PostWatch

There's a Reason It's Called Planet Moron

From one of my favorite blogs:

At yesterday’s White House press briefing, Washington Post reporter Jim VandeHei got tough with Press Secretary Scott McClellan. How tough? David Gregory tough.

The senior White House correspondent skipped the easy topics such as Sudanese genocide, Iranian nuclear blackmail and the other “happy talk” fodder of the morning talk shows and instead got right to the difficult material, the issue no one wanted to talk about (you might want to have the children leave the room):

"It's come to my attention that there's been requests -- this is a serious question -- to turn these TVs onto a station other than Fox, and that those have been denied."...

"Read it all"

For Dana Priest, Only Motives Are Classified

I've been as riveted as any self-respecting blogger by this week's revelations about the CIA's Mary McCarthy, whose leak to the Post's Dana Priest about foreign terrorist detention centers earned the former a pink slip plus possible criminal charges but the latter a Pulitzer. It now appears that McCarthy was a fairly enthusiastic contributor to Democratic causes including some guy named John Kerry (start with Tom Maguire for details). (Update: An attorney for McCarthy says she's denying she was the source or that she leaked "any classified information." Here's the story.)

I want to add to the record by noting Priest's past dismissal of the idea that anyone in the CIA was leaking with the intent of harming the Bush Administration. As I blogged at the time, this came up in a live chat on Nov. 3, 2005 a day after her secret prison story (my bold):

Washington, D.C.: Cliff Kincaid writing in "Accuracy in Media" says that your story on secret prisons yesterday "reflects the view of a faction in the agency (CIA) that opposes this policy and wants to use The Post to convey its view publicly. Once again, the secret war against the Bush administration is on display for all to see."

While I don't expect you to reveal your sources to us -- although go ahead if you want to do so -- you should at least be able to tell us if there is any truth to the notion that currently serving CIA officers are trying to undermine the Bushies. Are they?

Dana Priest: I've always found this view amusing, and rather convenient for the White House, which likes to point to someone else when it's own policy decisions don't work out right or fail to achieve the stated goals (like other administrations, I would add) Most CIA people I've met probably voted for George Bush. And the CIA is responsible for executing the war on terror and capturing the vast majority of the terrorist suspects around the world. No one from the CIA and no one who used to be in the CIA proposed that I write the article I did. On the contrary.

Now, it matters little whether Priest or McCarthy was the first to propose revealing classified information--great minds think alike after all. What matters is that Priest says she was amused even by the idea of partisan motives. What matters is that motives either make no appearance in these stories, or are remarkably disinterested. This came up in another revelation last year, with Priest writing about a secret paramilitary group called the Scorpions that may have run amok. Here's  the story. Here's the live chat. Here's part of what I blogged, when I managed to get two questions in:

Manassas, Va.: In your story yesterday about the Scorpions, what were the motivations of the officials who compromised the secrecy of this classified program? On those rare occasions when The Post uses anonymous sources, aren't you supposed to give us some insight into why anonymous sources are speaking to you?

Dana Priest: In most stories like this, it's an issue of trying to help me get it right, with some proper context, rather than wrong in some way. Both those stories took a very long time to put together....you are right about unattributed sources but only if they have some particular motive. In this case, I don't see an obvious one other than the one I just stated.

And the followup:

Manassas, Va.: Dana, thanks for taking the question on motives, but isn't there usually something going on more than some source being nice enough to help you get it right? Couldn't the motivations range from everything to a sincere interest in stopping the kind of abuse said to be committed by the Scorpions to outright opposition to the war effort? And don't you agree that conveying that kind of information will help us evaluate the situation?

Dana Priest: In some cases yes. But I won't apply it to this case.

Nor any other case that I can think of.

Cross-posted at Newsbusters

Server Alert

(Borrowed for the occasion from a Stanford server--trying to offload the hits. Actually published Feb. 10 2007)

About Jill Caroll

Well, I mucked up some of the coding in a long comment I left at Right Wing Nuthouse where proprietor Rick Moran makes some good points about the shoot-first, ask-questions-later mode of many right-wing bloggers about statements made in captivity by terrorist kidnap victim Jill Carroll. Below is the gist of what I said:

Good points in this post but I think you’re glossing over a key event you reference briefly: Her interview with the Iraqi Islamic Party after her release, in which she continued to speak positively about her terrorist kidnappers.

Many bloggers, but but by no means only bloggers, were startled by the statements she made in what they took to be her first opportunity to freely speak her mind. The mainstream media reports about that interview pushed in the same direction. Here’s one by the AP's Mariam Fam that I found at washingtonpost.com:

BAGHDAD, Iraq—American reporter Jill Carroll’s three-month hostage ordeal ended Thursday when she was left on a Baghdad street in front of a Sunni political party office. She appeared composed and eager to talk about her 82 days held captive in a tiny room.

“It’s important people know that I was not harmed,” she said.

Wearing a green Islamic head scarf and a gray Iraqi robe, Carroll was dropped off at midday near an office of the Iraqi Islamic Party. She walked inside and was then driven 20 minutes to party headquarters, where she called her family and gave an interview to Baghdad Television before being handed over to U.S. authorities.

The 28-year-old freelancer for The Christian Science Monitor said her kidnappers confined her to a small, soundproof room with frosted windows but treated her well. Although her captors issued televised threats to kill Carroll if American forces did not release women prisoners, she said: “They never said they would hit me, never threatened me in any way.”...

In the interview, Carroll seemed well and animated and spoke in a strong voice. She frequently tucked her hair under her headscarf, and appeared excited to be free nearly three months after she was ambushed and her translator killed….

Dr. David Wellish, a psychologist at the UCLA School of Medicine, said he had the impression Carroll was suffering from a psychological trauma known as “Stockholm syndrome,” a survival mechanism in which a hostage begins to empathize with his or her captors.

“Jill Carroll clearly went down the Stockholm syndrome spectrum part of the way,” he said, adding he thought it would take her “a few weeks to get over it and regain perspective.”

It was unclear, however, whether Carroll would have given a different assessment in the interview Thursday were she not still in Iraqi hands _ albeit the offices of a Sunni political party.

Now let’s face it, the general attitude of American reporters toward the war is not one that argues against believing what she said was heartfelt. But even more than that, I think you should pay more attention to how this interview was framed. She “appeared composed and eager to talk.” She gave an interview to “Baghdad Television.” She “seemed well and animated and spoke in a strong voice.” She “appeared excited to be free.” And when we get an expert in the story to talk about Stockholm syndrome, the reporter adds “It was unclear, however, whether Carroll would have given a different assessment in the interview Thursday were she not still in Iraqi hands.”

Now I’m not saying that every one of these points were made in every MSM story—but I think if you go back and read other accounts, you’ll find the same plot.

So I’d be much harder on people who attacked her statements while still in terrorist captivity than those made when it appeared she was completely free. I’d be much more critical, for example, of the party officials who exploited a kidnap victim in this way.

And I don’t get most of the indignation about NRO's John Podhoretz, who is being criticized, now, for saying the following:

It’s wonderful that she’s free, but after watching someone who was a hostage for three months say on television she was well-treated because she wasn’t beaten or killed—while being dressed in the garb of a modest Muslim woman rather than the non-Muslim woman she actually is—I expect there will be some Stockholm Syndrome talk in the coming days.

Again, this was made after the IIP interview. Seems like a reasonable statement which turned out to be true.