Hey, you remember The New Republic — publisher of fraudsters Scott Thomas Beauchamp and Stephen Glass?

Well, TNR editors are patting themselves on the back today for exposing an elderly couple’s lies about their Holocaust love story — a story picked up by Oprah and other duped media outlets:

Last week, TNR published an article by Gabriel Sherman, whose original reporting revealed that a new Oprah-touted Holocaust memoir, Angel at the Fence, was a hoax. Based on interviews with top scholars, Sherman concluded that Herman Rosenblat likely fabricated his story of having been saved in a sub-camp of the Buchenwald concentration camp by a girl who threw apples to him over the fence. (According to Rosenblat’s story, he later met her in New York on a blind date and married her.) The publishing company stopped responding to Sherman when he questioned the book’s fact-checking process. Rosenblat’s agent refused to comment for the original article, but Harris Salamon, the producer of a new movie based on Rosenblat’s story, vociferously defended the story’s veracity to Sherman. (TNR’s Noam Scheiber criticized “Rosenblat’s shameless defenders” who “invoke the fabricator’s moral authority as a survivor to defend the apparent lies or embellishments.”)

Over the next two days, Sherman continued to report the story. On the morning of December 26, responding to Sherman’s first article, Berkley released a statement to the Associated Press affirming that the publisher and author stood behind the story. Later that day, Sherman published a second article, in which Rosenblat’s sister-in-law and three other Holocaust survivors all confirmed that the story was fabricated. Sherman also received more information regarding the scant to nonexistent fact-checking process for the book. The publisher also refused to comment for the second article.

The day after Sherman’s second article appeared, Rosenblat confessed to his agent, Andrea Hurst, that he had fabricated the love story, and Berkley announced that they are canceling the publication of the book. Following the announcement, Kenneth Waltzer, the Michigan State professor who originally questioned the story’s veracity, spoke to Sherman about the danger of Rosenblat’s fabrication. Hurst emailed a statement to say that she is “stunned and disappointed” by the lie. Salamon says that he will still be making the movie as a “fictionalized adaptation of his story,” but that he “may rewrite elements of the script to reflect recent revelations.”

Congrats. The New Republic finally smoked out a hoax! Too bad they can’t apply the same standards of veracity and accountability to their own writers when the fit hits the shan.

So, what is The New Republic obsessing about as the teenager prepares to fight for our country on the seventh anniversary week of 9/11?

Track’s “temper.”

What the…?!?!?!?!

So much for leaving the children alone.

Maybe they’ll put Scott Thomas Beauchamp on special assignment to cook up fake stories to slime Track Palin while he’s serving overseas.

***

In other P.D.S.-related news, the NYPost asked me to weigh in with a special Lipstick Diary column. You can find the piece here.

Now, TNR can’t stop pestering me with e-mail from publicists pimping their latest articles. Check ‘em out:

date Wed, Mar 12, 2008 at 3:23 PM
subject From The New Republic

Hi Michelle,

Sean Wilentz, who has previously written about Obama playing the “race-baiter card”, extended this argument to Orlando Patterson’s recent op-ed in The New York Times, in which Patterson described Hillary Clinton’s “3 a.m.” commercial as racist. Patterson responded on TNR.com today. “Sean Wilentz makes no attempt to respond to the points raised in my article beyond his huffing that it is biased. He merely repeats his earlier, quite absurd inversion of the course of events leading up to, and responsibility for, the injection of race in the campaign.” You can check out their dialogue here. This debate between two passionate public intellectuals mirrors a lot of the discussion among Clinton and Obama supporters. It’s been causing an outpouring of opinion from our readers; I think you and your readers would find it interesting as well.

Please don’t hesitate to call or write me an email if you have any questions, and here’s that link once again:

link

Thanks,
Cara Parks

The New Republic, LLC
Phone: (202) 508 4455
Email: cparks@tnr.com

***

date Thu, Mar 6, 2008 at 1:53 PM
subject From The New Republic

Dear Michelle,

My name is Cara Parks and I work for The New Republic. Today we are running a piece on Lamar Alexander’s transition from presidential hopeful to elder statesman. You can read the piece here. The article examines his attempts to unite opposing factions in the Senate while exploring the misunderstandings that divide them, noting, “The battle between the conservatives and the moderates in the Senate is a fundamental one over how to understand their 2006 electoral demise: Did it happen because they sold out the values of the base, or because they ignored moderates on Iraq?” It’s a great insider’s look at the Senate, and I think your readers would find it interesting.

Thanks very much, and if you have any questions, please feel free to email me or give me a call. Here’s the link once again:

link

Best wishes,
Cara Parks

The New Republic, LLC
Phone: (202) 508-4455
Email: cparks@tnr.com
***

date Thu, Feb 21, 2008 at 1:13 PM
subject TNR Exclusive: The Story Behind the ‘New York Times’ McCain Bombshell

Hello,

The New Republic just posted an article by TNR special correspondent Gabriel Sherman that tracks the behind-the-scenes drama at the ‘New York Times’ over the paper’s controversial story about John McCain and lobbyist Vicki Iseman. The publication of the article capped three months of intense internal deliberations at the Times over whether to publish the negative piece and its most explosive charge about the affair. It pitted the reporters investigating the story, who believed they had nailed it, against executive editor Bill Keller, who believe they hadn’t. It likely cost the paper one investigative reporter, who decided to leave in frustration. And the Times ended up publishing a piece in which the institutional tensions about just what the story should be are palpable.

Here’s the link to the full story: link

Please let me know if I can help you with anything else.

Best,
Cara Parks

***

date Mon, Feb 4, 2008 at 2:38 PM
subject Clinton Donor Article from The New Republic

Hi Michelle,

My name is Cara Parks and I work at The New Republic. Today we are running a lengthy story on the Clintons’ sleaziest donors. You can check out the piece here. Obama has Rezko; the Clintons have, well, a lot more people. Some of them you might have forgotten – Ng Lap Seng, the Macau hotel owner (“known as much for its prostitutes working the lobby as for its floor show of whip-wielding, leather-clad dancers upstairs”)? Peter Paul, who tried to swindle Fidel Castro in the ‘70s and used to be Fabio’s manager? IPA, an allegedly sexual-harassment-filled firm in Illinois – two ex-employees told their stories on Oprah — that’s given over $100,000 to Hillary’s campaigns since 2000? And unlike other politicians who’ve returned IPA’s donations, she has not.

There’s a ton of fascinating stuff in there, and I think your readers will really enjoy it. Here’s the URL again: link

Thanks,
Cara Parks

The New Republic, LLC
e-mail: cparks@tnr.com
phone: 202-508-4455

All together now: SOL.*

(*Snorting out loud.)

Writes Owens: “[New Republic editor Franklin] Foer has yet to issue an apology to his critics or the military he maligned during the course of this story.”

Hubris dies hard.

Bullseye!

Good.

***
Ugh. This is bad on many levels. W. Thomas Smith, Jr., a former Marine and milblogger who writes at National Review Online’s The Tank (and whose work in Iraq I’ve praised and linked to here), posts a long-winded defense of bogus, shoddy reporting he published while he was in Lebanon earlier this fall. It’s painful to read because he takes nearly 1,400 words to get to the main points:

1) He claimed he had seen “some 200-plus heavily armed Hezbollah militiamen” at a “sprawling Hezbollah tent city” when, in fact, he hadn’t seen 200-plus heavily armed Hezbollah militiamen.

2) He reported that 4,000-5,000 Hezbollah gunmen had been “deployed to the Christian areas of Beirut in an unsettling ‘show of force,’” when, in fact, there is no evidence that a deployment of 4,000-5,000 Hezbollah gunmen to Christian areas of Beirut ever took place.

As you read the explanation, ask yourselves this: If Thomas Beauchamp had written it instead of Thomas Smith, would you buy it?

Kathryn Lopez, to her credit, immediately* disclosed (see update above) the controversy to readers. Contrary to the TNR editors, she thanked the reporter who first questioned Smith’s account, instead of trashing critics. Writes Lopez:

Bottom line: NRO strives to bring you reliable analysis and reporting — whether in presenting articles, essays, or blog posts. Smith did commendable work in Lebanon earlier this year, as he does from S.C. where he is based, as he has done from Iraq, where he has been twice. But rereading some of the posts (see “The Tank” for more detail) and after doing a thorough investigation of some of the points made in some of those posts, I’ve come to the conclusion that NRO should have provided readers with more context and caveats in some posts from Lebanon this fall. And so I apologize to you, our readers.

I thank Smith for his good, brave work. He’s a smart, reliable reporter with a great patriotic spirit and sense of service. We owe him and our readers better — we should have gotten you more context and information before a post or two went live. It’s understandable how it happened — the nature of blogging being what it is — but given what an underreported tinderbox we’re talking about, especially, we owed you more. We weren’t blogging about Dancing with the Stars there.

So I’m grateful to the reporter who contacted Smith with questions. He brought them to my attention. We did due diligence. We’ve reported this back to him. And now we’re reporting back to you.

The problem is that “more context” and “caveats” aren’t what was needed. Just the facts would have sufficed. Smith’s work in those posts was not “good” or “brave.” And “the nature of blogging” doesn’t excuse the phenomenal errors. Given Smith’s admissions, “reliable” is not a word that should attach to his Lebanon reporting.

We are all fallible. We all make mistakes. But these were not small mistakes. They were XXL ones.

Moreover, online journalists and bloggers can’t have it both ways: They can’t ask for mainstream media parity when their reporting is dead-on and ahead-of-the-curve–and at the same time hide behind the “well, I was just blogging” excuse if their reporting turns out to be as ill-sourced and wrong-headed as the legacy media’s. Also note: In one of the tainted posts, the headline isn’t “Blogging from Lebanon.” It’s “Reporting from Lebanon.”

The nutroots are having a field day. And yes, points like this one made in the Huffington Post are going to sting:

Smith wrote at least five posts in September and October on The Tank attacking the Beauchamp stories, including the following comments: “It would have been virtually impossible for the things Beauchamp said happened to have played out the way he says they did” on September 10; and “Scott Thomas Beauchamp was either a fictitious character or a liar” on October 27.

An American journalist in Lebanon piles on. And you can be sure this story will get tons more coverage on the left side of the blogosphere in the next few days than the TNR debacle has gotten over the last five months. The liberal media will prop up this case to blunt criticism of TNR’s handling of the Beauchamp scandal. They’ll ignore the fundamental difference in how the two magazines have handled their respective situations. They’ll ignore the slander and the cover-up at TNR, and comfort themselves with a blanket of false moral equivalence.

The worst aspect of the case, however, is that it will give cover to Hezbollah-sympathizing media propagandists and their puppet masters–the fauxtographers, the ambulance manipulators, and the evil-enabling stage managers of the Theater of Jihad.

We must fight the propagandists with incontrovertible truth, not more propaganda.

***
Well, well, well. Ready for your weekend schadenfreude? At long last, TNR ‘fesses up to the Scott Thomas Beauchamp debacle. In an act of grace and professionalism, the magazine has thanked its critics and apologized to the military. No, just kidding about the thanking and apologizing part.

Read the whole thing here and watch TNR’s defenders (and advertisers) weep. The maxi-mea culpa runs more than 10 pages and thousands and thousands of words (self-pitying, rationalizing, messenger-blaming), but this is the belated bottom line: The Beauchamp stories are bullcrap. Franklin Foer’s conclusion:

When I last spoke with Beauchamp in early November, he continued to stand by his stories. Unfortunately, the standards of this magazine require more than that. And, in light of the evidence available to us, after months of intensive re-reporting, we cannot be confident that the events in his pieces occurred in exactly the manner that he described them. Without that essential confidence, we cannot stand by these stories.

Buh-bye, Franklin Foer.

Stay tuned for more…

Update: Pay special attention to this admission in Foer’s windy piece…

Fact-checking is a process used by most magazines (but not most newspapers) to independently verify what’s in their articles. Beauchamp’s anonymity complicated this process. Because we promised to protect his identity, we were reluctant to call Army public affairs to review his claims. What’s more, the fact-checking of first-person articles about personal experiences necessarily relies heavily on the author’s word and description of events.

But there was one avoidable problem with our Beauchamp fact-check. His wife, Reeve, was assigned a large role in checking his third piece. While we believe she acted with good faith and integrity–not just in this instance, but throughout this whole ordeal–there was a clear conflict of interest. At the time, our logic–in hindsight, obviously flawed–was that corresponding with a soldier in Iraq is logistically difficult and Reeve was already routinely speaking with him. It was a mistake–and we’ve imposed new rules to prevent future fact-checking conflicts of interest.

It was blogger Ace of Spades who first reported on this gobsmackingly obvious conflict of interest and pushed it persistently. He and others were derided as “ludicrous.”

Who’s ludicrous, now?

Update: Foer discloses an instant-message exchange with Beauchamp about the non-existent disfigured civilian female contractor whom Beauchamp claimed he had taunted while on the battlefront in Iraq–supposedly a sign of how war dehumanized him and his fellow soldiers. When challenged, you’ll recall, Beauchamp then claimed that it happened in Kuwait. Before he had gone to war. Here’s the moment of emblematic moment of discovery:

tnr: where did you see the crypt keeper?

Beauchamp: are you there?

tnr: yes

Beauchamp: the last thing i got was “where did you see the crypt keeper”

tnr: yes

Beauchamp: the dfac on falcon or chow hall, as it IS commonly called

tnr: what about kuwait?

Beauchamp: brb [be right back]

Nine minutes of silence

tnr: you there?

Ten minutes of silence

Beauchamp: ok just did a sworn

statement

tnr: about?

Beauchamp: saying that i wrote the

articles

tnr: ok

Beauchamp: theyre taking away my

laptop

tnr: fuck is this it for communication?

Beauchamp: yeah and im fucked

tnr: they said that?

Beauchamp: because you’re right the crypt keep WAS in Kuwait

FUCK FUCK FUCK

***

Update: Check out the comments section at TNR. Scorching…

“When I last spoke with Beauchamp in early November, he continued to stand by his stories. Unfortunately, the standards of this magazine require more than that. And, in light of the evidence available to us, after months of intensive re-reporting, we cannot be confident that the events in his pieces occurred in exactly the manner that he described them. Without that essential confidence, we cannot stand by these stories.” So you took 15 PAGES to say that you were WRONG, and even then lacked the courage to actually confess to error. You long ago added intellectual cowardice, to the usual helpings of intellectual dishonesty, but did you really have to take 15 pages to so clearly prove the points made by your opponents. Could you not simply have said — “We screwed up. We apologize.” Guess not. And I really appreciated this one passage — “Unfortunately, the standards of this magazine require more than that.” That was classic on so many levels. Even better than the petty uncalled-foer, drive-by, ad hominem slur against Matt Sanchez. You must be ever so proud of that sleazy, cowardly, remark. I know I would be. Actual STANDARDS in the New Republic. Who would’ve thunk it ? ROTFLOL.

| Posted by brooklyn red
5 of 72 | warn tnr | respond
so you lied?

| Posted by Joe Humphrey
6 of 72 | warn tnr | respond
After four and a half months of utter nonsense about recanting and re-recanting and hearing from many thousands of honest warriors you spend countless words across 14 oages to finally admit that you are standing down from drom the Beauchamp fables. Amazing, simply amazing! You should be ashamed.

| Posted by Chris Christner
7 of 72 | warn tnr | respond
You broke every rule of journalism and in the process slandered our military. At the very least you owe them an apology. If you had a shred of integrity and respect for the reputation of TNR, you’d also submit your resignation. It’s obvious that you waited until the last possible moment to retract Beauchamp’s stories, only doing so now because the new TNR book on Election 08′s just come out. However, regardless of your blame-the-messenger retraction, the Beauchamp affair is still going to hammer your book’s credibility along with that of TNR. As it should.

| Posted by George Croft
8 of 72 | warn tnr | respond
The real culprits are your editors and your management. The anti-soldier stories were “just too good to check” and you eagerly went to press with pure garbage from an anonymous, lying, neophyte writer. Don’t dare blame it all on Beauchamp. He just created the garbage. YOU SERVED IT UP. George Croft Argyle, TX

| Posted by Suspended Disbelief
9 of 72 | warn tnr | respond
Congratulations. You’ve reached the conclusion that the rest of us reached months ago. Good luck with the upcoming staff purge and loss of advertisers.

Flashback: Just wanted to remind you of Foer’s pathetic attempt to “control the story” as exposed in the Army transcripts leaked in October. It’s all about the CYA at TNR:

***
Instant reax:

Patterico: “I don’t think we’ve seen the last of the fallout. In fact, I think it may be just beginning.”
Bob Owens (update – and more from Bob at PJM)
Allah and Bryan
Glenn Reynolds

And watch for reax from Michael Goldfarb at the Weekly Standard, who started the ball rolling and endured much abuse from the TNRites and the nutroots for calling B.S. and tapping open-source intelligence in the blogosphere–especially among milbloggers–to expose the lies, distortions, and attempted cover-up.

More:

Scott Johnson at Power Line dubs TNR’s evasion and blame avoidance “The Fog of Foer.”
Dan Riehl notes Foer’s snitty ad hominem on Matt Sanchez.
Q&O: TNR pulls the eject handle
Karl at Protein Wisdom rips Foer for continued lack of disclosure:

Foer complains about leaks from the Army, but further fails to inform TNR’s readers of the results of the Army’s official investigation, which found, for example, that Beauchamp admitted he did not witness the targeting of dogs and saw only animal bones near Combat Outpost Ellis (except to imply that Beauchamp was coerced into the latter, though even TNR’s version carefully leaves open the more likely possibility that it was only animal bones).

Foer now admits that having Beauchamp’s wife, Elspeth Reed, fact-checking one of his stories was a conflict of interest, but he fails to note that Foer himself injected her plea for Beauchamp to stand by his stories into a September phone call between TNR editors and Beauchamp – which reads much more like pressuring Beauchamp than any of Foer’s innuendo about the Army – even while admitting doing so put him in an “awkward” position. And while Foer reassures TNR readers there are new policies in place to prevent this in the future, he does not mention that Reeve is apparently no longer in the employ of TNR.

Foer also engages throughout in addressing the suspect stories in a disjointed, fragmented narrative, which allows him to avoid having to account for what Beauchamp actually wrote. For example, Foer never states whether TNR has any confidence at all that Beauchamp saw a “Saddam-era dumping ground,” though even TNR’s prior statements on the case suggest that they know it was not.

Of course, at this point, no one had any reason to believe that TNR would be any more straightforward in its modified limited hang-out than it was in its Potemkin re-reporting or its initial publication of the Private’s fables. The only real surprise was that they did even this much, rather than remaining in their bunker, hoping memories of the smears they published would fade. Had Foer chosen to be more open and honest with its readership — even at this late date – I could have offered more than the sound of one hand clapping.

You don’t have to be a Harvard University re searcher to figure out that the media is infected with liberal bias – or to realize that some left-wing journalists will use any means necessary to create ideological narratives that fit their worldview.

The Rathergate debacle at CBS News – in which faked National Guard memos were used to smear President Bush – was an extreme example. But if you look closely, you’ll find everyday examples of Serious Journalists manufacturing the news and concocting social crises. Amazingly, they always manage to make conservatives look racist, intolerant and evil. Funny how that works…

…Welcome to Media Theatrics 101. Instead of simply interviewing folks in the South or staking out real gay couples, ABC News thinks it’s fair and objective to stage-manage social experiments and call it journalism. Next thing you know, they’ll hire celebrity prankster Ashton Kutcher to jump out and yell, “You just got Punk’d!”

Reader Brett from Atlanta e-mails:

You know what’s ironic? Tonight–the very day you have posted this article about ABC hoping to show Southern people as narrow minded bigots–that same network is broadcasting the CMA Awards! The show will do a huge number in the South, and ABC is no doubt charging top dollar to the manufacturers of pickup trucks and jeans to advertise their wares. So at the same time ABC wishes to expose Southerners as bigots, it is wooing them as viewers. Such hypocrisy.

When you don’t feel like covering the news, you manfacture it. Remember the story I broke last spring about NBC News engineering a sting at NASCAR to try and expose fans as anti-Muslim bigots? Well, it looks like the dinosaur networks haven’t learned from the embarrassing backlash to that pathetic episode. Or Rathergate. Or Shattered Glass. Or Janet Cooke. Or Scott Thomas Beauchamp. Etc. etc. etc.

Now, according to the local Fox affiliate in Birmingham, Alabama, it looks like ABC News is engaging in media stage management and Theater of Journalism to expose anti-homosexual bigotry in the South:

ABC is doing a social experiment in Birmingham that includes having same-sex couples show affection for each other in public, according to Birmingham police department sources.

FOX6 first learned about this story from a Southside merchant who pointed out an RV parked at the corner of 20th Street and 11th Avenue South. The merchant said ABC was working on a week-long project to see how people would react to things like public displays of affection by gay and lesbian couples. A FOX6 news reporter approached the RV and talked with an “actor” who said, “Yes, we are working for ABC News.”

The “experiment” is apparently for ABC’s Primetime Live program, which is running a series of undercover stings titled “What Would You Do?”

Welcome to Serious Broadcast Journalism: If you can’t find the video you need to fit the P.C. left narrative, hire actors to make it happen.

Dinosaur network news motto: All the news that’s fit to stage.

***

Here’s more about “What Would You Do?” from a 2005 article on the ABC News site.

Flashback: News sting ideas of the day (these came in after the NASCAR/NBC debacle…feel free to send/add your suggestions for new ABC News ideas):

I wonder if they would consider sending a professor wearing an “I Love W” button and an American flag pin into the faculty lounge at Harvard or some other liberal ivory tower with a hidden camera. I would love to see that experiment. I can’t imagine anyone at NBC doing that one. Maybe John Stossel at ABC, though?

…Perhaps when I get back from deployment, you can follow me around Seattle and see how I get treated wearing my Navy uniform…

…Why don’t you set up some white guy with hidden cameras, put a George Bush T-Shirt on him and have him walk down a street in Pakistan. Or, better yet, have him walk down a street in Detroit. I’ll just bet you could get a lot of bigoted reactions…

…* Wear a pro-life t-shirt to a Women’s Studies class.
* Wear a Halliburton company polo shirt to the Kos Kidz annual blogmeet.
* PUBLISH CARTOONS WITH MOHAMMED IN THEM…

CORRECTION: Make that Totally. Freaking. Believable.

And read this, too.

Back in May, the LA Times asked itself and others: Why does the L.A. Times’ circulation continue to drop?

Hint: Look here…

The LATimes is going to need more than a garden hose to put out this fire.

Update: See all the latest developments at Jules Crittenden’s.

If you are ready to act, go here.

***

Related: Also check out Armed Liberal’s excellent post.

One more Beauchampian musing for you from Gerard van der Leun: Li(f)e imitates Shattered Glass.

And Patterico also ribs Rutten.

Which is more than you can say for Scott Thomas Beauchamp.

***

Foer and company persist in blaming “the Army” for the magazine’s failure to keep its readers apprised of the scandal in a timely, forthcoming manner:

The New Republic is deeply frustrated by the Army’s behavior. TNR has endeavored with good faith to discover whether Beauchamp’s article contained inaccuracies and has repeatedly requested that the Army provide us with documentary evidence that it was fabricated or embellished. Instead of doing this, the Army leaked selective parts of the record—including a conversation that Beauchamp had with his lawyer—continuing a months-long pattern by which the Army has leaked information and misinformation to conservative bloggers while failing to help us with simple requests for documents.

We have worked hard to re-report this piece and will continue to do so. But this process has involved maddening delays compounded by bad faith on the part of at least some officials in the Army. Our investigation has taken far longer than we would like, but it is our obligation and promise to deliver a full account of our findings.

So, TNR has “endeavored with good faith?” Go re-read the transcripts. You be the judge.

***

Update: The bottom line from Bryan Preston…

Foer can spin and twist his conversations with Beauchamp and various Army officers all he wants. He can suggest that the Army is being devious with him, that it’s strong arming Beauchamp, whatever. But if he can’t verify, after all this time, the existence of that mass grave, and since he now has official records documenting that his reporter has lied to somebody, Foer has no choice but to consider Beauchamp’s credibility as beyond repair and his stories as fatally flawed.

And from Allah:

We learned yesterday, as this was crumbling around TNR, that the left considers this story a terribly silly distraction from the “real issues” that they’re, um, no longer covering. Will TNR’s pushback create Strange New Respect for the saga of Scott Beauchamp among our liberal colleagues? Stay tuned!

And Ace makes a good point about Foer’s wildly exaggerated picture of Beauchamp being “threatened” and who’s doing the threatening:

The privileges and freedoms he speaks of are free use of his cell phone and laptop. Certainly Beauchamp would want access to these things, but it’s hardly the case he was being threatened with three years in Leavenworth…

… Foer says that Beauchamp was not free to talk in the Sept 6th call because he was “under duress” from the Army. He doesn’t mention another sort of duress — the fact that Foer himself repeatedly told Beauchamp his wife’s career would be “harmed” unless he re-affirmed the story. He says in the later conversation, where he claims Beauchamp stood by the story, there was no duress from the Army, as the call was unmonitored.

But the duress from Foer — the “harm” that would befall Ellie Reeves — still was there, no? Foer does not provide a transcript of this call — it would be interesting to see if Foer continues making these vague threats — though he almost certainly recorded the conversation himself and could provide it.

But he chooses not to.

***
Related:

Bob Owens:

Foer, as noted in the transcript, has been badgering Beauchamp to release his personal statements made during the course of the investigation. It is obvious in reading the transcript that Beauchamp has no intention of making that a priority. The Army cannot release those documents to TNR without Beauchamp’s authorization.

But there are other documents.

After getting off the phone with CENTCOM’s FOIA office just moments ago, I now know that there are a total of 58 pages of sworn statements that have been collected from Beauchamp’s fellow soldiers and are now on their way to legal review.

I must stress that just because there are 58 pages of statements, much of the information contained in these documents is likely to be heavily redacted. The (leaked) letter of concern, and the (leaked) transcript of the call between Foer, Scoblic, and Beauchamp were also part of that request, but at this point, are somewhat unnecessary other than as housekeeping items.

That leaves us with one other known document remaining, the transcript of the interview of investigating officer Major John Cross by The New Republic, which occurred after my interview with Major Cross, published September 10.

I’ve just submitted a new FOIA request for that information, wondering if those speaking on the The New Republic side of the call will still be employed by the magazine by the time the request is processed.

At this moment, I’d say that both the odds, and the truth as we know it, are against them.

Peggy Noonan:

Journalistically, I was lucky enough to work at CBS News when it was still shaped by the influence of the Murrow boys. They knew and taught that “everyone is entitled to his own opinions”–and they had them–”but not his own facts.” And I miss the rough old boys and girls of the front page, who’d greet FDR with “Snappy suit, Mr. President,” who’d bribe the guard to tell them what the prisoner said on the way to the chair, and who were not rich and important but performed an extremely important social function.

They found out who, what, where, when, why. And they would have looked at the half-baked, overcooked junior Hemingway of Scott Thomas Beauchamp and said, “That sounds like a buncha hooey.”

Michael Yon:

Beauchamp is young; under pressure he made a dumb mistake. In fact, he has not always been an ideal soldier. But to his credit, the young soldier decided to stay, and he is serving tonight in a dangerous part of Baghdad. He might well be seriously injured or killed here, and he knows it. He could have quit, but he did not. He faced his peers. I can only imagine the cold shoulders, and worse, he must have gotten. He could have left the unit, but LTC Glaze told me that Beauchamp wanted to stay and make it right. Whatever price he has to pay, he is paying it…

The commander said I was welcome to talk with Beauchamp, but clearly he did not want anyone else coming at his soldier. LTC Glaze told me that at least one blog had even called for Beauchamp to be killed, which seems rather extreme even on a very bad day. LTC Glaze wants to keep Beauchamp, and hopes folks will let it rest. I’m with LTC Glaze on this: it’s time to let Beauchamp get back to the war.

Allahpundit:

Good for Beauchamp for not walking away. But the only people preventing him from getting back to the war are TNR and, possibly, Beauchamp himself. This goes back to my post yesterday and the two possibilities identified by Ace: either Beauchamp hasn’t released his sworn statements, in which case he’s left TNR in a type of limbo, or else he has released them and TNR’s sitting on them in hopes everyone will forget about this and it’ll go away. Yon’s appeal reads like a plea to bloggers but I’m not sure which bloggers he means. Bob Owens? Michael Goldfarb? TNR can put the whole thing to bed by simply walking away from the story, which it should have done after that first phone call with Beauchamp, or Beauchamp can force them to put it to bed by telling them flat out that he’s no longer standing by the story and they should therefore commence eating shinola. Instead he no-commented them to death and promised to get them those statements, and after six weeks — nothing. Radio silence from all parties.

To be clear, Yon isn’t making excuses for TNR. They’re the guilty parties in his retelling of the story, and no one would disagree, but even so this evil editor/good-but-wayward soldier dynamic he’s trying to create here doesn’t sit right with me. Beauchamp deserves credit for fulfilling his obligation to the military, but what about his obligation to Foer and Scoblic (and to his wife, most of all) not to hang them out to dry with half-baked calumnies against his unit? He made a mistake, says Yon, which is true — but so did Foer. TNR’s lied, true — but not as much as Beauchamp, apparently. They gave Beauchamp a huge break by not only publishing a young writer but putting their trust in him, post-Glass, seemingly sight unseen, and he dumped all over it. Their fact-checking failures and especially their stonewalling after this came out are their fault entirely but let’s not minimize the extent to which they were wronged just because Beauchamp’s still willing to man his post.

Did he? Then why hasn’t TNR published the transcript of that conversation? After all, I’m certain that one of the reporters or editors in the room for that call must have recorded the conversation, if for no other reason than to make sure they had his affirmation on the record. That’s what reporters do when trying to ensure accuracy and verification….right?

Instead, we see today that TNR still has not responded to the release of the Army documentation. No one has even addressed the story at The Plank, TNR’s staff blog. No one, from Martin Peretz on down, has bothered to give an explanation for the transcript in which Foer threatened Beauchamp with his wife’s job if he recanted, or the named soldiers in the Army report who denied Beauchamp’s claims. All Foer can do is to argue — through Kurtz — that he has verified the stories with anonymous sources.

I find it hilariously ironic that Foer refuses to defend himself and TNR in his own magazine, but instead goes whining to Howard Kurtz — at the newspaper that he demanded Beauchamp refuse to engage. I wonder why Kurtz didn’t ask him about that, and ask Foer why he was talking to the Post when he didn’t want Beauchamp to do so. Foer’s hypocrisy knows no bounds.

Update 6:45am Eastern. Here is Howard Kurtz getting spun by Franklin Foer. I love how the editors of The New Republic make themselves so accessible only to hapless journalists incapable of asking the most obvious, simple questions about the magazine’s appalling journalistic malpractice.

Questions like:

So, uh, does this mean your “investigation” is done yet? When do you plan to tell your own readers about the transcripts? Why have you suppressed the existence of the Beauchamp conversation for more than a month? When will you retract your assertion that the military was gagging Beauchamp? Who did you file your FOIA request with and when?

For starters.

Annoyingly, Kurtz completely omits the significance of Beauchamp’s fabricated story about the non-existent disfigured contractor. Here’s what he wrote:

Beauchamp had written that he and other soldiers had taunted a female soldier whose face was badly disfigured. The Army report said every soldier interviewed in Beauchamp’s unit could not recall such a woman and called the account “completely fabricated.”

Hello?

Beauchamp wrote that he had taunted the woman while on the battlefront in Iraq–supposedly a sign of how war dehumanized him and his fellow soldiers. Except when challenged, Beauchamp then claimed that it happened in Kuwait. Before he had gone to war. And neither the military nor TNR can find anyone who will step forward publicly to corroborate this tall tale.

Someone send Howard a cluebat.

Another snort-worthy load of you-know-what from Foer:

While Beauchamp “didn’t stand by his stories in that conversation, he didn’t recant his stories,” Foer said in an interview. “He obviously was under considerable duress during that conversation, with his commanding officer in the room with him.”

While the discussion “was extremely frustrating and engendered doubts,” Foer said, Beauchamp defended his story in a subsequent conversation that was conducted with no superiors present.

And Foer planned to tell his readers about this…when?

Update 10:18am Eastern. My friend Mark Steyn gets it. Phew.

Update 8:03pm Eastern. TNR = Laughingstock.

Ed Morrissey makes this very, very simple for the uninitiated: “Foer can cast this in conspiracy theories all week long. In the end, TNR had all of the information it needed to conclude that Beauchamp lied to them and to their readers. Foer and TNR chose to keep it to themselves.”

Let me put it even more simply: Beauchamp lied, TNR’s credibility died (again).

Update 6:50pm Eastern. Franklin Foer comes out from under his desk to whine to the NY Observer about the transcripts being leaked. All of this damning transcript evidence of TNR’s attempts to cover up, and what does Foer do? He attacks the military again:

“It’s maddening to see the Army selectively leak to the Drudge Report things that we’ve been trying to obtain from them through Freedom of Information Act requests,” Mr. Foer said. “This fits a pattern in this case where the army has leaked a lot of stuff to right wing blogs.”

Mr. Foer said TNR had been trying since July to get access to some of the documents Mr. Drudge posted, but that the Army had not cooperated.

A reader e-mails: “Pathetic…he was waiting for access to his own conversation?”

Moreover, what is Foer’s evidence that it was the military that leaked the transcripts to Drudge?

What is it? Inquiring minds want to know.

The ship sinks and sinks and sinks.

Update: “If” they were wronged?

Update 5:30pm Eastern. My friend Kathryn Lopez misses the point entirely, I’m afraid.

I repeat Ace’s distillation for those who have only superficial knowledge of this scandal: Remember: TNR Hid The Existence Of This Phone Call From The World.

To paraphrase the Clintons: It’s the cover-up, stupid.

And TNR’s sliming of The Weekly Standard.

And TNR’s false allegations that the military was censoring Beauchamp.

And TNR’s pathetic attempts to wrest control of the story from Beauchamp as he attempted to tell other media outlets that he was not being gagged, use Beauchamp’s wife as a wedge, and refusal to acknowledge the truth of their journalistic malpractice.

Get it?

Update 4:15pm Eastern. I saved the transcripts. You can access them and read them in their entirety for yourselves here, here, and here.

The Jawa Report has also posted the docs.

Meanwhile, Bryan Preston put in a call to Franklin Foer. He’s in a meeting at the moment. He’s a very, very busy man, you know.

Update 3:50pm Eastern. The Weekly Standard’s Michael Goldfarb, who got the ball rolling over the summer on this story, speaks:

It is now clear that somewhere along the way, TNR stopped acting in good faith and started doing damage control. They cited a Bradley expert who purportedly confirmed that the vehicle could be operated as Beauchamp described. But when Bob Owens tracked down said expert, BAE spokesmen Doug Coffey, he denied making any such statement, saying that TNR had mischaracterized his comments and that the editors had never shown him Beauchamp’s stories. He added that having read the stories, they were indeed “suspicious,” and that he did not believe the Bradley could be operated as described. TNR never acknowledged Coffey’s later statements or its apparent misrepresentation of his earlier statement.

And then came our report that Scott Beauchamp was no longer standing by his stories. The editors at TNR responded to this report by insinuating that THE WEEKLY STANDARD was not a credible source. They also accused the Army of “stonewalling” and preventing them from speaking with their author. That was on August 10. Bob Owens subsequently reported that TNR spoke to Beauchamp on September 7–the transcript now posted on Drudge–but TNR never returned to the subject, despite their claims of a “commitment to the truth” in that August 10 statement.

The documents posted by Drudge reveal that the New Republic’s editors have known for several weeks that the central anecdote of the story was untrue, that the other anecdotes were deeply suspect, and that the author was no longer standing by his work. And yet they remained publicly silent even though they had long ago promised to be open and forthcoming on the matter. Worse still, they asked Beauchamp to cancel pending interviews with the Washington Post and Newsweek, lest their complicity in Beauchamp’s slanders come to light.

Foer attacked his magazine’s critics as “reckless” and “ideologically motivated,” at one point even demanding an apology from the bloggers who did so much to advance this story and find out the truth of the matter. He now has more than a little ‘splaining to do.

Meanwhile, the Drudge link is now gone and NRO’s The Corner is oddly downplaying the transcripts and waiting for TNR’s talking points. From Peter Beinart, perhaps?

I’m not sure how you make “Let us control the way this story proceeds” and “Ellie sent me an e-mail to tell you that it’s the most important thing in the world for her that you say that you didn’t recant” sound less damning than they are. Good luck.

Update 2:51pm Eastern. After apologizing to its readers and advertisers, TNR editor Franklin Foer needs to apologize to the Army and our troops for continuing to suggest that the military stonewalled while the magazine obstructed the truth. Then, it seems to me, he will need to apologize to Beauchamp’s wife for cravenly exploiting her to try to save his sorry ass.

I didn’t think there could be a bigger crapweasel than Scott Thomas Beauchamp in this mess.

Franklin Foer wins, hands down.

Bob Owens weighs in: “Now that they have been posted on the public record, these disclosures should end careers at The New Republic.”

Ace of Spades, who was vilified for doing digging no one else would do, boils it down:

Remember: TNR Hid The Existence Of This Phone Call From The World. We only even knew previously that this phone call had taken place because a source of Confederate Yankee’s told him about it. TNR did not mention it. Even after it was disclosed, TNR did not comment on it, nor explain their reasons for withholding information about a fiction they had printed as truth. Reading the transcript, I can see why someone whose reputation and career depended on the story being true could convince himself the story had not been fully recanted. Foer could tell himself, “The guy is evasive, there are officers listening, he can’t say anything. So I can’t take this as a retraction.” I can see how he could tell himself that.

However, I cannot see where he convinced himself he could hide the existence of the call from the world, nor report to TNR’s readers his reasons for doubting the phone call proved anything. TNR could have said: “A recent phone call with Scott Beauchamp leaves us in a no man’s land where Beauchamp will neither re-affirm nor recant the stories to us. We suspect he is worried about his career in the military and possible punishment. He will not say he is, however. Under these circumstances, we must provisionally retract the stories, though we have no firm evidence they are false. But with a compromised writer also unable to affirm they’re true, neither can we stand by these stories.”

That would have been a (mostly) honest appraisal of the situation, at least from their own need-to-believe point of view.

Instead, however, rather than accurately and honestly describing Beauchamp’s complete refusal to affirm the stories as true, and offering their reasons for doubting this refusal to affirm to be conclusive, they instead simply withheld facts in their possession from the world and pretended the call never happened at all.

Update 2:45pm Eastern. Another snort-worthy moment from the phone conference transcript–watch Franklin Foer take umbrage at being lumped in with the rest of “the media:”

Ridiculous indeed.

Part III of Drudge’s posting of the leaked transcripts is the official Army investigative report dated July 31, 2007. It is thorough, detailed, and damning. The findings are no surprise to anyone who has followed the story in the blogosphere:

Update 2:18pm Eastern. Glenn Reynolds searches for reaction from the TNR. Silence so far. It’s the sound of heads getting ready to roll. Also: I find it curious how TNR’s Peter Beinart never brought this up in his videoblog show with Jonah Goldberg. Must have just slipped his mind over the last month. Meanwhile, what apt timing: Commenter Capitano notes that the Independent Film Channel will be airing “Shattered Glass,” the saga of TNR’s first journalistic internal combustion, twice on Friday. Grab the popcorn.

Speaking of that movie, here’s Allahpundit’s reaction to the first part of the phone conference transcript: “It reads, I kid you not, like a scene from ‘Shattered Glass.’ All that’s missing is, ‘Are you mad at me, Frank?’”

Heh.

Update: Okay. The transcripts are posted in three parts. Here are the participants in the September 7, 2007 phone conference between Scott Thomas Beauchamp and TNR…

At the very start of the call, Foer asks if Beauchamp has any restrictions. Beauchamp replies: “Other than OPSEC violations, I can talk about anything I want.” In direction contradiction to the “Army is gagging Beauchamp” propaganda from TNR, the transcript makes clear that it is Beauchamp’s choice not to talk to the media:

The conversation turns to Beauchamp’s wife, Ellie, then a reporter-researcher for the magazine, and Beauchamp’s foot-dragging on providing statements backing up his stories:

Now, here is a truly disgusting moment. Beauchamp lets TNR know he wants to talk to other news outlets to tell them he is NOT being censored. And what does TNR do? It attempts to censor him. Franklin Foer, and I quote, leans on Beauchamp to “let us control the way this story proceeds.”

Oh, and here’s more of crapweasel Foer using Beauchamp’s wife to try and extract corroborating statements from Beauchamp:

***

Wow. Someone leaked the Scott Thomas Beauchamp transcripts to Drudge. I’m reading through them now. Stand by.

Bob Owens, who has been on this story like white on the rice from the get-go and broken ground the MSM refused to all along the way, summed up the sorry state of TNR two days ago:

Far from intellectual honesty, the senior editor staff of The New Republic have proven their intractable corruption. Editor Franklin Foer, Executive Editor J. Peter Scoblic, and Senior Editor Jason Zengerle failed to do their jobs as editors, published a false story (though there are indications that all three of the author’s stories were fabricated, in whole or in part), more than likely lied when they claimed the allegations made had been fact-checked prior to publication, and then ran a false investigation that involved misrepresenting the claims of at least one expert, while attempting to bury the story and exerting influence over the author to cancel interviews with other interested publications…

…Details will continue to trickle out revealing just how deceptive the editorial staff at The New Republic has been to its readership and critics alike, and once those details are made public, I very much doubt that Franklin Foer, Peter Scoblic, and Jason Zengerle will be able to survive the coming purge.

As Scott Johnson has observed repeatedly, “It’s the cover-up that kills you.”

***

Michael Goldfarb and the Weekly Standard first launched the salvos that may sink TNR entirely here.

Flashback: Yoo-hoo. Has anyone seen Franklin Foer?