's undoubtedly a technical coincidence I could not download the 'The I-Can't-Believe-I'm-a-Hawk Club' piece today, even as a grudging Times Select subscriber. Luckily my clippings archive did not let me down. The paragraph still reads as a verbal airbag shielding his bellicose confession from the impact of anticipated liberal criticism.
Keller devoted most of that Saturday essay to philosophizing about the after-victory use of force in future theatres of war-for-democracy. It can't be a comfortable reread for the now Executive Editor of the Times. The ground on which he built his support for massive military action incorporated most probably some NYT WMD scoops. Those weren't entirely accurate, even according to Judith Miller in Sunday's paper.
Two days after the invasion, Keller strongly advised Colin Powell to quit the State Department. In that March 22, 2003, column Keller concluded Powell would make a great secretary of state, just not for this president. It was a consolation line, winding up a devastating summary of Powell's diplomatic sales effort for the war.
Having read the Judith Miller-saga in this weekend's Times one is bound to wonder whether Keller's stated personal position in 2003, spelled out on the paper's most prestigious page, yields some added explanation of his unquestioning support for the free agent at his Amok desk. With publisher Sulzberger riding the valiant horse called Press Freedom, he might have hoped to defend his honor as a columnist on the side. It would only be natural.
This is not to say executive editors should have no paper trail. It only means in some cases they might consider recusing themselves. When a paper's credibility is on the line verifiable independence could make the difference.
Now Keller feels obliged (in a memo to his staff) to call Sunday's incomplete reconstruction of the paper's own affair 'a fine, rigorous piece of journalism'. Yet, Judy Miller's reporting was far more consequential than Jason Blair's.
Now the Pandora's Box of who allowed what and when is open, more will probably have to come out before trust is restored. The Hawk Club is out on a limb.
In a sense, I feel sorry for Keller. When he became Editor, the table was already set for him. As I pointed out in another post here yesterday -- Miller was already embedded with the Pentagon in 1998 when she did the documentary for Frontline on Biological Warfare, and was taken to see the "experiment" of what could be build for little money and with off the shelf technology to create a bio-terrorist weapon. A project of I believe, the US Army.
I am not suggesting she should not have done the documentary, or that she should not have had that beat -- what bothers me is that she was fooling around in policy matters, was doing stuff with American Enterprise Institute, other stuff -- she did not have the conscience, and if not that authoritative editorial management to understand the difference between factual reporting and policy advocacy. And the Times folk did not have the sense to see it.
In his last meeting as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Paul Wellstone introcuded a very thick binder of studies by think tanks (Institute for Policy Studies and others,) in oppostion to the War Resolution as "part of the record" -- anf for some reason, I can't find that content in the record. Virtually all the questions about the quality of the available intelligence were in that report. Paul used it as the basis for his questioning of Wesley Clark who had set his opposition to the resolution, or at least the timelyness of it. Had the Times been reporting "all the news that's fit to print" at least some sort of outline of that content would have graced their pages. It didn't.
Let's face it -- unless we are willing to use carefully the assets we have, the Kellers of the world are free to cut deals, and in the case of the Times, they cut a deal -- and cut it a long time before Judy began doing the neo-con dance on the front page about mushroom clouds, aluminum tubes, and yellow cake.
I've read the Times since I was a kid, and during WWII my next door neighbor who worked at the Post Office, arranged a Monday delivery to the PO, which then circulated to five families who swhared the cost in my Akron Ohio neighborhood. Taught myself to read on the Akron Beacon Journal, but quickly understood that the Times was better. Reading the Times regularly was about "really being informed" even if we lived in Goodyear Heights, and our smell was the sulphirous fumes of making rubber 24/7 365 days a year. Read it in College, was an early subscriber for Home Delivery. -- it has failed me. I want International Coverage -- in depth national political reporting, and the arts and science -- plus book reviews. I quit (aside from internet reading) about three years ago. In a sense it is like Wal-Mart -- the lacal papers can no longer afford foreign correspondants, because the foreign interested shifted to the Times, and the Times was the Subsitute, but then it went flabby and compromised. And I mean it really compromised, as a corporation and as a cultural organization. Judy is what happened in that kind of structure. Keller -- he is just the latest guy who has to try to sell the product. To fix, you have to backtrack and undoo all the compromises.
October 17, 2005 6:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Keller's behavior in all this is a bit like you see in law firms when they are forced to hire the client's son after he graduates from some party school. The kid's incompetent and reckless, yet he knows he can get away with anything because of who his daddy is, and the partners have to take it and give him the keys to the company car.
Who's Miller's daddy? The White House. I wonder what business the NYT's would lose if they had gotten rid of her?
I'm betting that at the very least, they were told that as far as access goes, all scoops go through Miller.
October 17, 2005 6:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
I-Can't-Believe-I'm-a-Hawk
February 8, 2003, Saturday
By BILL KELLER (NYT):
Good stuff on the 'I-Can't-Believe-I'm-a-Hawk Club'--a blog entry with lots of links:
October 17, 2005 7:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
In a sense, I feel sorry for Keller.
Save your sympathy for the Americans and Iraqis who have died and will die in "the worst strategic mistake in US history."
Great post, BTW.
October 17, 2005 7:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
In the long Sunday article paired with Miller's own, I noticed more honesty about strain within the Times than I expected. The paper's not known for criticizing itself and its staff; of course, even the famous mea culpa about WMD avoided criticizing reporters by name. Given such unfortunate biases, it seemed downright frank in reporting what others at the paper felt about her.
But, even more striking, in contrast it seemed kind to Keller. It painted him as one who inherited Miller after the editorial damage was done by Howells, but at least ready to print the mea culpa. As for the time after Miller came under investigation, that was portrayed as in the hands of lawyers and as a matter of policy (or conscience) entirely irrespective of Miller's merits and honesty as a reporter, something that people concerned for journalistic ethics can honestly differ on (and indeed have, I should say before I and others get self-righteous about hiding her sources again). In other words, an honest guy ready to make changes and do the right thing.
I'm not agreeing, just noting it. What do you think it leaves out? Again, I don't mean support for Miller's silence during her jail term, about which we've already expressed our opinions.
October 18, 2005 7:56 AM | Reply | Permalink