“Hubris”–10 Years Later, Run-up to the Iraq War Still Shadows the Media & the U.S.

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Tonight MSNBC will broadcast “Hubris: Selling the Iraq War,” narrated by Rachel Maddow, based on the 2006 book of the same name by Michael Isikoff and David Corn. Coming nearly ten years after the US invaded Iraq, on March 19, 2003, I’ll be watching with great interest.

Politics of TruthI retain vivid recall of how the Bush administration pushed the country, and as much of the world as it could hector along with them, into invading that country. It was a mad, misguided rush, one that I was upset about at the time, and soon after became involved with personally and professionally. In July 2003, after Valerie Plame’s role as a CIA official was revealed in a notorious column by Robert Novak, I contacted Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, Plame’s husband. In the months before the invasion of Iraq, he had become a vocal critic of the rush to war, publishing a number of Op-Ed columns that drew on his experience of twenty-five years as an American diplomat, including his service as the last American official to meet with Saddam Hussein before the beginning of the Gulf War in 1991. In my role as an editorial executive with Carroll & Graf Publishers I was referred to Wilson by publishing friend, Barbara Monteiro. I contacted Joe and found he was interested in writing a book that would chronicle his years as an American foreign service officer; more recent events involving his trip to Niger, where he was sent by the CIA to investigate the claim that Iraq had sought yellowcake from that African country; and the unprecedented exposure of his wife’s CIA employment. Joe, as I soon came to know him, agreed to the offer I made, a contract was quickly signed, and he began diligently working on the manuscript.

Fortunately, when Joe retired from the State Department a few years before the war fever he had sat for a series of lengthy interviews with an interlocutor from State–a good custom at the agency–setting his memories down in a proper oral history. He drew on this aide-memoir as he composed the diplomatic memoir that made up about 1/3 of the final manuscript. As for his trip to Niger, the positions he took in opposition to the Bush administration while they were twisting intelligence and co-opting media during he run-up to the war,  and events after the invasion, including the outing of his wife, he had little need of reminders. Joe delivered a very readable manuscript, and with a team of colleagues at Carroll & Graf I edited this draft, and Joe made key revisions to it. Meantime, we also kept a keen eye on breaking developments in the investigation in to how and why Valerie’s CIA employment had become a subject that administration officials felt free to discuss openly with reporters. Getting the manuscript ready for the printer was like aiming an arrow at a moving target.

The launch for the book, The Politics of Truth–A Diplomat’s Memoir: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife’s CIA Identity, was in early May 2004, less than a year after Novak’s fateful column. Joe went on the TODAY show, Charlie Rose, and he did a ton of public radio shows. I went with him to many of those interviews, sat in green rooms with him, fancy and plain. It was as cool when he did Democracy Now with Amy Goodman, as when we went to Rockefeller Center one morning before 7 AM, to do TODAY . His most interesting TV appearance was on “Countdown with Keith Olbermann,” when KO shared with Joe and the audience White House talking points supposedly rebutting the book. These had been sent to virtually all news outlets, including even to programs like Countdown, ones that weren’t having any of the BS from the administration. Olbermann brandished the sheaf of talking points, like a sword. With Joe’s opposition to the war, and most of all the fact he’d been to Niger and vigorously debunked the fraudulent yellowcake claim, Joe had stepped across a tripwire that loosed Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby like a pack of dogs, with Karl Rove and Ari Fleischer chasing close behind. None of their talking points refuted Joe’s claims. John Dean gave the book a great review in the New York Times Book Review and it became a national hardcover bestseller in the Times and Publishers Weekly for about six weeks. This was Dean’s opening paragraph:

“THIS is a riveting and all-engaging book. Not only does it provide context to yesterday’s headlines, and perhaps tomorrow’s, about the Iraq war and about our politics of personal destruction, but former Ambassador Joseph Wilson also tells captivating stories from his life as a foreign service officer with a long career fostering the development of African democracies, and gives us a behind-the-scenes blow-by-blow of the run-up to the 1991 Persian Gulf war. As the top American diplomat in Baghdad, Wilson was responsible for the embassy, its staff and the lives of other Americans in the region – not to mention the freeing of hostages in Kuwait. He goes on to relate his eye-to-eye encounter with the wily sociopath Saddam Hussein; his return home to be greeted as a ‘true American hero’ by President George H. W. Bush; his stint advising America’s top military commander in Europe; and his time as head of the African affairs desk of Bill Clinton’s National Security Council, where he assembled the president’s historic trip to Africa while the ”Starr inquisition” into the Monica Lewinsky affair developed. Along the way he fell in love with and married a C.I.A. covert operative – a ”’willowy blonde, resembling a young Grace Kelly.”’

I should add the book was also a plea for Americans to be actively engaged in their citizenship, and to be unafraid if it became necessary to call one’s government to account. In 2010 The Politics of  Truth and Valerie’s 2008 book Fair Game: How a Top CIA Agent was Betrayed by Her Own Government, were jointly adapted for the feature film, “Fair Game,” with Sean Penn and Naomi Watts. I saw Joe and Valerie in NYC for a premiere reception and we have remained friends, more so than other authors I’ve published over the years. I just heard from Joe today. He and Valerie sat for interviews with the MSNBC producers and they will also be watching “Hubris” tonight. I hope you will be, too. Please feel free to leave comments here about the program, this post, and this period in our recent history. Joe and Valerie played a significant role in these events, bringing the Bush administration before the judgment of history for its deceptions. I am proud of the role I had in bringing their story before the public. To read about other aspects of this case, especially the federal trial of Scooter Libby for his obstruction of justice, and the book I brought out in 2008, The United States v. I. Lewis Libby, along with Patrick Fitzgerald’s legacy as a federal prosecutor, please see this post.

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Two NYC Mayors, Falsely Lionized/Part II

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Since last October when I wrote about what I view as the false lionization of New York City mayors Bloomberg and Giuliani by much of the national media, I’ve kept an eye out for stories of their conduct in office that underscores the points I made in that post last fall, when I wrote this paragraph:

“As mayor, Rudolph Giuliani was a daily irritant in the city, continually choosing confrontation over conciliation, seldom missing a chance to stoke the embers of urban enmity–between the police and the people; black and white citizens; between Manhattanites and residents in the other boroughs. On and on it went, year after year. When Abner Louima was sodomized by members of the NYPD, a word of apology never crossed that mayor’s lips. The same was true when Amadou Diallo was shot by police. Giuliani picked fights with museums and routinely showed contempt for free speech and free expression. It was like being trapped in a room with an unremittingly argumentative neighbor.”

I go on to say that after 9/11 it was as if national reporters hadn’t ever read one of the reams of story on Rudy’s meanness and divisiveness. Please note, it was often different for many hometown NY-based reporters, who tended to cover his high drama hijinks more honestly. So I perked right up today, when I saw this tweet from NY Times reporter Michael Powell::


 

I’ve now read that story, co-bylined with reporter Ross Buettner, headlined “In Matters Big and Small, Crossing Giuliani Had a Price,” in which they reported on the mayor’s vindictiveness in striking back at people he considered his enemies. As stated in the tweet, one of the people against whom Giuliani unleashed one of his many vendettas was Richard Murphy, whose recent death, marked this week by a NYT obituary, probably prompted Powell to tweet about the still pertinent article, a litany of abuse of power and petty payback in which Giuliani administration officials painted Mr. Murphy–formerly a youth services advocate in the administration of Mayor Dinkins, preceding Guliani–as corrupt, though there was no basis for this insinuation. They even bad-mouthed him to a prospective employer in California, a job he then wasn’t offered. From the 2008 article:

“I was soiled merchandise—the taint just lingers,’ Mr. Murphy said in a recent interview. Not long after, a major foundation recruited Mr. Murphy to work on the West Coast. The group wanted him to replicate his much-honored concept of opening schools at night as community centers. A senior Giuliani official called the foundation—a move a former mayoral official confirmed on the condition of anonymity for fear of embarrassing the organization—and the prospective job disappeared. ‘He goes to people and makes them complicit in his revenge,’ Mr. Murphy said.”

As for Mayor Bloomberg, even while supporting some of his initiatives, such as his advocacy of stricter gun regulations and the installation of more bike lanes around the city, his anti-democratic hubris in arranging city law to permit himself a third term continues to place him under a cloud. His State of the City address last week was a model of Bloombergian megalomania, with the Brooklyn Nets cheerleaders dancing before he took to the podium, where pennants and balloons festooned the Barclays Center. The colossally nervy message of his speech, according to this Feb. 13 NYT article, was that after he leaves his office, the city may be taken over by special interests, as if we’ve been free of them the past decade he’s held office.

“In an unabashed and relentless tribute to his own municipal stewardship, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Thursday declared victory over 12 years of ‘obstructionists’ and ‘naysayers’ who sought to block his vision for New York City, and warned that an era of political independence might leave City Hall when he did. From the floor of the Barclays Center in Brooklyn—itself a monument to his ambitious and controversial development agenda—Mr. Bloomberg delivered his final State of the City address with a vow not to retreat into a state of ribbon-cutting resignation. . . . ‘The special interests and campaign donors have never had less power than they’ve had over the past 11 years,’ he said, alluding to his ability, because of his personal wealth, to refuse campaign donations. ‘And this year, we’re going to show them just how true that is . . . . ‘Given all the politics and special interests, if we don’t do it this year, it may never get done,’ he said of his proposed rezoning plan for the area around Grand Central Terminal, intended to encourage the construction of modern towers.”

So, a mayor who’s been a ceaseless proponent of ever-more development and an ally of to real estate interests, claims the city may suffer once his stewardship ends. To this malarkey, I echo these comments, quoted in the story on the Barclays Center extravaganz:

“’He still doesn’t understand that the city was here before him and will be here after he leaves,’ said Bill de Blasio, the public advocate and a Democratic candidate for mayor. ‘I heard a lot of creating temples to his greatness.’”

While I believe that the media have often contributed to the false lionization of these mayors, I am grateful to reporters Powell and Buettner, and the Timesmen who wrote the story on the State of the City speech, Michael M. Grynbaum and Michael Barbaro.

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The Washington Post, Slouching Toward Irrelevance

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April Update: As I anticipated below, the Washington Post did eliminate the position of ombudsman and replaced it with a down-scaled “reader representative.” The new rep is Doug Feaver, who was invited to take the part-time job and brought out of retirement by Post editor Fred Hiatt, author of some truly horrible Post editorials during the run-up to the Iraq War. Craig Silverman of Regret the Error recently interviewed Feaver for poynter.org. Unlike ombudspersons who work independently from a newspaper’s editors, Feaver conceded to Silverman that “people in the newsroom will always get a heads up about what he’s looking into.” While blowing the whistle on newsroom mistakes is not part of the new post’s mandate, at least Feaver won’t be harboring career ambitions. Maybe he’ll be a bit more independent as a result, or maybe I’m just trying to find a bright side in an otherwise gloomy development at the Post.
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Though I don’t live in Washington, D.C., I’ve been a reader of the Washington Post for many years. I read it online and will buy the paper when I can find it in NYC, even though I’ve long been disappointed in some of its editorial stances, particularly over the build-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, as articulated by Fred Hiatt, the newspaper’s editorial page editor. It was also a terrible move when in 2008 they let Dan Froomkin go from washingtonpost.com, where he’d long assembled White House Watch, a daily aggregation of news about the executive branch.

My latest disappointment with the top paper in the nation’s capitol is that, according to media reporter, Harry Jaffe of the Washingtonian, they are evidently thinking of eliminating the post of ombudsman at the news organization. The ombudsman, or public editor as the job is described at the New York Times, is a key person who serves as a go-between readers and the management of a news outlet.  They are often the only person in a news organization where readers concerned about errors and biased reporting can turn to for redress or clarification. Virtually all news orgs fill this position–from PBS to NPR to the Toledo Blade, to dozens of others–and do it in such a way that the ombudsman is insulated from lobbying and pressures from the newsroom, since it’s his/her job to call out editors and reporters when they make mistakes. At the Times, Margaret Sullivan currently holds the job of public editor. According to Jaffe, the contract for Patrick Pexton, the Post‘s current ombudsman, expires March 1, and Fred Hiatt is making no promises about replacing him:

“’We are in the process of thinking about whether we want to replace Pat with no changes in the role or do it differently,” . . .  Hiatt wrote in an e-mail. “We have not made any decisions.’”

Sounds to me that the position of ombudsman is on its way out at the Washington Post, unless some public pressure is brought to bear on Hiatt over the next couple weeks. H/t Dan Froomkin, @froomkin, who tweeted about Jaffe’s column this morning.

 

 

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#FridayReads, Feb 15, “Worth Dying For,” a Jack Reacher novel by Lee Child

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#FridayReads, Feb 15, “Worth Dying For,” a Jack Reacher novel by Lee Child. I’ve been hearing about Child for quite a while, and now have finally picked up one of his books.  It’s a corker, I can see why they’re so popular. Reacher is a marauding justice-seeker who knows no limits, physical or psychological, in avenging those who’ve been wronged. In this case, it’s about justice for an 8-year old girl who went missing 25 years before the primary events in this story, with her disappearance having gone unsolved all this time. Reacher shows up in a desolate Nebraska county unsuspectingly, and soon gets drawn in to a tangled web with the corrupt Duncan family at the center of it all. The violence–and there’s quite a bit of it with Reacher being one of the toughest badasses I’ve ever come across in suspense fiction–is thick and visceral, and though very realistic, somehow hasn’t made me avert my eyes, figuratively or literally. It’s a bit like the mayhem in a comic book–thunderous and full of punch. Still, unlike the Road Runner, who always gets up again after having an anvil land on him, the blows sustained by Reacher’s opponents leave them down for the count.Reacher backReacher front

As usual, also reading book proposals from prospective author clients, in this case, a manuscript about the recently excavated Richard the III, translated into English from Dutch. Timely, and if good enough, could be something publishable here in North America, and perhaps in other English-speaking countries.

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Observing World Radio Day, Feb. 13

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For years I’ve been a fan of listening to the radio, and that’s only grown over the past couple years, with the welcome option of being able to listen to distant stations over the Internet. Although radio remains a terrestially-based news, information, music, and cultural medium, innovations and apps such as TuneInRadio mean it is no longer limited to the reach of a signal and the sensitivity of an antenna, much as I also enjoy that kind of listening. Nowadays I may as readily listen on my IPod Touch or my IPad to a radio station from Wellington, New Zealand, Winnipeg, Canada, or Cleveland, Ohio, as I listen to a station like WNYC, here in my home base of New York City.

I was excited when I heard this morning (on the radio) that UNESCO had “declared Feb. 13 World Radio Day to recognize the crucial role radio plays in organizing and informing communities.” For an hour this afternoon NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” devoted their program to discussing the role that radio plays in people’s lives in many different countries. The Twitter hashtag #WorldRadioDay has gotten a work out all day today, including in the above tweet of mine. Did you listen to radio today?

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Is There a Re-Sale Market for Ebooks? Should There Be One?

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Before you rush to answer “no” to the first question, consider that Amazon.com recently applied for a patent in this corner of the emerging digital marketplace. That development was covered by the publication Motherboard, in a piece headlined, “Used Ebooks, the Ridiculous Idea that Could Also Destroy the Publishing Industry,” and in a sign this may have the potential to catch the reading public’s eye, that story was quickly linked to by the Huffington Post Books section. There are many people in book publishing who believe that if a resale market for ebooks is established it will unavoidably engender a race to the bottom in ebook pricing, causing not just disruption but real damage in the entire book world, digital and print. And, yet, notwithstanding the impulse to make wry jokes about somehow shopworn ebooks with torn covers, or the resale condition of dog-eared ebooks, a company exists called ReDigi that is trying to create what it calls “the world’s first pre-owned digital marketplace.” They say they are working to enable readers of ebooks and consumers of digital music to resell books and music they choose to no longer own.

Today, Publishers Weekly, in one of the Executive Roundtable forums they hold every few months, provided their podium to John Ossenmacher, CEO of ReDigi. We were told early on by moderator Joe Wikert that several journalists were in the room, and that the day’s conversation would be on the record. I was glad about this since I’m a blogger and I report on these issues too. Thing is, I would hardly have been willing to consider it off the record had Ossenmacher insisted on that. Though he came equipped with a deck filled with many slides, his presentation quickly turned away from the screen at the front of the room toward the audience in front of him. The result was a spirited Q&A between Ossenmacher, a self-described “engineer who likes to get his hands dirty,” with a rather skeptical book business and media-centric audience.

Ossenmacher said they began engineering the software for their platform in 2008, and went live to users and consumers in October 2011. He added that shortly after that Capitol Records filed suit against ReDigi, on the assumption they were an illegal file-sharing site. Capitol claimed infringement of copyright on their intellectual property was being committed by ReDigi. The court didn’t see it that way, and Capitol’s plea for an injunction against ReDigi has so far been unavailing. Ostensibly because of the litigation history, Ossenmacher was guarded in his statements, though I thought he could have been more open in answering how many people they already have on the platform. Still, he was not so careful that I couldn’t follow what they’re trying to do. Among the intriguing things he said was that ReDigi is striving to lend some element of “physicality to a digital entity.” Counter-intuitive though this may seem, it is also an issue publishers are facing in a related context, where they’re challenged to create an analog to the experience of print book buyers, who meet an author and eagerly purchase an autographed and inscribed copy of a book.* He claimed that rather than enabling theft of IP, ReDigi within its domain monitors resellers’/relicensors’ accounts and requests that they delete an efile of a book that’s been sold on to a new user, thus he said, preventing multiple copies from being owned improperly. He added they will terminate the accounts of users who don’t comply. Ossenmacher claimed their business practice will actually serve to reduce piracy, not enable it. One neat piece of tech he mentioned is what he called “digital sonar,” which allows them potentially to locate and find a digital file that has somehow gone missing in the vast digital ecosystem–it emits a kind of “ping” that allows a stray file to be recovered and reassigned to whoever is its rightful owner.

Ossenmacher repeatedly asserted that “publishers are currently leaving digital dollars on the table,” by not accommodating readers and customers who enjoy the ebooks they buy, but then don’t want to retain them for perpetuity. He claimed that by design ReDigi is sharing revenue with publishers, who he added, can in turn, share that revenue with authors. I tweeted my concern though that many corporate and some indie publishers are still offering the frequently contested royalty of 25% of net for ebooks, half of what many authors and agents claim would be equitable. It must be pointed out that publishers and authors currently enjoy no monetary benefit from the market for used print books. Somewhat relatedly, with my publishing friend David Wilk, I am an advocate for what in the UK and Canada is called a “public lending right.” The term is a bit arcane, and it’s meaning isn’t obvious here in the U.S. In those countries, each time a book is checked out from a public library, the author receives a small royalty. You might see this as the first micro-payment. During the Q&A I asked if there might be something like a “digital lending right,” that could follow a book down the resale or re-licensing trail, benefiting creators beyond the first sale.  Ossenmacher answered favorably, but of course he wouldn’t be the party directly funding that. 

After the program ended, I went to the podium to thank the speaker, and found him in conversation with Bill Rosenblatt, of Giant Steps Media Technology Strategies. Rosenblatt was saying to Ossenmacher that as far as he could ascertain, ReDigi must be creating a copy of efiles they receive from resellers, which if so, would suggest one kind of legal status for them vis-a-vis the IP they’re handling. For his part, Ossenmacher insisted, “No, we’re not creating a copy.” Standing there, I pitched in an observation, that in ReDigi’s parlance, they’re “passing on a baton,” as in a relay race, not making a new baton. I wasn’t trying to carry water for ReDigi, but that was his point. Rosenblatt appeared unconvinced, though he declined to argue the point further. Ossenmacher thought the baton image aptly fits what they’re trying to do and I later tweeted about our 3-way exchange.

I’m intrigued at least that ReDigi, in trying to create a secondary market for ebooks and music, is sharing revenue with publishers and record labels. If that part of it works, it could become a good thing for creators and content companies. And yet, I worry about the far greater possibility that a market for re-licensed digital files will only degrade the value, and the price, of initial sales that publishers make. I wonder if ReDigi’s willingness to share revenue is in part conditioned by their certainty that publishers’ reluctance to do business with them would never be overcome without this provision. Color me skeptical about the whole idea. 

In the picture at the right, Ossenmacher is standing in front of the slide that charts the money he believes publishers are leaving on the table by not pursuing a second-hand market for digital goods.photo (1)

*Autography is one company working to create personalization in ebooks, with digital autographs, inscriptions, etc.

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A Great Afternoon at Book Camp

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IMG_1407Above is just one of the dozens of tweets that emerged from an event I attended today, Book Camp, known as an ‘unconference.’ The first time I heard about Book Camp was in 2010 when one was held in Toronto. I was unable to make that one, but I’ve participated in each of the four Book Camps that has been held in NYC, always on a Sunday. Here’s a blog post I wrote about last year’s Book Camp. It is a supremely ad hoc occasion where, by design, those attending don’t know what they’re going to talk about until the action gets underway. At the outset, a blank wall is at the front of the room and participants begin writing down descriptions of sessions they want to lead, taping these pages to the wall, and the schedule fills in with 4-5 sessions during each of the four 45-minute time blocks, with 10-minute networking intervals between each block. The discussions are invariably about the future of the book and publishing, whether print, digital or Web-based. Potential new initiatives are tabled that we can undertake individually or as an industry. Hosts lead the sessions they’ve offered and attendees decides what discussions they want to join, showing up at each session ready to listen and contribute. And if a session isn’t making it for you, or if you got all you needed after a few minutes, you’re encouraged to get up and move on to another one, with no aspersion cast on the host, or you for leaving. It’s like a no-fault divorce. All this stands in contrast to more scripted gatherings such as Digital Book World and Tool of Change (ToC)–with the latter handily following in the days after Book Camp. With lots of book and tech people in NYC from out of town for ToC, it’s an ideal time for this unconference, which charges no admission, though space is limited.

I led a session about ‘monetizing’ one’s website, an ungainly term that I’ll continue using until a better one comes along. I’ve begun making money with this blog and website, and am embarked on learning more fully how to convert the Web assets I’m creating in to income, and do it with greater focus and savvy. The session drew a good turnout and I’m grateful to everyone who came, with each person around the table speaking up and participating. I learned a lot, while also taking the opportunity to talk about The Great Gray Bridge and describe the curatorial impulse that drove me to create it in 2011, an impulse that continues to fuel my writing for it virtually everyday. I explained how, upon leaving corporate publishing in 2009, when I no longer had a publishing list to assemble of 20-25 books each year, I felt bereft and for a time, oddly uninspired. After a couple years of that arid feeling, I realized I needed a new garden to tend, and what’s more, that I could plant it with the seed of my own writing, and assemble my own little jewel box of a website.

Book Camp is organized by a posse that includes Chris Kubica, Ami Greko, and Kat Meyer, each denizens of the evolving digital book universe. This year we were fortunate to have space provided by Workman Publishing, in its light and spacious offices on Varick Street in Tribeca. If you’re interested in the concept of an unconference, and Book Camp in particular, I encourage you to visit the Book Camp website and follow today’s discussion on Twitter under the hashtag #Book2. I will try and add more to this post over the next day or two, but after a full day at it, I’m going to close my report for now, after first putting up a couple more of my grainy pictures. (Note to self: don’t forget to bring good camera next time!)IMG_1405IMG_1412

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Religious Intolerance Leaves Me Sputtering

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This is so ridiculous the tweet above couldn’t do justice to the wrong-headedness and narrow-mindedness of it.

The NY Times reports that Rob Morris, a Lutheran minister, has been forced by his denomination’s elders to apologize for violating “its prohibition against joint worship with other religions.” Morris participated in the ecumenical service held after the mass murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Though he’s said, “I believed my participation to be, not an act of joint worship, but an act of community chaplaincy,” he may still be punished. This, for lending succor to neighbors of all faiths at a time of great anguish, during the same event where President Obama met with grieving families and gave a moving talk.

Forced to apologize for consoling all people, not just his own tribe. That’s repellent. Intolerance and exclusionary theology are repugnant.

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