Did Sharpton “cut a deal?”

Under the headline

Videotape shows Sharpton cutting a deal

the Phiadelphia Inquirer reports:

With a hidden FBI camera rolling inside a New York hotel suite in 2003, an unsuspecting Rev. Al Sharpton, Democratic candidate for president, spoke candidly.

Sharpton offered to help Philadelphia fund-raiser Ronald A. White win a multimillion-dollar business deal, if White helped him raise $50,000 for politics.

White offered $25,000. "If you bring my guys up on this hedge fund, and I have the right conversation," White said, "I'll give you what you need."

"Cool," Sharpton said.

The Inquirer obtained an account of the May 9, 2003, conversation, which was recorded as part of the Philadelphia City Hall corruption case.

The tape helped spark a separate inquiry into Sharpton's 2004 campaign and his civil-rights organization, the National Action Network.

The FBI-IRS probe resurfaced publicly Wednesday, when Sharpton aides received subpoenas.

In an interview yesterday, Sharpton said there is "absolutely nothing illegal" about tying business deals to fund-raising because he is not a public official.

"The tapes vindicate me," Sharpton said. "They show that I did not talk about bribing a public official or paying money under the table."

That from one of the leaders of America’s religious Left, the Democratic Party and the civil rights movement.

Ol’ JinC’s first thought is: “I wonder what Rev. Jackson will say?”

Second thought: “Who’s surprised by any of it?”

The Inquirer continues:

The video was recorded by an FBI camera hidden in a lamp inside Suite 34A at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Manhattan.

Sharpton and White were introduced by La-Van Hawkins, a Detroit businessman.

At the time, FBI agents were investigating White and Hawkins, suspecting that they were involved in pay-to-play in Philadelphia - raising campaign funds for Mayor Street and others in order to win municipal contracts for favored donors. Later FBI agents in the case infamously placed a bug in Street's office, but it was discovered before it recorded anything.

FBI agents tapping White's phones in 2003 recorded more than 20 conversations between White and Sharpton, most of them related to fund-raising for the presidential campaign and an effort to secure a $40 million pension-fund deal in New York.

About a year later, White, Hawkins and a dozen others, including former City Treasurer Corey Kemp, were indicted in Philadelphia on federal pay-to-play corruption charges.

White died before trial. Hawkins was convicted of fraud and perjury and sentenced to 33 months. Kemp is serving a 10-year sentence for corruption, bribery and fraud.

No charges were brought related to Sharpton or the proposed New York pension-fund deal, which never materialized.

However, as The Inquirer reported in 2005, the New York-based investigation of Sharpton has continued.

Now why did the investigation of Sharpton continue?

It’s a safe bet Sharpton will scream it was because of race and his abiding commitment to the civil rights cause.

Back to the Inquirer:

Sources said agents in that case are examining whether Sharpton violated campaign-finance laws or used money donated to his National Action Network for personal use.

FBI spokesman James Margolin in New York declined to comment yesterday.

When Sharpton and White teamed up in 2003, each had a need and a talent. Sharpton had access to business and government officials, and needed help fund-raising for his fledgling national campaign.

White had access to campaign donors and was always looking for connections into business and government deals.

There are a lot more details in the Inquirer story before it ends with:

In [an] interview yesterday, Sharpton said that he has heard some of the wiretaps and they are not incriminating. He said his campaign finance reports show that he has done nothing wrong.

"It's not illegal for me to help guys get contracts . . . making introductions for Mr. White and Mr. Hawkins, if they help me raise money," Sharpton said. "I'm not a public official."

"You can make tapes sound like whatever you want," he said, "but the timing of this is ridiculous."

Sharpton was referring to his recent protests and commentary about the racial controversy in Jena, La., involving six black teenagers accused of beating a white classmate.

"This is government harassment," he said. "I knew this investigation would come back when we started the Jena protests."

Of the investigation, Sharpton predicted, "It went nowhere three years ago and it's going nowhere now."

Hmm? The entire story is here.

Is the federal government really persecuting Sharpton because of his involvement in the “recent protests and commentary about the racial controversy in Jena, La., involving six black teenagers accused of beating a white classmate?”

What do Sharpton’s fellow Democrats, Senate Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, say about that?

Have the Dems who control MSM news reporting asked them?

If not, why not?

What a terrible thing it would be if a religious and civil rights leader was investigated by the federal government just because he was involved in “recent protests and commentary” involving the Jena 6.

What are the NY Times, NPR, and the networks saying?

Do any of you know whether Tawana Brawley’s started a defense fund? Is there PayPal registration?

And, BTW, did Sen. John Kerry ever release all his Navy records to the public?

Stay tuned for more.

And what do you think?

J School Prof on Citizen Journalists

In an Atlanta Journal column University of Georgia Grady School of Journalism Professor David Hazinski says what people like me and many of you are doing “opens up information flow to the strong probability of fraud and abuse.” He wants the “news industry” to find “some way to monitor and regulate” citizen journalism.

What follows are excerpts from Hazinski’s column, comments by two other bloggers, and finally a few comments by me along with a “risky” proposal.

Now, Hazinski:

[…]Supporters of "citizen journalism" argue it provides independent, accurate, reliable information that the traditional media don't provide.

While it has its place, the reality is it really isn't journalism at all, and it opens up information flow to the strong probability of fraud and abuse. The news industry should find some way to monitor and regulate this new trend.

The premise of citizen journalism is that regular people can now collect information and pictures with video cameras and cellphones, and distribute words and images over the Internet.

Advocates argue that the acts of collecting and distributing makes these people "journalists." This is like saying someone who carries a scalpel is a "citizen surgeon" or someone who can read a law book is a "citizen lawyer." Tools are merely that.

Education, skill and standards are really what make people into trusted professionals. Information without journalistic standards is called gossip.

So without any real standards, anyone has a right to declare himself or herself a journalist. Major media outlets also encourage it. Citizen journalism allows them to involve audiences, and it is a free source of information and video. But it is also ripe for abuse.[…]

Journalism organizations should head that off. Citizen reports can be a valuable addition to news and information flow with some protections:

• Major news organizations must create standards to substantiate citizen-contributed information and video, and ensure its accuracy and authenticity.

• They should clarify and reinforce their own standards and work through trade organizations to enforce national standards so they have real meaning.

• Journalism schools such as mine at the University of Georgia should create mini-courses to certify citizen journalists in proper ethics and procedures, much as volunteer teachers, paramedics and sheriff's auxiliaries are trained and certified.[…]

Hazinski closes with:

Continuing to do nothing as information flow changes will further erode it. Journalism organizations who choose to do nothing may soon find the line between professional and citizen journalism gone as well as the trust of their audiences.

Next, with a hat tip to The Opinionator let's hear from citizen journalist Chuck Simmins at the North Shore Journal:

As I read the piece, Professor Hazinski is calling for standards and regulation of “citizen journalists”, bloggers and Matt Drudge types.

He admits that there is little or no such standards and regulation for those he calls journalists. But, we’re the real danger here.

Professor, I am insulted.

When I look at the world of journalists, the men and women that you educate and graduate, I see little sign that ethics and standards are practiced.

Anonymous sources, misstatements of fact, misquoting, staging photographs, outright falsifying of documents, and lack of fact checking are rife in journalism today.

I, and those like me, could hardly do worse. Indeed, we do better …

There are dozens of other stories that I’ve covered, that the old media ignored or reported incorrectly.

Other bloggers discovered and reported on Dan Rather’s creative use of forged documents, Reuters’ staging photos in Beirut, AP’s repeated bogus reporting of incidents in Iraq, and The New Republic’s utter failure to fact check a series of stories.

Let’s not forget the murders and rapes in the New Orleans Superdome that never happened. There’s lots more, frauds and mistakes by journalists, journalists that graduated from institutions like the one Professor Hazinski teaches at.[...]

Here's another blogger, University of Tennessee School of Law Professor Glenn Reynolds, at Instapundit responding to Hazinski's concern that “without any real standards, anyone has a right to declare himself or herself a journalist,” Glenn Reynolds explains

Yep. Which is pretty much how it works now. Journalism isn’t a profession, it’s an activity — and often those who engage in it for a living act pretty unprofessionally. Or just write lame, self-serving columns.

Folks, I give Hazinski a few points for: 1) acknowledging professional journalists haven't adopted and enforced ethical standards; and 2) for being right when he says citizen journalism is ripe for abuse.

Other than that his column amounts to "missed shots."

Formal education in journalism may be of some use but it's not essential to being a fine journalist. Winston Churchill never went to J School but he was an outstanding journalist.

How much formal education did Ben Franklin have?

On the other hand, I think it's a safe bet most of the professional journalists who helped launch and sustain the Duke Hoax had a good deal of professional training. The same goes for the pros who helped bring us the Jena 6 falsehoods.

Hazinski takes no account of the corrective power that's at work in the blogoshpere: the power you folks who edit bloggers like me bring to what's posted at a blog.

I make a mistake and bingo, one or some of you are right there with a correction.

And bless you for it. You're helping me and other readers.

Now about that "risky" experiment I mentioned at the start of this post: engage in a little citizen journalism. Comment here. Let's see what happens.

I'm looking forward to the "results of the experiment."

Hazinski's column is here.

The Churchill Series – Dec. 14, 2007

(One of a series of weekday posts on the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

Readers Note: One of you commented in response in this series post. I've responded. We both agreed on a few things about President Truman. You can view the comments here.

John
_________________________________________________________

I guessed the painting Churchill gave President Harry Truman which was auctioned by Sotheby’s this week would fetch at least $300 thousand more than the pre-auction estimate of $1.03 million.

The International Herald Tribune reports it actually went for a bit less than $1 million.

Oops! Sorry about that.

Moving right along, many of you know that as a child Churchill loved to play with his large collection of toy soldiers. He later befriended the artist Paul Maze, who also had a large collection of toy soldiers.

With that as background, here are excerpts from a 1985 New York Times article:

Britain's leading stately homes are brimming, as one would expect, with paintings of the great masters and rare furnishings. But two of them - Wilton House and Blenheim - have a surprise in store for visitors: extraordinary collections of miniature lead soldiers.

Each collection is significant in that it includes figures from two separate periods of toy-soldier artisanship. Wilton House contains an impressive collection of late 18th- and early 19th-century two-dimensional soldiers known as ''flats,'' all set in dioramas and tableaux representing such historic battles as the Charge of the Light Brigade. At Blenheim, a vast assemblage of early 19th-century three-dimensional figures called ''Lucottes'' represent the colorful armies of Napoleon. […]

The [Napoleonic] collection is a relatively recent addition to the treasures at Blenheim, and is housed there as a result of the efforts of Sir Winston Churchill, who was born at Blenheim while his American mother, Jennie Jerome, was visiting.

Part of the palace has been turned into a memorial to Churchill displaying, among his memorabilia, the auburn curls of his childhood, his baby dress, bedroom slippers and the ''siren suit'' always at his bedside during World War II in the event that he had to make an emergency journey.

Sir Winston was a close friend of the artist Paul Maze whose father started the toy soldier collection during the early 1890's. When he thought Maze old enough to preserve and care for the soldiers, he presented the collection to his son.

In London, Maze displayed them in a large case and when Churchill visited, he was always fascinated by the army and would rearrange it to his satisfaction. According to Maze, he always complained that there was ''not enough artillery in support.''

In 1935, both Maze and Churchill were invited to spend Christmas at Blenheim. Churchill suggested to Maze that Napoleon's entire army be moved ''stock and barrel'' and displayed at Blenheim. Maze agreed and gave the entire army to the present Duke, who at the time was a child of nine.

Maze later wrote, ''I am happy to know the Army is an added attraction to young and old people who visit Blenheim under good guidance.''[…]

The entire Times article is here.

I hope you all have a good and safe weekend. I’m thinking especially of those of you in the storm areas

Letter to KC Johnson

Readers Note: Before reading the letter below to KC Johnson, co-author with Stuart Taylor of the highly praised Until Proven Innocent, you should be very familiar with Questions re: Until Proven Innocent (12/9/07) and KC Johnson Responds To UPI Questions (12/10/07).

John
__________________________________________________________

Dear KC,

I want to again thank you for responding.

I’ve not gotten back to you before now for two reasons.

First, I’ve been traveling most of the week; and it’s always hard for me to blog “on the road.”

Second, a number of your responses raised new questions in my mind.

I’ve worked for a good many hours on a single, comprehensive response to you.

I wanted it to be fact-based, reasoned and respectful of the enormously positive contribution you’ve made to exposing the Duke Hoax, aiding its victims obtain as just outcomes as has been and will be possible, and alerting Americans to weaknesses in the functioning of our justice and higher education systems and news reporting.

But what I did wasn’t much good, even on forth and fifth re-workings.

Among other things, the material was too much like “contending with KC” when my purposes are to understand what you said and when I express differences, as surely I will, to do so in a way that makes clear to thoughtful readers the differences concern data and interpretations, the interpretations being ones about which reasonable people can disagree.

With that in mind, I’d like to ask what you think of the following:

I plan posts for next Tuesday and Wednesday which will lay out reasons why it’s so important people have a detailed, accurate understanding of the Raleigh News & Observer’s role in helping launch and sustain the attempted frame-up and the on-going cover-up of same.

That post will also outline a new series I’ve begun work on. It will examine the Raleigh N & O’s Duke Hoax coverage from Mar. 18, 2006, the day it ran a brief staff report about a rape allegation without connecting it to “Duke lacrosse,” through the end of Joe Neff’s series which followed NC AG Roy Cooper’s Apr. 11, 2007 announcement the players were innocent.

While I’ve reported extensively on the N&O’s coverage during that period, we’ve learned much about the Hoax since most of those posts were published.

“Another look” taking into account the more recent material should be useful and interesting.

I plan for the series to be about 20 posts and expect to publish them during January and February.

Working on that series will give me a chance to email you and ask you questions about your most recent responses. By that means I hope to assure as informed a treatment as possible of what you said.

How does that sound to you?

Best,

John

The Churchill Series – Dec. 13, 2007

(One of a series of weekday posts on the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

Very soon after London came under bombing attacks, a fire-watch system was developed roughly as follows: thousands of citizens, most volunteers, would go to watch stations, often on roofs, to spot and report fires resulting from the bombing. It was a hazardous but essential duty that saved many lives even as some fire-watchers lost their own.

For much of the war, most members of the House of Commons volunteered to serve as fire-watches at the Palace of Westminster which houses Parliament. The Palace towers provide excellent views of nearby government buildings, Westminster Abbey, and St. Margaret’s Church (The Churchill’s were married there; Sir Walter Raleigh’s buried beneath its alter.) as well as of the South bank of the Thames.

Commons Member Harold Nicolson’s diary entry for Oct 7, 1943 records his fire-watching that night:

It is my night for fire-watching in the House. I go up to the Victoria Tower platform and remain there rather cold for three hours. I hear Big Ben chime 9 and 10 and 11.

The guns spit and fire all around us, the river lies milkily in the misty moon, the searchlights sweep and cluster, and suddenly converge to a cone, and there high above our heads is a little white gadfly which is a German bomber. Our own night-fighters, dropping identification flares, go up to meet it. Another cone towards the east catches another little gadfly driving along in a different direction. The guns boom and crackle, the rockets soar, and we hear two bombs whistling down from the stars in the direction of Lewisham.

There is a lull, and then it all begins again.

Finally, at 11:45, we retire to rest. The deep drone of our own bombers going out to Germany throbs through the night.

For those wondering, yes, in the text it’s spelled “milkily.” __________________________________________________
Harold Nicolson, The War Years, 1939-1945. (vol.II ), edited by Nigel Nicolson. (Atheneum, 1967) (pg. 324)

A Woman With a Gun

From KNBC:

A female homeowner who shot a male intruder in her back yard in October 2006 spoke to KNBC's Laurel Erickson on Wednesday, one day after a jury found the man guilty of all charges.

Nadine Teter shot Michael Lugo twice in the stomach and once in the leg after he broke into her Canyon Country home

Lugo broke the lock on Teter's door and barged in. She fled to the back yard with her gun, according to police.

"He was coming at me. He was yelling. I shot him to stop him," Teter said. "He went down. He got back up. Came back at me. I shot him again. I shot him again, and he turned around and jumped back over the fence. (He) disappeared."

Teter testified against Lugo and his mother, Cynthia Brandon, who drove the getaway car during the Oct. 18, 2006, attack. Both were convicted Tuesday.

While Teter talked to law enforcement that night, Brandon flagged down a deputy heading to Teter. She told him her son was bleeding to death.

"It was terrifying, absolutely terrifying," Teter said.

"Did you have any second thoughts about testifying against him out of fear for yourself?" Erickson asked.

"A little bit, but I knew I had to do it. We needed to get him locked up, put away," Teter said.

Teter said she thinks that every woman should carry a gun.

"Never in a million years, did I think I would use (the gun) -- never. And whatever higher power, whatever gave me the strength to pull that trigger ... You're looking at him or me. My life or his life. I was not going to get raped. I was not going to get murdered. There was no way -- and I didn't," Teter said.

Teter said she was grateful to all the people who helped convict Lugo.

"You know, for something as horrible as this to happen, it could not have ended up any better," Teter said.

Lugo and his mother face sentencing on Feb. 29.

Not every woman or man should be able to own a gun. Former felons, people with histories of violent acting out because of mental illness and certain others ought not to have access to guns in most circumstances.

But average citizens properly licenced?

Sure. Let them have the same chance to defend themselves as Nadine Teter did.

But what about people opposed to gun ownership by responsible citizens?

Well, they don’t have to own a gun, do they?

And they can put big signs on their lawns or apartment doors: “NO GUNS HERE.”

Final word: My wife and I talked it over.

Based on the KNBC story we’d like Teter for a neighbor. And we’d want the bad guys to know she was.

Hat tip: Instapundit.com

A Senator Clinton Question

No, it has nothing to do with what's she's saying about Senator Obama or her drop in many state primary polls.

It's just this: Has she changed her makeup or it that my TV?

What are you seeing?

USA Today: Progress in Iraq But

USA Today summarizes its lead editorial today:

Our view on war in Iraq: Surge's success holds chance to seize the moment in Iraq
Instead, Democrats are lost in time, Bush lowers the bar for Baghdad.
Iraq remains a violent place, but the trends are encouraging.

It then begins:

U.S. and Iraqi casualties are down sharply. Fewer of the most lethal Iranian-made explosive devices are being used as roadside bombs. In community after community, Sunni groups who were once in league with al-Qaeda have switched sides and are working with the U.S. forces.

On the Shiite side of Iraq's sectarian chasm, something similar is happening. About 70,000 local, pro-government groups, a bit like neighborhood watch groups, have formed to expose extremist militias, according to Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations.

But as much as facts have changed on the ground, little seems to have changed in Washington. There are plans to withdraw some troops next year, but there is no clear picture of the endgame in Iraq. How long will troops be needed? Exactly what do we expect success to look like? Will we leave behind a permanent presence?

None of the answers are any clearer than they were when the news began improving. In fact, they seem fuzzier.

On the Republican side, the White House has been busy making excuses for the Iraqi government's failure to move toward national reconciliation (which is the goal of the troop surge), and it has lowered the benchmarks for success to the level of irrelevance.

That translates into reduced accountability, continued dependency and an open-ended commitment. Lowering the bar for the Iraqi government sends a message that Baghdad can enjoy security paid for in American lives, and reconstruction aid paid by America's taxpayers, and ignore its responsibilities.

Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, seem lost in a time warp. They could try to impose new benchmarks that acknowledge the military progress. Instead, too many seem unable or unwilling to admit that President Bush's surge of 30,000 more troops has succeeded beyond their initial predictions.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who in the spring declared the war lost, said last week that "the surge hasn't accomplished its goals." Anti-war Democrats remain fixated on tying war funding to a rapid troop withdrawal. Yet pulling the troops out precipitously threatens to squander the progress of recent months toward salvaging a decent outcome to the Iraq debacle.

What's needed is acknowledgment that the surge is achieving what was intended: not complete military victory but enough stability to make political compromise possible. What's missing is Iraqi will to take advantage of the success

There’s more to the editorial here.

USA Today’s editorial offers readers, IMO, a thoughtful assessment of what we’re hearing is happening in Iraq.

The editorial doesn’t have much partisan tilt that I can detect.

My hat’s off to USA Today for its editorial.

The Churchill Series – Dec. 12, 2007

(One of a series of weekday posts on the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

It’s fair to say today’s post “is brought to you be the BBC.”

Actually, I’m providing a link to a brief, anecdotal BBC story marking the 60th anniversary of the Potsdam Conference which began with the new American President Harry Truman meeting Stalin and Churchill for the first time.

I think you’ll find what the BBC says interesting but I’ve a few cautions to offer.

The BBC titles the piece “When the Allies fell out of love.” But tensions and disagreements among Russia, Britain and America existed throughout the war. There never was much, if any, love between the governments of Russia on the one hand and Britain and America on the other.

Also, if we must use a word like "love" to characterize relations between governments, a case can be made that since WW II the relationship between America and Britain has been more close to "love" than not.

Consistent with its “fell out of love” theme, the BBC notes Truman on first meeting Churchill thought he talked too much and often talked “a lot of hooey.”

But that was Truman’s first impression. He soon developed a great appreciation and respect for Churchill. I wish the BBC had mentioned that.

But the Beep’s story is, as I say, interesting. Give it a look here.

Greenspan on Mortgage Crisis

We’ve all had a chance hear President Bush, Senators Cllinton and Obama and House Speaker Polosi give their explanations for the current mortgage crises.

Now for a more informed explanation let's look at what former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan says today in the WSJ:

On Aug. 9, 2007, and the days immediately following, financial markets in much of the world seized up. Virtually overnight the seemingly insatiable desire for financial risk came to an abrupt halt as the price of risk unexpectedly surged. Interest rates on a wide range of asset classes, especially interbank lending, asset-backed commercial paper and junk bonds, rose sharply relative to riskless U.S. Treasury securities.

Over the past five years, risk had become increasingly underpriced as market euphoria, fostered by an unprecedented global growth rate, gained cumulative traction.

The crisis was thus an accident waiting to happen. If it had not been triggered by the mispricing of securitized subprime mortgages, it would have been produced by eruptions in some other market. As I have noted elsewhere, history has not dealt kindly with protracted periods of low risk premiums.

The root of the current crisis, as I see it, lies back in the aftermath of the Cold War, when the economic ruin of the Soviet Bloc was exposed with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Following these world-shaking events, market capitalism quietly, but rapidly, displaced much of the discredited central planning that was so prevalent in the Third World.

A large segment of the erstwhile Third World, especially China, replicated the successful economic export-oriented model of the so-called Asian Tigers: Fairly well educated, low-cost workforces were joined with developed-world technology and protected by an increasing rule of law, to unleash explosive economic growth. Since 2000, the real GDP growth of the developing world has been more than double that of the developed world.

The surge in competitive, low-priced exports from developing countries, especially those to Europe and the U.S., flattened labor compensation in developed countries, and reduced the rate of inflation expectations throughout the world, including those inflation expectations embedded in global long-term interest rates.

In addition, there has been a pronounced fall in global real interest rates since the early 1990s, which, of necessity, indicated that global saving intentions chronically had exceeded intentions to invest.

In the developing world, consumption evidently could not keep up with the surge of income and, as a consequence, the savings rate of the developed world soared from 24% of nominal GDP in 1999 to 33% in 2006, far outstripping its investment rate.
Yet the actual global saving rate in 2006, overall, was only modestly higher than in 1999, suggesting that the uptrend in developing-economy saving intentions overlapped with, and largely tempered, declining investment intentions in the developed world.

Greenspan has much more to say here. It includes some powerful examples of the extraordinary economic growth that's occurred in the world during the last few decades.

Greenspan closes with:

The current credit crisis will come to an end when the overhang of inventories of newly built homes is largely liquidated, and home price deflation comes to an end. That will stabilize the now-uncertain value of the home equity that acts as a buffer for all home mortgages, but most importantly for those held as collateral for residential mortgage-backed securities.

Very large losses will, no doubt, be taken as a consequence of the crisis. But after a period of protracted adjustment, the U.S. economy, and the world economy more generally, will be able to get back to business.

The "world economy ... able to get back to business?"

Is Greenspan saying we'll start the cycle he describes all over again?









http://opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010981

Rove Questioner Spotlights Self

This is a 1, 2, 3 post.

1) The first paragraphs of the Durham Herald Sun's Dec. 4 account of former presidential aide Karl Rove's appearance at Duke University.

2) A H-S op-ed published a few days later in which the first person to "question" Rove at the Duke event, documentary film maker and activist Rebecca Cerese, introduces herself and explains her "question." Her op-ed is presented complete and uninterrupted.

3) JinC comments concerning Cerese's op-ed and an excerpt from a Sept. 2006 CNN news report concerning former State Department official Richard Armitage and Valerie Plame, a CIA employee who for more than five years before she was "outed" commuted from her Washington, DC home to her job at CIA headquarters in Langley, VA.

---------------------------------

1) The H-S story begins:

Karl Rove encountered hecklers and protesters at Duke University Monday night, some accusing him of being a fraud, a traitor and even a killer.

President Bush's former White House deputy chief of staff and senior adviser appeared in Page Auditorium for a "conversation" with Duke political science professor Peter Feaver.

But the situation intensified when the floor was opened to questions […]

2) Here's Rebecca Cerese's H-S op-ed - - -

I am the woman who asked the first question of Karl Rove at Duke University on Dec. 3. I want to clarify the context of my question, respond to Rove's answer and expand on a few other issues from the article in The Herald-Sun.

My question started with a 1999 quote from former President George H.W. Bush. Bush, former head of the CIA, stated, "I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors."

It is within this context I asked my question which was: "Since you were so intimately involved with the outing of a CIA asset who not only was covert, but working on issues concerning weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and Iran, I was wondering when does your trial for treason start?"

Rove responded that these were slanderous comments, and questioned my faith in the Justice Department and in Patrick Fitzgerald.

He then added, "If anything that you had to say had a bit of truth in it, I wouldn't be sitting on this stage."

It is important to remember that Patrick Fitzgerald was never able to get to the bottom of the Valerie Plame scandal because I "Scooter" Libby perjured himself and obstructed justice, and then had his prison sentence commuted by President George W. Bush.

We do, however, have Matt Cooper's testimony that Karl Rove was the person who told him Valerie Plame's identity.

Second, I want to respond to some of the comments put forth by the conservative student leadership at Duke, that anyone who protests is "absolutely undignified," and "everything that is wrong with things these days." I would like to counter that by saying that people who don't believe that there is a place for dissent in this country, and want to suppress freedom of speech are what is truly wrong with this country.

I was also taken aback by Stephen Miller's fears that someone would pull a gun or knife on Rove. The protesters present were there to oppose the heinous and tragic violence unleashed on the rest of the world by this administration and were all completely non-violent.

Obviously non-violence is a concept lost on people who support the bloodthirsty war-mongering of Rove and the current administration.

I am sick to death of people questioning the patriotism of liberal Americans who have opposing views on the war and other major issues. Robert Kennedy said, "The sharpest criticism often goes hand in hand with the deepest idealism and love of country."

My love for my country goes so deep that I am willing to stand up and speak out against a lawless bunch of criminals who have hijacked our government, and continue to wrap themselves in the flag even as they shred the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Throughout history, America has moved closer to its ideals of eqfuality for all only when ordinary citizens speak out about injustices and demand change. Today, we need that more than ever, and a vigorous exchange of ideas from all sides should be welcomed, as we determine the type of America we wish to live in.
______________________________

3) COMMENTS;

Do you think self-proclaimed patriot Rebecca Cerese knows about former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage?

This from CNN News on Sept. 8, 2006:

Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage acknowledged Thursday that he was the source who first revealed the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame to syndicated columnist Robert Novak back in 2003, touching off a federal investigation.

Armitage told the CBS Evening News that he did so inadvertently.

"I feel terrible," Armitage said. "Every day, I think, I let down the president. I let down the secretary of state. I let down my department, my family, and I also let down Mr. and Mrs. Wilson."

I want to put aside for now Armitage's concerns about all the people he let down, including many of those not mentioned in the CNN report: Karl Rove, for example.

A more pertinent question now has to do with why Cesere never mentions Armitage as a traitor needing to be punished?

Why could that?

Shouldn't it matter to Cerese that Armitage, not Rove, "outed" Plame?

The Churchill Series – Dec. 11, 2007

(One of a series of weekday posts on the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

Two unrelated items today:

Churchill buff and series regular Corwin yesterday reminded me of an extraordinary proposal Britain was prepared to make to France in June 1940.

In an effort to keep France an active belligerent in the was against Nazi Germany, the British government, with Churchill’s strong support, was prepared to propose the two nations merge and become one, with common citizenship for their peoples and a single government.

But before the Brits could make their proposal, France determined on armistice talks.

Nevertheless the background to the proposal and the way in which Britain was prepared to present it are very interesting. I’m going to brush-up on the proposal and present a short (likely two posts) series within the series in the next few days.

The second item is this reminder from the Jackson County Examiner (Jackson County was President Harry Truman’s home county):

A painting by Winston Churchill presented to former President Harry S. Truman's daughter, Margaret Truman Daniel, in 1951, will be sold at Sotheby's Auction House in London Dec. 13.

The painting, titled "Marrakech," is reportedly worth up to $1.03 million.

Ray Geselbracht, special assistant to Truman Presidential Library & Museum Director Michael Devine, said the painting was a personal gift from Churchill presented to Margaret Truman for her father during her trip to England in 1951.Correspondence between Churchill and Truman also suggested the painting was a personal gift to Truman.

"Truman wrote a letter thanking Winston Churchill," Geselbracht said. "The correspondence in that letter suggests the painting was a personal gift. Margaret presented the painting to Truman when she returned home and when he died (in 1972), she took the painting to her home."

According to the Associated Press, a note accompanying the gift quoted Churchill as describing the painting as "about as presentable as anything I can produce."

Truman responded by writing, "I shall treasure the picture as long as I live and it will be one of the most valued possessions I will be able to leave to Margaret when I pass on."

The Examiner story contains a color photo of the painting.

Would you care to guess what it will fetch?

I won’t guess a number but I’ll guess the painting will bring at least $300 thousand more than the $1.03 million pre-auction estimate.

We’ll all know in a few days.

UPI’s on Sowell’s Christmas Gift List

At RealClearPolitics.com Thomas Sowell reminds us:

Books are good gifts to receive and even better gifts to give because you can get books without half the hassles involved in buying many other kinds of gifts.

You can easily buy books from the Internet and avoid the mob scenes at the shopping malls.

This has been a good year for books that shoot down false and nonsensical notions on major issues of our time

Sowell offers a list of such books, one of which is:

"Until Proven Innocent" by Stuart Taylor and K.C. Johnson is an account of the Duke University "rape" case that goes far beyond the misdeeds of the disgraced District Attorney Michael Nifong.

"Until Proven Innocent" turns over a lot of rocks and shows what was crawling underneath -- in the media and in academia, as well as in law enforcement, that produced a lynch mob atmosphere in which evidence meant nothing.

UPI is on my Christmas gift-giving list.

But it's still tough to get.

I wanted to order two at Borders in Chapel Hill. Only one was available.

"Why was that?"

"We sold all the others," the clerk replied.

"Are there any copies on order?"

"Let me check. .... No, it doesn't appear we've ordered more."

The sales clerk didn't know why, but promised to pass my suggestion that Borders Chapel Hill order more UPI copies on to the order manager.

Have any of you had any trouble getting the book?

Professor Munger Responds To Questions

Readers Note: On Dec. 8 I posted Questions For Professor Munger. He’s responded at his blog (not a Duke site) with Some Good Questions from JinC. A copy of his post is below.

If you haven’t already I encourage you to read read Munger's letter to The Chronicle, my posts here and here and those posts' threads, and Munger's post at his blog and its thread.

I thank Professor Munger for responding to my questions.

I wish to comment on some of what he says with which I disagree and some with which I agree.

But JinC Regulars know, my usual practice when someone responds as Munger has is to put the response in full on the main page and say nothing for a day or so.

That’s so the person responding can have his or her full say and you can read it without my jumping right in.

You, of course, are free to respond whenever you wish.

I’ll be responding tomorrow.

Again, my thanks to Munger.


John.
___________________________________

Some Good Questions from JinC

John in Carolina asks some interesting and useful questions, in this post.

I try here to respond, at least in summary form. I have gathered and summarized some of John's comments, perhaps unfairly. But it seemed like a useful way to broaden the issues. John's queries are underlined, in the text below, to make clear what he was asking. And, let me emphasize, I shortened and abridged some of the queries. To judge whether I changed their meaning, check the original post.

JinC Query 1: I assume a principal reason, if not the principal reason, you’d not tolerate protests and shouts in your classroom is because they’d interfere with the presentation of information, including opinion, and orderly discussion of same.

Why shouldn’t the same conditions hold for a public lecture at a university?

Why shouldn’t the rest of the student body, the faculty and others have the same chance to hear Rove under the same reasonable circumstances you’d enforce in your classroom?

Why could they only hear and interact with Rove and he with them in the face of harrassment which you justify as part of "the show?"

Universities frequently spend ten of thousands of dollars to bring speakers such as Rove to their campuses, we’re told for educative purposes.

Why not treat the appearances of such people as academic events?

I hope you come to agree that others at the University and those who traveled to Duke for the event should have had the chance to hear and question Rove under circumstances similar to those you’d have assured for your own students.

I think of there being a continuum of types of events. On one extreme, the classroom, where the professor is responsible for presenting information and controlling the atmosphere. If I invited Karl Rove to my classroom, I would ask that students neither applaud, nor boo. It is a small, intimate setting, and everyone gets their chance to ask a question.

At the other extreme, there are political debates. I oversaw one of these recently, the Durham mayoral debate, where I was moderator. People cheered, or booed, or otherwise made some demonstration of their approval or disapproval. It was not intrusive, and the candidates were not interrupted.

I think of the Karl Rove talk, or Rick Santorum talk, as being closer to the debate setting than the classroom setting. People hear what the person has to say, and respond. They can applaud, or not. No one is guaranteed that the audience approves of their message.

Part of the reason is that not everyone, by a long shot, gets to ask a question. It is different from a classroom. The speaker speaks, the audience reacts, in a big public lecture.

There is a line, I'm not sure just where, between expression and interruption. I thought the Rove talk was well over on the side of expression. There were a few shouts, and one pair of protesters walked down the SIDE of the auditorium with a sign, for about 30 seconds. He was not interrupted, and I did not even find it distracting.

And, by far the most common reaction, was ....applause! Mr. Rove was often interrupted by applause, and in some cases cheers. I would not expect, and would in fact dissuade, such demonstrations of approval in a classroom setting. I think it important to allow people to applaud at a lecture, if they want to.

To summarize: there were no interruptions, other than a shout or two, or maybe four, and some applause. The applause interruptions were the most noticeable, and distracting. Why are you not objecting to applause, John? You wouldn't see that in a classroom.

Now, I recognize that at some point interruptions, and hostility, cross a line where it becomes first unseemly, and then downright distracting. You are quite right that people came to hear Rove, and not the protesters. In fact, this was the argument I was making when I posted the following on the BLUE NC site, on just this subject. The context was this: several folks had claimed that THEIR freedom of speech meant that they got to interrupt and disrupt the Rove talk. I responded :

I'm always confused on how the "free speech" thing goes. But I have learned a lot here.

Since I am myself one of the primary sponsors of the Rove visit, I am looking forward to having Duke students and the Durham community get a chance to ask questions, after hearing what he had to say.

But, if I understand the content of this thread, "free speech" seems to mean two things:

1. You think that protesters' free speech rights include the right to enter private property and disrupt an event planned and paid for by someone else. I should point out that the audience will be there to hear Karl Rove, not you, but for some reason that doesn't matter. "Free Speech" should be getting a chance to have YOUR message heard, not drowning someone else's.

2. You think that there is no reason to protect anyone's speech rights against the "heckler's veto" that I see being proposed here. I think that is just flat wrong. When I hosted George McGovern, for example, I persuaded a number of students who WANTED to protest that it would be inappropriate. When I hosted the Palestinian Solidarity Movement conference, I got several student groups to have an alternative event, instead, and use it as a way to try to affect public opinion.

The answer to speech you disagree with is a forum to offer YOUR truth. Why would you want to prevent someone else from being heard? It makes you look cowardly.

So, let me make an offer. I will be happy to secure Duke facilities for anyone wanting to hold an alternative event, or wants to use this opportunity to get their message out. Contact me at munger@duke.edu. We'll put something together.

The difference, then, is a matter of degree. So long as the speaker is not interrupted or the talk disrupted, I think applause should be allowed. That's not true in a classroom, at least not in my classroom. Same with a quick boo, or a shout: if you don't interrupt, go ahead, if the setting is a public lecture where there is not nearly enough time for everyone to ask their own question.

So, in my view, your last paragraph quoted above is just plain wrong on the facts. And, I was there, at the talk, and so have some handle on the facts.

People who came to hear Karl Rove should indeed get to hear him without interruption, except for quick boos or applause. And that is what happened!! If they had NOT been able to hear, I agree that that would be a problem. But I had already said that, and you knew it. So I don't understand your question, sir.

If you think that ALL applause should be prevented, like in a classroom, at all public lectures, then we disagree. I think you should get to applaud in a lecture. If you think applause should be allowed, then you yourself think that the classroom and the large public lecture are different, and so I don't see why you say they are the same.

JinC Query 2. What concerns me about your letter and some of your subsequent comments is that you are, IMO, setting the bar for acceptable public conduct on campus much too low.

For example, when you say, as you did in your letter, the Rove evening was “as close to flawless as you are going to get with a controversial speaker.”

The evening was certainly much better than the recent event at Emory during which administrators and police, fearful they could no longer assure the safety of David Horowitz, convinced him to break off his speech and leave the campus.

And as regards the invitation to Rove, almost all Duke faculty showed themselves more tolerant than the University of California system faculty who recently pressured the Board of Regents into cancelling their invitation to former Harvard President Larry Summers to be their dinner speaker.

But just because something is not the worst or near worst of its kind, doesn’t make it acceptable or deserving of praise.

I’m one of those concerned by the growing intolerance, including violent acts, on many campuses; and by the threat that intolerance poses to something both wonderful and vulnerable: The Academy.

You may just be right about this, sir. I was relieved that Duke had not embarrassed itself, in the just the way that others embarrassed themselves in the other examples you (correctly) cite.

Whether my relief gives a pass, when a higher standard should be enforced, is a question I think your readers are better able to judge than I am.

I have had jobs at several universities. And Duke is the place most committed to open debate and real free speech of all of those. Whether that commitment is less than it should be is a fair question.

But, in the specific case of Karl Rove:

1. He is used to people being rude

2. He characterized his treatment at Duke as being acceptable, and better than he had expected, at the dinner later

3. Had Karl Rove spoken at pretty much any of the other "elite" schools you might name, I am convinced there would have been a riot.

Surely that counts for something. If you think that EVEN more civility is required, I think I disagree. The speech went off without serious interruption or distraction. THere is a qualitative difference, not of degree but of kind, when one compares this outcome to places where visitors have been shouted off the stage, and not allowed to speak.

Further, that same week there was a visit by Rick Santorum, also a controversial figure (And, if it matters, my program co-sponsored this visit, as we did Rove, to make sure there are conservative voices on campus!).

There were NO interruptions of any kind, except for applause. The room was nearly full, and the audience was entirely of the sort you say is appropriate. (I assume, again, you think applause are okay, yes?) That is the sort of atmosphere that Duke cultivates.

Why do you give us no credit for that? I had thought that the Rove talk was about as good as one could expect, but the Santorum talk went even better.

To close: Let me emphasize that I value John's questions, and appreciate
the chance to have this discourse. John is extremely fair-minded, and has posed his concerns as questions rather than leaping to conclusions.

Now, after reading my responses, readers may well conclude that I am just mistaken. But it will be after hearing a fair and extended discussion, rather than just one side. Thanks to John for initiating this, and for pursuing it.

The Churchill Series - Dec. 10, 2007

(One of a series of weekday posts on the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

Readers Note: This post first ran in Feb. 2006.

John
___________________________________________________________
During WW II Churchill frequently worked 18 or more hours a day. His fellow Cabinet members and aides were often forced to keep the same hours, much to their displeasure.

Detective-Inspector Walter Thompson, Churchill’s principal bodyguard during the war, recalled the time in June, 1940 when Churchill and his party had just arrived back in England after two exhausting days in France trying to persuade the French not to agree to an armistice with the Germans.

The party had just landed at Hendon airport near London when Churchill announced, “We will have a Cabinet meeting at 10 p. m.”

The Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, was dismayed. “Surely not tonight, Winston,” Halifax pleaded. “We have had a long day; it will make such a late night.”

Churchill paused a moment before saying, “All right, we’ll make it 9:30 instead.”
_____________________________________________________
Tom Hickman, Churchill's Bodyguard: The Authorized Biography of Walter H. Thompson. (pgs. 117-118)

TRAVELING NOW - BLOGGING LATER

If the planes land as scheduled and the wireless connections connect, I'll be blogging tonight.

I'll be posting further on the harassment of Rove and most of the audience at Duke.

I'll also post in response to some recent reader comments.

And then there's President Brodhead and the matter of his continuation in office.

I'll be telling a CIA story as well.

I hope you're back.

John

KC Johnson Responds to UPI Questions

Readers Note: If you haven’t already read this JinC post, "Questions re: Until Proven Innocent" , I encourage you to do so before reading the post below.


I thank KC for responding to my questions.


I wish to comment on some of his answers. But as JinC Regulars know, my usual practice when someone responds as KC has is to put the response in full on the main page and say nothing for a day or so.


That’s so the person responding can have his or her full say and you can read it without my jumping right in.


You, of course, are free to respond whenever you wish.


I’ll be responding tomorrow.


Again, to KC who has done so much outstanding work on the case, thank you.


John.
__________________________________

KC’s initial response:


KC Johnson said...

I tried to keep the last Q&A post to one or two questions from each people. Given my respect for JinC's work on the case, I wanted to make sure all questions were answered to the best of my ability, and so will do so here.


Q: Raleigh N&O reporter Anne Blythe was bylined on the 3/24/06 story which “broke” the Hoax story and the 3/25/06 “anonymous” interview story.


Blythe also reported on a number of other very important Hoax stories including the now discredited one about many lax players drinking and boasting in a bar just a few days after the story broke.


She's continued to cover the Hoax up to the present. But Blythe isn’t mentioned in UPI. Why not?


A: I checked the index because I couldn't have imagined we didn't mention Blythe--and see that you're correct. That was an oversight on our part.


All told, her reporting on the case was first-rate, and we should have made clear that while Neff was the key person for the N&O, Blythe (along with Niolet, Biesecker, and Ferreri) were important in the N&O's coverage.


Q: At DiW in the Sources section you say:

The discussion of the March 25 N&O story quoted Duke Law professor Paul Haagen’s recollections of his interview for that article. The book stated that Samiha Khanna interviewed Haagen, and Haagen recalled her asking leading questions; in fact, another N&O reporter interviewed Haagen, and said that she asked fair questions of Haagen, who did not subsequently complain to her. We apologize for the error.

Who was the reporter Haagen says he recalls “asking leading questions?”

Does Haagen still stand by the “helmet sports” violence quote the N&O attributed to him and with which it ended the 3/25/06 story?

A: Haagen never denied that he made the quote. And the statement is, in fact, true (whether these studies involved lacrosse players, however, is very much unclear--I've read some of them, and they don't really say).

Haagen has also said that, in retrospect, there are aspects of his early dealings with the media he might have reconsidered. His overall role in the case, however, seems to me a strongly positive one--imagine if his successor, Paula McClain, had been academic council chairwoman as of March 2006.

He was critical in ensuring that Jim Coleman was selected to head the lacrosse investigating committee, and his proposal for Faculty Athletic Associates was well-considered.

As I have said on several occasions, I very much regret the error in the book on this point, and allow me to repeat that apology here.

Q: The N&O knew from day one of Mangum’s history as a “dancer” and her criminal background which contradicted claims made in the 3/25/06 story. It had reported on all of that in June 2002.

Yet the first mention of any of that I can find in the N&O is a 4/14/06 story by Samiha Khanna, Joe Neff and Ben Niolet which is about another matter and buries the information about the June 2002events in a few paragraphs at the end of the story.

Those paragraphs don’t mention that Mangum stole the car from outside the club where she was lap dancing.Do you know why that wasn’t mentioned or why the reporters never interviewed Durham County Deputy Carroll who gave chase and who Mangum attempted to run down?

A: No, I do not know why. As I said during a presentation at the N&O in September, I considered the failure to identify Mangum's arrest record in the original article a serious mistake. I maintain that belief.

Q: Why did the N&O withhold for thirteen months the critically important exculpatory news it had on 3/24/06 when Mangum told the N&O the second dancer was also raped at the party but couldn’t report it for fear of losing her job. Also, that the second dancer would do anything for money.

A: As you know, Linda Williams has offered a claim for this (libel concerns). As you also know, I strongly criticized Williams' argument, both on the blog and in the book.

Q: Did any of the folks you worked with at the N&O on the book provide what you consider a satisfactory explanation for why the N&O withheld the exculpatory news until the day after Cooper had declared the players innocent?

A: I didn't "work with" anyone at the N&O. As I said above, I do not think that Williams' explanation was satisfactory. This policy didn't prevent speculation (including by me) that Mangum had really claimed to have been robbed by Roberts.

In fact, her claim that Roberts also was raped was also made in her 4-6 statement.

In that respect, the N&O's withheld news added comparatively little; and I am far more sympathetic to the N&O's decision than I was when I thought the claim was that Roberts had robbed Mangum, since they would have been publicizing additional false claims by Mangum against lacrosse players, rather than against Roberts.

Q: When did Ben Niolet and Joe Neff first learn about the exculpatory news?

A: Again, I'm not clear what you mean by "exculpatory news." I can't speak for Neff or Niolet. I would assume they learned about Mangum's 4-6 statement shortly after she made it, and about what she told Khanna shortly after the 3-24 interview.

Q: Did they ever tell you how they felt reporting on the story once they learned what the N&O was withholding?

A: It's my sense that both Neff and Niolet are very proud of the reporting they did on the case--as they should be. I don't think the flawed 3-24 story in any way affected how they did their jobs.

Q: It’s Not About The Truth goes into considerable detail quoting Ruth Sheehan’s claims that Mike Nifong was the anonymous source for her notorious 3/27/06 “Team’s Silence Is Sickening” column.

According to Sheehan, Nifong’s source information was passed on to her by someone(s) in the N&O’s newsroom when she phoned in on 3/26/06 with a column she’d already written for the next day on another matter.

But, according to Sheehan, the information the newsroom fed her was so strong she dropped the column she’d already written and started to work on “Team’s Silence Is Sickening.”UPI doesn’t mention any of that. Why not?

A: UPI and It's Not About the Truth are different books with different areas of focus.

INAT is, in large part, Mike Pressler's story; Pressler and Yaeger argue that Sheehan's column played a key role in Brodhead's decision to fire Pressler. It's unsurprising, therefore, they spend a good deal of time on the piece.

Pressler's dismissal is not the central (or a central) story of UPI. It therefore is unsurprising Stuart and I spent less time on the column. We mentioned the column, and mentioned the key line and how it captured the rush-to-judgment mood--as Sheehan herself conceded when she apologized.

Q: Did you learn anything from the N&O reporters and editors about Nifong serving as an anonymous source for the N&O?

A: No.

Q: Were you ever able to learn who made the decision to withhold from those early stories the news the N&O had of the players cooperation with police and instead promulgate what the N&O knew was the “wall of solidarity” ( later “wall of silence”) falsehood?

A: It was not the central (or a central) focus of the book to determine what the N&O knew and when it knew it. The questions that I asked regarding N&O matters were, therefore, confined to N&O issues that appeared in the book.

In general, of course, JinC and I agree on most aspects of the case, but disagree rather strongly on the N&O's performance. In this respect, I'll defer to Wade Smith, as quoted in a Ted Vaden column from April. I agree both with Smith's criticism of the early coverage and with his ultimate judgment:

"'I think The News & Observer has done a really terrific job in covering the lacrosse story,' said Wade Smith, attorney for former defendant Collin Finnerty. 'I think at first The News & Observer went for (the accuser's) story. But The News & Observer has done careful and very responsible reporting after the initial part of the coverage ended and The News & Observer started to see the light.'

He said the ultimate outcome 'perhaps' would not have been accomplished without the reporting by The N&O and other papers."

KC’s follow-up comment on the same thead:

A couple of follow-ups to my answers, to avoid anything unclear.

On the issue of why the reporters never interviewed Durham County Deputy Carroll who gave chase and who Mangum attempted to run down, I pointed out that I didn't know why.

I can speak, however, why I, as someone who covered the case intensively, never sought to interview Carroll. I didn't see why such an interview would be relevant to the case. At the risk of carrying a feminist cliche to its logial extreme, even a woman who attempts to run down a police officer can be raped.

Whatever Carroll had to say about Mangum beyond his report would have been dubious--raising questions of why he didn't document the items in his report. And the report itself was more than sufficient, as I mentioned in a post on the question, to raise serious doubts about Mangum's credibility.

The arrest should have been mentioned in Khanna's article not because of the Carroll angle but because it proved Mangum lied to Khanna. Mangum told Khanna (between, it seems, bursts of tears) that she had just started to strip--so she could spend more time with her kids and studies(!). The arrest report proved that Mangum had a career of at least four years as a sex worker.

Just because she lied about that didn't necessarily mean that she lied about the rape, but it definitely raised serious credibility questions.

2) On the question of Mangum's claim to Khanna that Roberts had been raped and the N&O's decision not to report this, I fear my answer conflated two issues, which I want to explain:

a) Linda Williams' explanation (that the N&O didn't report the item out of concerns of libel) was absurd.

b) I don't quite agree with the claim that the N&O withheld "exculpatory news." For many months, as I noted, I thought Mangum had repeated to Khanna her assertion to Levicy that Roberts had stolen her money.

Withholding that claim would clearly have been withholding exculpatory news.

The question of reporting the claim of additional rapists, however (which apparently was not made with much strength), strikes me as a far closer call, because it would have involved raising new charges against other lacrosse players beyond what the police had done.

If I were in the N&O editors' position, in short, I believe I would have made the same choice--though not, of course, for the reasons that Williams stated. I do believe all members of the media should have pursued far more aggressively than they did the question of why Nifong had chosen to ignore Mangum's unequivocal statement on 4-6 that three other lacrosse players tore Roberts away from her at the bathroom door.

Nifong's decision to pick and choose what elements of Mangum's statement to believe, with no additional investigation, was clearly exculpatory news.

I don't see the Mangum assertion to Khanna in the same light

The CIA Interrogation Tapes

More outstanding blogging offline by Mike Williams. All I've done is add some bolds and a few parentheticals.

John
___________________________________________

The outrage of the Dems at the destruction of the 2003 CIA interrogation tapes is palpable.

Here’s a good example:

Massachusetts Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy called the CIA move a cover-up. "For the past six years, the Bush administration has run roughshod over our ideals and the rule of law," Kennedy said.

For four years, Kennedy said, the Republican-controlled Congress stood by idly, but since the Democrat-led Congress started to hold the administration accountable "it is feverishly covering up its tracks. We haven't seen anything like this since the 18 1/2-minute gap in the tapes of president Richard Nixon."

Except that the tapes were destroyed in 2005, a year before the 2006 elections in which the Dems took control of Congress.

And, apparently, their destruction was a compartmentalized decision made by the agency’s chief of clandestine services, against the advice of Congress, the White House, and the CIA itself.

So since Kennedy has brought up Watergate, do you recall “What did they know, and when did they know it?”

If you’ve followed the links above, it seems clear that Congress knew all about the tapes and about the CIA’s desire to destroy them. What’s not clear is if/when they were told that the tapes had indeed been destroyed.

As for the White House, it seems Bush himself didn’t know they were destroyed until he heard about it last Thursday from CIA Director Michael Hayden (who was not the Director in 2005). So overall, it’s probably appropriate for the Justice Department to look into this and see if they can figure out who knew what when.

All that said, as Bill Kristol reminded us on Fox News Sunday:

( Williams' paraphrasing) We just don’t know what was on those tapes. They may have revealed sources and information that could have jeopardized current and future clandestine operations, embarrassed friendly governments, and put at risk the lives of agents and sources.

And then there’s this surprising WaPo report:

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody.

For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

"The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough," said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange….

Captain Ed Morrissey comments:

This puts a completely different light on the controversy. While Democrats -- and a few Republicans -- in both chambers of Congress have railed against the White House for supposed torture, in reality Congress willingly supported the procedure in over two dozen briefings. Only one person raised any objection during two years of using the procedure.

That doesn't settle the question as to whether waterboarding constitutes torture, but it certainly calls into question the notion that politics has nothing to do with the debate.

The CIA stopped using waterboarding after 2003, and apparently have only used it on three detainees: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah, and an unidentified al-Qaeda prisoner.

Only well after the practice had been abandoned did Congress raise objections to its use, and then never acknowledging their own acquiescence to it earlier. That lack of honesty allowed them to paint themselves as shocked, shocked! that waterboarding had been used as an interrogation technique…. ( Ds and Rs lacking in honesty? Who would have believed it? -- JinC)

Over to [University of Tennessee Law School] Professor Glenn Reynolds [at his Instapundit blog]:

Lots of people who were talking tough back then subsequently changed their tunes -- out of either a sudden flowering of scruples or an unprincipled desire to go after the Bush Administration with any weapon that came to hand.

But, you know, if you're going to say "it was different back then," it really has to be more than just an all-purpose excuse for politicians. It's also a reason not to hang people out to dry for doing what politicians, and the public, wanted back then, when things were so "different."

Your call, but Jules Crittenden notes: "Next thing you know, someone’s going to say the Clinton co-presidency thought Saddam had a nuclear program and backed regime change."
Yeah, and showing videos like this. Unfair!

Be sure to watch that video.

And to borrow a quote:"This ongoing selective outrage by the Congressional overseers is ridiculous. No kidding."
______________________________________

Thanks, Mike, for a great post.

Questions re: Until Proven Innocent

At his Durham-in-Wonderland blog KC Johnson recently invited questions concerning Until Proven Innocent which he co-authored with Stuart Taylor.

I’ve posted on a number of UPI reviews (see here and here, for instances).

I’ve joined those reviewers in praising UPI as an important book that details a shocking attempted frame-up of three innocent young men by a DA and certain police officers who were enabled by the actions and inactions of Duke University, much of media, most importantly the Raleigh News & Observer, and “activists” and “rights” groups pursuing narrow agendas in disregard of facts and due process.

I do have questions about UPI. Many of them concern what I consider the weakest area of the book: its account of the role much of media played in helping launch the witch hunt and sustaining the attempted frame-up and the cover-up of it which continues to this day.

So I’ve left the following questions and comment at DiW.

Dear KC,

Thank you for inviting questions about UPI, a fine book I’ve recommended at JinC and given as gifts.

Raleigh N&O reporter Anne Blythe was bylined on the 3/24/06 story which “broke” the Hoax story and the 3/25/06 “anonymous” interview story.

Blythe also reported on a number of other very important Hoax stories including the now discredited one about many lax players drinking and boasting in a bar just a few days after the story broke. She;s continued to cover the Hoax up to the present.

But Blythe isn’t mentioned in UPI. Why not?

At DiW in the Sources section you say:

The discussion of the March 25 N&O story quoted Duke Law professor Paul Haagen’s recollections of his interview for that article. The book stated that Samiha Khanna interviewed Haagen, and Haagen recalled her asking leading questions; in fact, another N&O reporter interviewed Haagen, and said that she asked fair questions of Haagen, who did not subsequently complain to her. We apologize for the error.

Who was the reporter Haagen says he recalls “asking leading questions?”

Does Haagen still stand by the “helmet sports” violence quote the N&O attributed to him and with which it ended the 3/25/06 story?

The N&O knew from day one of Mangum’s history as a “dancer” and her criminal background which contradicted claims made in the 3/24/06 story. It had reported on all of that in June 2002.

Yet the first mention of any of that I can find in the N&O is a 4/14/06 story by Samiha Khanna, Joe Neff and Ben Niolet which is about another matter and buries the information about the June 2002events in a few paragraphs at the end of the story.

Those paragraphs don’t mention that Mangum stole the car from outside the club where she was lap dancing.

Do you know why that wasn’t mentioned or why the reporters never interviewed Durham County Deputy Carroll who gave chase and who Mangum attempted to run down?

Why did the N&O withhold for thirteen months the critically important exculpatory news it had on 3/24/06 when Mangum told the N&O the second dancer was also raped at the party but couldn’t report it for fear of losing her job. Also, that the second dancer would do anything for money.

Did any of the folks you worked with at the N&O on the book provide what you consider a satisfactory explanation for why the N&O withheld the exculpatory news until the day after Cooper had declared the players innocent?

When did Ben Niolet and Joe Neff first learn about the exculpatory news?

Did they ever tell you how they felt reporting on the story once they learned what the N&O was withholding?

It’s Not About The Truth goes into considerable detail quoting Ruth Sheehan’s claims that Mike Nifong was the anonymous source for her notorious 3/27/06 “Team’s Silence Is Sickening” column.

According to Sheehan, Nifong’s source information was passed on to her by someone(s) in the N&O’s newsroom when she phoned in on 3/26/06 with a column she’d already written for the next day on another matter.

But, according to Sheehan, the information the newsroom fed her was so strong she dropped the column she’d already written and started to work on “Team’s Silence Is Sickening.”

UPI doesn’t mention any of that. Why not?

Did you learn anything from the N&O reporters and editors about Nifong serving as an anonymous source for the N&O?

Were you ever able to learn who made the decision to withhold from those early stories the news the N&O had of the players cooperation with police and instead promulgate what the N&O knew was the “wall of solidarity” ( later “wall of silence”) falsehood?

There are many more questions I’m sure others and well as myself would like to ask you and Stuart.

But I’m going to end here so this doesn’t get too long.

Thank you for the opportunity to ask questions; and thank you again for all the outstanding work you’ve done pursuing truth and justice in the Hoax case.

Best,

John