Frums piece today answers Hersh.
MAR. 11, 2003: RESENTMENT IN PARIS; DISGRACE IN NEW YORK
'Ello Paris
I?m in Minneapolis, Minnesota, but thanks to the miracle of modern satellite technology, I was able to join yesterday in a French television program that pitted former French foreign minister Hubert Vedrine against a line-up of North American sparring partners. Vedrine too was in his own way highly impressive: poised, well-spoken, and beguilingly frank about his hostility to the United States. The
book he cowrote a couple of years back with Dominique Moisi is full of unconvincing humbug about human rights and France?s special symbolic significance in the world. On television, Vedrine dispenses with all the pretense and gets straight to the point: French ambition, resentment, and envy of the United States.
I couldn?t take notes during the conversation and the transcript is not yet posted to Nexis, if it ever will be, so I?ll have to recall Vedrine?s words from memory. I was struck by one thing above all ? how little he talked about Iraq, the show?s purported subject. Neither Saddam Hussein?s weapons of mass destruction nor Saddam?s cruelty and tyranny interested Vedrine much. What fascinated him instead was the United States ? and the need, as he repeatedly said, for the nations of the world to join together to contain and control it. In his press conference last week, President Bush described France as a ?friend.? Vedrine spoke about the United States in the way that states more typically speak of their enemies.
Vedrine?s words were illustrated by three or four video clips intended to offer the French television viewer some context. One clip, on the evolution of American power, started with some quick shots of D-Day and the proceeded through B-52s dropping bombs on Vietnamese rice paddies, weeping Vietnamese widows and orphans, vast sheets of dollars spitting out of the presses of the Mint, Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, McDonald?s arches, and President Bush addressing Congress on September 20. Another, on American religion, showed the Christian Coalition, Pat Robertson, and elderly white people in absurd hats proudly discussing their disdain for Muslims. It was rather as if an American TV show produced a video clip about France that began with Marshall Petain, cut to scenes of torture from the Battle of Algiers, a reeking pissoir, politicians accepting bribes, and rioting truck drivers smashing windows to protest France?s hopeless inability to compete on world markets.
After an hour of this, I made a personal vow: Never, ever again will I permit anyone to disparage in my hearing Americans? ignorance of the rest of the world. Compared to what the French are getting from their media, Americans are bloody Baedekers.
A Disgrace
I hate to draw any additional attention to it, but it must be said that Seymour Hersh?s piece in yesterday?s New Yorker was a disgrace even by Hersh?s own low standards. Out of the fact that Richard Perle ate lunch in January 2003 in Marseilles with two Saudi businessmen, Hersh has concocted a tissue of conspiracy so elaborate ? and yet simultaneously so shapeless and gauzy ? that it looks more like the nightgown of some 1930s film star than a magazine article in a fact-checked publication.
All three participants in the January 2003 lunch agree that the purpose of the lunch was to discuss a plan to avoid war in Iraq by enticing Saddam Hussein to go into exile. It?s not difficult to understand why the Saudis would want to discuss such an idea with the highly influential Perle ? or why Perle, who volunteers his services to the government as chairman of the President?s Defense Policy Review Board, would want to listen.
But where you or I might see the useful exchange of information and opinions, Hersh sees skullduggery. At least, he seems to see skullduggery: his piece is written in so convoluted a way that it is almost impossible to discern what exactly he is trying to see.
After a few close readings, though, I get the idea. Hersh wants to insinuate that Perle was lured to the meeting by the possibility of winning investment dollars for a company with which he is associated.
Now let's go to the scoreboard, and test Hersh's thesis against Hersh's own facts.
Did Richard Perle or any company with which he is associated accept any money from Hersh?s Saudi businessmen? By Hersh's own account: No.
Was Richard Perle or any company with which he is associated offered money by Hersh?s Saudi businessmen? Again by Hersh's own account: No.
Was a Saudi investment in any of Richard Perle?s companies discussed or even mentioned at the lunch that so interests Hersh? Hersh acknowledges that all three participants agree: No.
Would such an investment have been improper if it had been discussed? Despite Hersh's heavy breathing, the article has to concede that the answer is once more No : Richard Perle is a private citizen, who serves the U.S. governmen without pay, and is entitled to earn a living so long as he avoids conflicts of interest - of which Hersh could show none.
In other words, Hersh?s big scoop amounts to this: Richard Perle met with two rich Saudis in January to discuss the future of Iraq. Although it would not have been improper for the three men also to discuss their businesses, they did not in fact do so. Period, end of article.
In one of the busiest news weeks of the past couple of decades, surely the editors of the New Yorker could have found something more relevant to publish than Hersh?s content-free paranoia?
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