Well, well. More than four months after the controversy began,
the New Republic has finally admitted that it can no
longer stand by the Baghdad Diarist articles that were written
earlier this year by Scott Thomas Beauchamp. (Some background on
the Beauchamp affair can be found here.) Before that admission, though, in the current
(December 10) issue of TNR, editor Franklin Foer spends over 6,500 words explicating the
Beauchamp saga as it appeared from his end. Foer’s account is so
full of blame-shifting and paranoia that it could be a case study
in a Psychology 101 textbook. To hear Foer tell it, the Army has
perpetrated a nefarious conspiracy with the express purpose of
undermining the New Republic. “Beauchamp’s behavior was
sometimes suspicious — promising evidence that never arrived —
but so was the Army’s,” he writes.
Foer had an instant message conversation with Beauchamp on July
26. “After that,” writes Foer, “the Army, by its own admission,
didn’t permit Beauchamp to speak to TNR for over a month.” It’s not
entirely clear, though, that this is true. Beauchamp’s cell phone
and laptop were apparently confiscated as punishment, but on August
11 the Weekly Standard’s blog published a statement from Col. Steven Boylan,
Gen. David Petraeus’s Public Affairs Officer, which read in
part:
We are not preventing [Beauchamp] from speaking to TNR
or anyone. He has full access to the Morale Welfare and Recreation
phones that all the other members of the unit are free to use. It
is my understanding that he has been informed of the requests to
speak to various members of the media, both traditional and
non-traditional and has declined.
Here’s how Foer handles this:
After we had posted an online statement explaining that
we had been unable to communicate with Beauchamp — who, according
to [Beauchamp’s wife Elspeth] Reeve, was under orders not to speak
with us — and pleading with the Army to make him available to us,
General David Petraeus’s spokesman, Steven Boylan, told the
Standard, “We are not preventing [Beauchamp] from speaking
to TNR or anyone.” One of our editors called Boylan’s
office on a near-daily basis to set up a phone call with Beauchamp;
every time, they told us they were working on our request. After
several weeks, we stopped hearing back from them. The Army later
confirmed to us that it had, indeed, prevented Beauchamp from
speaking.
The complaint about Boylan’s office is a non sequitur. The question
is not whether the Army would “set up a phone call with Beauchamp,”
the question is whether Beauchamp could pick up the Morale Welfare
and Recreation (MWR) phone and call
TNR if he wanted to.
Contacted yesterday by
TAS, Col. Boylan stands by his
August 11 statement, writing:
Based on the information that I was provided by the
Division concerning this matter, he had access to the MWR phone
system at that time. How much access he had depended entirely on
the availability of where he was located while out on the patrol
base. What may have occurred after I responded to the media query
as part the investigation or subsequent unit level determination is
something that will have to be addressed at the unit level by his
chain of command.
Readers may be forgiven for demanding something beyond Foer’s
assertion to confirm that Boylan was mistaken.
Foer also, rather ludicrously, accuses the Army of trying hide
the results of its investigation, which concluded that Beauchamp’s
stories were fraudulent. Foer’s evidence is that a blogger scooped
traditional media outlets. Really:
The Army didn’t announce this [finding] to The New
York Times or even The Weekly Standard, let alone in
a public report. It first gave the story of Beauchamp’s supposed
fraudulence to a former porn actor turned blogger named Matt
Sanchez. Apparently, the Army wanted the matter to quietly fade
away.
That’s one interpretation. Another would be that Sanchez got the
scoop first because he was reporting on the ground in Iraq and was
thus in a position to ask the right people the right questions.
(Funny how Foer gratuitously noted
Sanchez’s past but somehow left out this relevant
fact.)
Foer blames the Army, in part, for his own reluctance to retract
Beauchamp’s stories, writing that “the Army’s behavior — its
initial efforts to bury the results of its investigation, not to
mention the four months and counting it has taken to process our
Freedom of Information Act request for those results — made us
reluctant to rush to judgment.” That’s right, the notoriously slow FOIA process — a problem that
reporters have been complaining about for decades — was taken by
Foer as evidence that the Army is hiding something.
Of course, it was Beauchamp who was doing the hiding. When an
anonymous Weekly Standard source said that Beauchamp had
signed a statement recanting his articles, Foer was under the
impression that the statement Beauchamp had signed was a Clintonian
dodge:
When Beauchamp had described his statements to us, it
seemed like he was walking a fine line, trying to satisfy his
commanders while staying on the side of the truth. But, without the
actual documents in hand, we had no way of judging. Through his
wife and lawyer, we made the first of many requests for these
statements, which Beauchamp was legally entitled to obtain for
us.
Foer’s still waiting on that document. Because of privacy
protections written into the FOIA, he can’t get it without
Beauchamp’s cooperation.
Even when he’s retracting Beauchamp’s stories — though not
apologizing for them — Foer can’t help smearing the Army. When
critics first started raising red flags about the Baghdad Diarist
articles, there were charges that TNR was advancing an
anti-military agenda. Such charges were somewhat unfair in July.
They’re perfectly fair now.
