The Scott Beauchamp affair — the background on which you can
find here — reached a new climax Wednesday when the
Drudge Report published some fascinating documents. (All of them
are in .pdf format, and were downloaded and saved before the Drudge
Report took them offline for unknown reasons.) One of them was an
Army
memo confirming what we already knew — that the Army’s
investigation has concluded that the New Republic
published falsehoods under Beauchamp’s pseudonym, “Scott Thomas.”
The other is a transcript in two parts (part 1,
part
2) of a September 7 phone call involving Frank Foer and Peter
Scoblic, TNR’s Editor and Executive Editor, respectively.
It would be hard to overstate how embarrassing this transcript must
be to TNR.
The conclusion of the conversation involves Foer and Scoblic
convincing Beauchamp that he mustn’t talk to other media outlets
before talking to them. But the most damning passages come in part
1 of the transcript:
Scoblic: (unintelligible) Are you standing by your
story then?
Beauchamp: I’m not talking about it all. I’m not commenting on
it at all anymore. Or any of my military experiences.
Scoblic: Look, Scott- I need… We are not another media outlet.
You can’t look at the New Republic which, you know, published these
stories as “just another set of reporters” that’s beating down your
door. The editor has placed a great deal of trust in you. You know,
I’ve watched this over the last month…I’ve been part of it myself
to some extent. They’ve displayed a considerable integrity in
standing by you and supporting you publicly. I know things have
been insane there, certainly with regard to this. They’ve been
pretty insane here, too. And, among other things, you know, Frank
has been…Frank and his reputation have been dragged through the
mud. In a lot of ways, the magazine’s reputation has been dragged
through the mud. And, all through that, we have sort of… we have
said: We are not going to throw an author overboard just because
someone has raised questions. I mean, we have… we have defended
you. And, all we want out of this, and the only way that it is
going to end if we have the truth. […]
[…]
Foer: Okay- we’re going to have to discuss the implications of
this of this last column. But (unintelligible) I think this raises
the possibility that if you’re not able to talk about this and able
to stand by your story, I’m not sure we’ll be able to stand by it.
So…
Scoblic: I think Scott, what this is, you know, is that we’re
going to have to come out to say that…because you know, you’re
not going to talk to us anymore about the piece we just can’t, in
good conscience, continue to defend it. And so the way it ends is
that there’s going to be another round of stories and the story is
going to be that an author lied to his editors. And they decided
that they can’t trust him anymore.
Beauchamp: Well…I mean, I understand it could be spun that
way, but it could be interpreted in any way, and it’s going to be
interpreted in any way that it was going to be interpreted… I
mean, that’s…that’s…
Scoblic: It’s not going to be, Scott. It’s going to be
interpreted (unintelligible)
And later:
Foer: Okay. I (unintelligible) Basically, we need some
sort of sign in good faith on your part and that would be the bare
minimum at this point to prevent us from fully retracting.
Scoblic: I mean, let me ask you Scott- do you care if we fully
retract not only this piece, but the previous ones?
Beauchamp: Right now, like I said before all I really care about
is the job I’m doing here. I really don’t care about the media at
all at this point. I’m sorry.
This transcript apparently came from the Army Public Affairs
Officer who was on Beauchamp’s end of the call. On the
TNR
end, they may not have known that a transcript would be made, and
almost certainly didn’t expect it to come out publicly.
So where does this leave TNR? We have their Executive
Editor saying “we just can’t, in good conscience, continue to
defend” Beauchamp’s work, and that until they have the truth they
can’t let it drop. We have Beauchamp saying that he doesn’t care
one way or another whether they retract his pieces. So why didn’t
they retract them? TNR’s behavior since September 7 has
amounted to pretending that this conversation never happened, that
the veracity of Beauchamp’s articles is still undetermined, and
that they have no ethical obligation to retract. But it did, it
isn’t, and they do.
TAS has left messages for Frank Foer and Peter Scoblic
requesting comment. They have not, as of this writing, returned our
phone calls.
