Mickey Kaus -
Kristof: I might have gotten it right! Jack Shafer finally provokes Nicholas Kristof into confronting the flaws in his initial reporting of Joseph Wilson's now-famous trip to Niger--reporting that set in motion the whole meshugaas surrounding the outing of Wilson's wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame. There are two main flaws in Kristof's initial Wilson columns.
Flaw #1: They give the impression that Cheney's office sent Wilson to Niger or was even aware of his trip.
Flaw #2: They say that Wilson exposed the Niger/Saddam/yellowcake documents as forgeries in early 2002--as opposed to calling into question the existence of the deal the documents allegedly documented. In fact, the documents themselves weren't examined (and soon declared forgeries) until late October 2002.
Kristof's response is on TimesSelect--non-members like me can't read it, even if we go down to the store and buy a copy of the NYT print edition. ** But kf operatives have obtained a copy (and Tom Maguire has long excerpts). In many ways, it's a model NYT columnists' correction. The paper has come in for a lot of criticism lately, but Kristof shows how it can be done. It's really not that difficult--there are five simple steps:
1. Bond with your base: Kristof introduces the subject of his mistakes by noting, "Some bloggers on the right have been fuming about the column ... " Not only are Kristof's critics conservative and partisan, they're overexcitably so--they're "fuming"! Of course it will turn out that the fuming conservatives are right and Kristof was wrong--but that's all the more reason to make sure his readers know whom to root for right from the start.
2.: Be picky about what you're not buying: Regarding Flaw #1, Kristof notes, "One of the criticisms of the right is that it sounds [in Kristof's May 6 column] as if the vice president dispatched Wilson to Niger, but I don't buy that objection." He doesn't buy it because on May 6 he only said "the vice president's office asked for an investigation of the uranium deal," and that this prompted Wilson to somehow be "dispatched to Niger." Of course, since Kristof never cited anyone else as doing the dispatching, he left the distinct impression that Cheney's office was the dispatcher. And, as Maguire notes, a second Kristof column on June 12 says Wilson had been sent "at the behest of the office of Vice President Dick Cheney," which is a good bit wronger than the May 6 formulation--but which Kristof conveniently doesn't mention. [Emph. added]
3. Keep hope alive!
"[Wilson] reported to the CIA and State Department that the information was unequivocally wrong and that the documents have been forged.
The envoy reported, for example, that a Niger minister whose signature was on one of the documents had in fact been out of office for more than a decade. In addition, the Niger mining program was structured so that the uranium diversion had been impossible. The envoy's debunking of the forgery was passed around the administration and seemed to be accepted -- except that President Bush and the State Department kept citing it anyway."
This is not a passage that's held up well. Kristof has no idea whether Wilson reported that the signature was that of an out of office minister, it turns out. Nor was Wilson's oral report "passed around the administration" and "accepted" by the administration, at least its more neoconnish precincts. Wilson may not even have been that "unequivocal" in his conclusions, which--remember--addressed whether the deal went down and not the forged documents themselves.
A less experienced correctioner might have written something like, "The column was wrong to imply that Wilson debunked the documents as opposed to the deal, or that it was specifcally his report that higher administrations officials saw or accepted."
Instead, Kristof notices something: Wilson might have cast doubt on the forged signatures without seeing them, if the name of the person signing, which was wrong, was known (even if the U.S. didn't have the actual documents). So Kristof writes
"[W]hile it's possible that he reported that the signatures were wrong, that seems to me unlikely."
This is a terrific formulation. I'll have to remember it the next time I need to weasel out of a bit of sloppiness. In one breath, it says "Hey, I might still be right!" while drawing praise for its fairminded admission that this possibility is "unlikely." It's so much more complex and interesting than a vulgar, flatfooted word like "wrong."
4. Equal time for the planes that land safely: "As for the quote about the State Department and bamboozlement, I think that's [sic] stands up well." I hadn't seen any fuming on the right about that quote, but it's good to be reminded of a sentence in the column that wasn't wrong.
5. In the end, it doesn't matter if the Hitler Diaries are real or not! Kristof grudgingly acknowledges that Wilson "may have exaggerated how strongly he debunked the documents," but then produces this extraordinary paragraph:
More generally, I find the attacks on a private citizen like Wilson rather distasteful. Sure, he injected himself into the public arena with his op-ed column and TV appearances, and so some scrutiny is fair. But I figure it's more important to examine and probe the credibility of, say, the vice president than a retired ambassador.
Hmm. Is it also distasteful to attack a publicity shy private citizen like, say, Dr. Steven Hatfill? O.K., cheap shot! But does anyone of authority at the NYT endorse Kristof's sentiment? It's allright to scrutinize federal officials but actively "distasteful" to scrutinize former officials who lead loud public election-year campaigns against them? Is Kristof suggesting that he should be let off the hook because it was more important to blast Cheney than get Wilson right? (Yes.)
It's also more important to "examine and probe the credibility" of the vice president than that of the Attorney General or the Governor of Mississippi. Does this mean those other officials get a pass from columnists?
P.S.: Kristof shouldn't be ashamed of his columns. He broke an important story. The first accounts of an event often get non-trivial details wrong. But why not just admit it when that appens? Is it because admitting it would also be admitting that Cheney and Libby and Rove had some legitimate reasons to want to set the record stright on Wilson back in 2003?
P.P.S.: I ran into Kristof at a party during the recent O.N.A. conference in New York. It's almost always a bad idea to introduce yourself to people you've attacked, I've found, unless they are bloggers. (Bloggers develop foot-thick skins and appreciate the attack instinct.) Kristof was flamboyantly friendly, maybe with a not-so-concealed undercurrent of "F--- Y--." And while it's possible I wasn't smarmy, that seems unlikely.
** --Here Kristof may have hit on the marketing breakthrough that will save TimesSelect. Call it TruthSelect. Here's the plan: Have the columns in the print edition contain flagrant inaccuracies. Figure out what the accurate version of events is, but print the corrected, accurate versions only on the restricted, premium portion of the Web site, where people have to pay $49.95 to get at them. The B.S. is free. The truth you have to pay for! It's so simple and intuitive it's genius.
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