Shots in the Dark

The long-awaited Times piece on the Judith Miller fiasco comes nowhere near explaining this bizarre journalistic puzzle, and instead it serves only to make almost everyone involved look foolish, sleazy, stupid or all of the above. Judith Miller and Bill Keller insist they have fought a battle for journalistic principle and won a victory for the profession. Instead, they are dragging it down into the muck.

Some thoughts on the winners and losers:

Let’s start with the losers, because there are more of them.

1) Bill Keller. Is there any aspect of this case that Keller did not mishandle? He didn’t ask to see Miller’s notes, he restrained his other reporters from investigating her case, he allowed his newspaper to be scooped by other papers…all to defend a reporter whose actions appear indefensible. After all, Miller lied to her own editors about whether she had been a recipient of the Valerie Plame leak. And, as the article makes clear, even now Miller refuses to cooperate with her own newspaper beyond the bare minimum.

This is the second instance recently in which Bill Keller went to bat for a reporter when conceding mistakes seemed the more honest course. Recently, he defended Allesandra Stanley’s wacky claim that Geraldo Rivera had pushed an aid worker out of a camera shot to aid a hurricane victim—even though the video showed no such thing. Keller’s response: Rivera was a “four-letter word” and the word “nudge” was meant to be figurative. Lame.

Since this type of thing does not seem to happen with male reporters and Bill Keller, one has to wonder if the gender of the reporters is not a factor in Mr. Keller’s judgment….

2) Judith Miller. She claims she went to jail to protect a source…but now she can’t even remember who the source is. Was it Scooter Libby who provided her with the identity whose leak was a potential violation of the law? Or did tell someone else give her the name “Valerie Flame”? She has multiple variations on Valerie Plame’s name written in her notes, but she has no idea where they came from. As Mickey Kaus smartly points out, Miller claims she’s won a victory for journalistic principle, but all she’s done is establish that if you send a reporter to jail for a couple months, she’s bound to spill the beans.

3) Floyd Abrams. I’ve written before regarding my low opinion of Floyd Abrams: As a First Amendment lawyer, he makes a great media whore. Nothing in this account changes that opinion. Quite the contrary. First, he appears to have badly botched negotiations with Scooter Libby’s lawyer, Joseph A. Tate. (To be fair, this comes from Judith Miller’s representation of what Abrams told her, and she’s not the most reliable teller.) Miller writes in her account, “Mr. Libby had singed a blanket form waiver, which hsi lawyer signaled to my counsel was not really voluntary.” Tate adamantly denies this, and it’s unclear what signal made Abrams so sure: a special, double-secret handshake?

There is no question that once D.C. lawyer Bob Bennett got involved with the case, and Abrams was backburnered—the Times is unclear about how his status changed after Bennett got involved—things started moving, talks with Tate were reopened (after a year of silence, which appears to have astounded Tate), and Miller was soon on her way to receiving a get out of jail free card.

Abrams’ own quote to the Times is highly curious. He said of his negotiations with Mr. Tate: “On more than one occasion, Mr. Tate asked me for a recitation of what Ms. Miller would say [in her potential testimony to the grand jury]. I did not provide one.”

Why not? There are only two options. Miller would either testify that Libby was her source, or she wouldn’t. Wouldn’t that be pertinent information for Tate as he advised Libby on whether to proffer Miller a waiver of his source confidentiality? Why not tell Tate what Miller would testify to?

Consider the scenarios: If Abrams says Miller will testify that it wasn’t Libby, then Tate can reaffirm the waiver with no qualms.

If Abrams says that Miller will testify that it was Libby, then Tate can be much clearer about whether Libby’s waiver was really voluntary, and Miller can go to jail under much less ambiguous circumstances.

So why wouldn’t Abrams spell it out?

Unless, of course, Abrams is simply lying now—that he detailed exactly what Miller would say, and he is now misleading the Times’ reporters because if he were now to disclose what Miller would testify to, then he would be, in effect, outing her source.

Either way, his decision not to contact Tate for a year is bizarre. As the Times piece notes, “Mr. Bennett called Mr. Tate on Aug. 31 [2005]. Mr. Tate told Mr. Bennett that Mr. Libby had given permission to Ms. Miller to testify a year earlier. ‘I called Tate and this guy could not have been clearer—”Bob, my client has given a waiver,”‘ Mr. Bennett said.”

4) Other Times reporters. Throughout the article, other Times reporters are chafing to explore this story aggressively…and at every turn, they are thwarted, so that Bill Keller and Arthur Sulzberger (also a loser in this affair) can protect Judy Miller. Funny how, in trying to defend their paper, they wound up debasing it.

5) Scooter Libby. Miller says she can’t remember if he gave her the exact name, but it’s clear that he enjoyed a cozy relationship with Miller, and was willing to use that relationship to smear an administration critic. A two-hour breakfast at the St. Regis? My lord, what was going on there exactly? At the very least, the length of that breakfast shows how important trashing Joe Wilson was to the White House. Most times, the only reporter who gets two hours of a White House staffer’s time is Bob Woodward.

Winners:

1) Bob Bennett. Granted, Bennett has long known how to make himself look good in the press. But there’s no question he seems to have proved far more adept in this Washington maze than was Abrams. Moreover, he got special prosecutor Joseph Fitzgerald to agree to question Miller only on Scooter Libby and the Plame matter, which, now that Miller says that Plame’s name may have come from someone else, looks like a significant victory.

2) Bloggers. Arianna Huffington has been particularly good on this matter…but lots of blogs have kept the heat on.

Um…that’s about it for winners.

All right, we’ll throw in Joe Wilson, who has long maintained that there was an orchestrated White House plan to smear his wife, and long suggested that Scooter Libby was involved, and now appears to be exactly right.

I once defended Judy Miller for what, at the time, struck me as a principled defense of journalistic privilege. It’s clear to me now that that was a mistake. Judith Miller strikes me now as a propagandist more than a journalist, and the Times, which has only suffered from its association with her, should fire her.

Florida state wildlife officials have recruited a new weapon in the fight against the dreaded Burmese python: a snake-sniffing beagle named Python Pete.

Let us hope that the little fellow will not get too, um, consumed by his work….

Harvard has announced its replacement for Jack Meyer, the retiring head of the Harvard Management Corporation: Mohammed A. El-Erian, a bond fund manager from the “powerhouse” firm Pimco.

The Times casts the hiring of El-Erian as a “surprising choice,” noting that he’s little-known around Wall Street, is not a Harvard alum, and has no experience managing a stock portfolio.

The Globe has a downright weird take*; it headlines its coverage “Harvard Will Keep Disputed Pay Policy,” and buries the fact that Harvard announced Meyer’s replacement four grafs into the story.

My thoughts: The Times piece does a better job of raising the right questions here. It, too, notes that El-Erian’s pay package will be similar to Jack Meyer’s, and points out that Yale’s money manager, David Swenson—who may be even better than Meyer—was paid only about $1 million last year, a relative pittance. But Swenson is a rare breed, an extremely moral man with strong feelings about what people like him should be paid. He’s an exception in the business. Harvard’s still paying well below market rate.

But the Times stresses that El-Erian is a curious pick, and I think that’s right. It may be a reflection of how difficult it was for Larry Summers to find someone to take this job.

(One thing neither the Times nor the Globe points out: As the Times reported some months back, Summers, Bob Rubin, and Harvard treasurer James Rothenberg had originally tried to conduct this search by themselves, then gave up and handed it off to an executive search firm. Who found El-Erian?)

I suspect Summers likes El-Erian for several reasons. First, he spent 15 years working at the International Monetary Fund, a credential Summers would value, given his own experience in international economics.

Second, El-Erian is Egyptian, was educated in England, and now works and lives in the U.S. Summers would appreciate that international experience—it fits with his globalization push.

Third, and perhaps most important, as the Times notes (but rather far down in its piece), El-Erian will have a slightly different role than Meyer did. In addition to his job at HMC, he’ll be teaching at the Harvard Business School and will serve as “deputy treasurer” to the university, advising Summers on all sorts of financial matters.

It’s possible to read this as an expansion of Meyer’s role. I don’t. It feels to me more a reduction of the autonomy that Meyer enjoyed and, by all acccounts, insisted upon, an attempt to diminish another “every tub on its own bottom” fief. Yes, Summers is bringing El-Erian into the fold…but he’s doing so in a way that clearly establishes El-Erian’s subordinate position.

One has to wonder if this arrangement isn’t part of the reason why finding a replacement for Meyer took so long—and if Summers isn’t taking a calculated risk here, hiring someone who isn’t perhaps the most obvious candidate because that person will accept less autonomy than Meyer enjoyed.

But that is just speculation on my part….
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P.S. A vigilant reader informs that the reason the Globe played the story as it did was because they had already scooped the rest of the press and broken the story on Friday morning. Good for the Globe; bad for me for missing the original story.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an important story: Australia has become the destination of choice for fee-paying college students. That’s surprising news given that the United States has traditionally held this spot by a wide margin, and did so up until the last such survey, five years ago.

Why is this important?

Several reasons.

First off, it’s obviously important for American colleges, which often make quite a lot of money off foreign students, especially (and obviously) those who don’t require financial aid.

Second, the United States benefits immensely from the presence of foreign students. Many of them stay here and add their talents to the workforce and culture of the country. The ones who return home bring with them a greater understanding of the United States that promotes better international relations.

And third, this shift is important because it reflects how the rest of the world views the United States. It’s clearly no coincidence that this student exodus has occurred during the presidency of George W. Bush and the war in Iraq. The rest of the world doesn’t like us very much now, and we’re going to pay the consequences of that for many years to come.

My piece about George in the Boston Globe seems to have aroused the latent ire of a handful of my old colleagues, some of whom are still angry about American Son.

How else to explain the nonsense peddled by reporter Sara James in Women’s Wear Daily?

I’ll quote from James’ story on the recent George event at the Kennedy School, and then correct its mistakes:

“The Daily Show” continued to be a topic of conversation at the dinner, thanks to a piece by Bradley in The Boston Globe this week. Bradley trumpeted the lingering influence of George by writing that “‘The Daily Show’ owes a creative debt to one magazine in particular: George.”

That struck some at the dinner Tuesday night as a bid for attention, especially considering the rift Bradley’s book about J.F.K. Jr., “American Son,” caused with his former co-workers and the Kennedy family.

“Richard Bradley was not going to be invited by any of the George people and he was not going to be invited by any of the Harvard people,” said one guest, alluding to Bradley’s book about Lawrence Summers, “Harvard Rules.” Even so, there was still some speculation he might show up, since, several years ago, he unexpectedly came to a lunch preceding the dedication of the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at the Kennedy School of Government, where Tuesday’s panel was held. According to several people who were there, Bradley was encouraged to not stay for the dedication.

Okay, let the correcting begin.

My piece on George, a bid for attention? Not hardly. Frankly, attention from some of those people is the last thing I need. My editorial came out of a longstanding sense that the magazine was more influential than many people realized, a theme I argued in American Son and that, my friends will disclose, I’ve gassed on about for years. I’m glad that the article helped spark some conversation. That was partly my intention.

The piece was also partly inspired by the sense that no one who actually worked at George would be speaking on its behalf, and that that was a shame. I’m hardly the only one to have noticed that conspicuous absence. There’s no reason, for example, that my predecessor as executive editor, Elizabeth Mitchell, couldn’t have occupied a seat on that panel; Biz could have spoken eloquently about George. The omission was an insult to the staff of George. Heck, I was on a Kennedy School panel in 1999 that had nothing to do with George, and on a panel about George, they can’t find someone on staff to include?

As to my lack of an invitation…there were a handful of ex-George people involved in this event, and a couple of ’em don’t care for me much, and have never hesitated to say so—though almost always anonymously, as indeed they did here. I make it a point never to give an anonymous quote to the press. If you don’t have the guts to put your name to something, it usually means you shouldn’t say it.

Some George people wouldn’t have invited me. Some would (and have told me so). They just weren’t the people who controlled the invites. But everyone who worked at George knows that this myth of me against the staff (or vice-versa) is just silly. I still have plenty of friends from George, and I’m happy that most of them come from the contingent of staffers to whom my aforementioned critics would never have bothered to give the time of day.

One final thing, a line so wrong that it really is worth correcting: “Even so, there was still some speculation he might show up, since, several years ago, he unexpectedly came to a lunch preceding the dedication of the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at the Kennedy School of Government, where Tuesday’s panel was held. According to several people who were there, Bradley was encouraged to not stay for the dedication.”

This is just nuts, and if Sara James had bothered to call me—I’m in the book—I’d have told her so. (Sara James, perhaps a little time at J School for you? Apparently this isn’t the only egregiously bad reporting you’ve done.)

First, notice the attributions James uses: “that struck some…as a bid for attention”….”said one guest“….”there was still some speculation”…..”according to several people who were there”…..

This is, simply, classic bad journalism. There’s not one attributed quote or fact. For all anyone knows, it could very well be largely or entirely made-up.

James implies that this mysterious lunch was connected with the dedication of the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum. It was not. The lunch in question was a reunion luncheon for Kennedy School alumni, and there were probably about 1,000 people present. Former Harvard president Derek Bok gave the keynote speech. A K-School alum invited me, and since I was then reporting a piece on the Kennedy School for Boston Magazine, I had a professional reason to attend. I was writing a book on Harvard at the time.

After the lunch, I bumped into former George publicist Lisa Dallos, who was on hand because she was attending the dedication of the JFK Jr. Forum and also because she was thinking about a mid-career change and considering the Kennedy School. We made some perfectly banal small talk. She asked if I was going to the dedication of the Forum. I said no, I thought it’d be awkward for everyone. She agreed. And that was about it.

A couple of days later, the New York Post ran a gossip item about how I was trying to crash the dedication ceremony. The source was anonymous yet obvious.

Now, another equally anonymous and erroneous item. Coincidentally, Lisa Dallos was doing PR for the event.

So let’s sum up James’ dubious reportage. She used blind quotes fed to her by people with an agenda. She didn’t call the subject of those quotes for a comment. She indulged in lazy and misleading attribution. She bought a publicist’s storyline hook, line and sinker. She didn’t fact-check. And she got facts wrong.

Future subjects of Sara James’ stories—and clients of Lisa Dallos—consider yourselves warned. Sara James is a sloppy reporter, and Lisa Dallos is a chronic gossip of dubious veracity.

But here’s the important thing in the end, far more important than my own personal gripes: From all that I’m told, the event was a success and people enjoyed it, and of that I’m glad. The folks at George went through a lot together, and we should be proud of our work, and any occasion to remember all that was good about George is a worthwhile thing. As for the office politics—it really is time for some people to grow up and move on.

So I just received an e-mail from something called “Killing Kittens.” A reader’s angry response to Ana Menendez’s pro- cat-eating column in the Miami Herald? Um…apparently not.

Killing Kittens, the most discreet parties for the most upmarket, young, good looking, liberated couples and single women invites you to its West End venue launch party.
Thursday 20th October
9.30pm - late
Dress code: cocktail dresses smart and masks (masks may be removed once doors close at 11pm)
Venue: revealed upon acceptance
£120 a couple/ £50 single girl - This is inclusive of entry and drinks all night
Apply: www.killingkittens.co.uk. The vetting procedure is strict and photos must be submitted.

Our West End venue in the heart of Covent Garden boasts a 30 person Jacuzzi (jacuzzi not a swimming pool…), sauna, large screen area, private rooms, DJ and bar.

Killing Kittens launched in 2002 and has since become a global phenomonome with the world’s rich and famous joining up to be part of an underground society that rivals ‘Happy Valley Kenya’, Berlin in the 30’s and Paris in the 20’s. Parties are held in private venues including St Tropez villas, Sydney penthouses and LA mansions.

Killing Kittens? Phenomenone?

Well, that is intriguing. I probably won’t be in London on October 20th. But I am flattered by the suggestion that I am part of an upmarket (i.e., rich), young, good-looking and liberated couple. Oh, that it were true….