Dry holes. Back at the beginning of February, Times public editor Daniel Okrent (Motto: "A Fierce Advocate for All Who Think The Times Is Pretty Much Fine as It Is") published some mild strictures about the paper's "not-invented-here attitude"—its habit of "diminishing or disregarding" stories that Times reporters hadn't broken. I imagine Danny was patting himself on the back yesterday, then: bang on the top left of A1 was David Halbfinger's lengthy review of John Kerry's antiwar activism ("Kerry's Antiwar Past Is a Delicate Issue in His Campaign"), a piece that featured absolutely no original reporting whatever.

Halbfinger's hook for this hash of public-record biographical information and previous reporting is the latest phony "controversy" about Kerry's activist career, namely the possibility that the Senator-to-be was in attendance at a November, 1971 meeting of Vietnam Veterans against the War (VVAW) at which discussion took place about a firebrand's vague idea of assassinating pro-war members of the Senate. [The controversy's a phony because, as all participants, including the idea's author, agree, the proposal was never taken seriously, nor can anyone remember Kerry having any part in any discussion surrounding it.] Halbfinger's nice care for the facts is evident when he acknowledges the prior work:

Several news organizations, including The Kansas City Star and The New York Sun, have recently reported that Mr. Kerry also attended the meeting of the group in Kansas City, Mo., in late 1971 where killing opponents of the war was discussed.

For the record—though, as Danny O has made clear today, the Times is emphatically not the Paper of Record—this is simply untrue. Only the right-wing Sun has reported Kerry's attendance at this meeting. Both the KC Star and the Boston Globe have accurately reported (the Star just a day after the first, slanted article in the Sun) merely that recollections differ: The Star has two participants remembering Kerry at the meeting, while Scott Camil, the author of the "assassination plot," is sure Kerry wasn't there; in the Globe's later account, one of the two who remember Kerry, Randy Barnes, admits that he may have confused the November meeting with an earlier one and is no longer sure. And the Globe has further noted that the contemporary account of Kerry's attendance on which the story is based—coming apparently in a single report from an FBI informant (not from more reliable agents)—is unverifiable and remains at odds with Kerry's assertion, backed by the memory of other VVAW members, that he had already quit the organization following a July 1971 meeting in St. Louis.

The story of the Kansas City VVAW meeting, then, is murky as regards John Kerry's participation and utterly trivial as regards his antiwar activism (not to mention his Presidential candidacy). [The Bush blog was all dudgeony about the Sun story, of course, the next day; the GOoPer line is that Kerry should have "alerted authorities to a conspiracy" to assassinate Senators (one we can be sure he didn't take seriously even if he knew about it), and that his failure to do so amounts to "covering up for potential assassins."] But Halbfinger's going to lay it on for whatever he's worth, so he begins and ends his piece with the complaints of the one meeting participant who's sure he remembers Kerry there:

When questions were raised last month about whether a 27-year-old John Kerry had attended a Kansas City meeting of Vietnam Veterans Against the War where the assassination of senators was discussed, the Kerry presidential campaign went into action.

It accepted the resignation of a campaign volunteer in Florida, Scott Camil, the member of the antiwar group who raised the idea in November 1971 of killing politicians who backed the war. The campaign pressed other veterans who were in Kansas City, Mo., 33 years ago to re-examine their hazy memories while assuring them that Mr. Kerry was sure he had not been there.

John Musgrave, a disabled ex-marine from Baldwin City, Kan., who told The Kansas City Star that Mr. Kerry was at the meeting, said he got a call from John Hurley, the Kerry campaign's veterans coordinator.

"He said, 'I'd like you to refresh your memory,'" Mr. Musgrave, 55, recounted in an interview, confirming an account he had given to The New York Sun. "He said it twice. 'And call that reporter back and say you were mistaken about John Kerry being there.'"

So: A potentially embarrassing report surfaces based on an old FBI document, one that contradicts Kerry's memory of his VVAW history, and the campaign reaches out to Kerry's old comrades to ask them to think hard about what they do and don't remember. (Did Hurley lean too hard on Musgrave, or is Musgrave unduly sensitive—or maybe more sensitive than he might be now that some doubt's been cast on the accuracy of his memory?) As much as Halbfinger exerts himself to make it seem that Kerry's got some guilty knowledge to hide, I'm hard put to see anything in this narrative but standard damage-control procedure.

The breathless tone of Halbfinger's lead obscures it, but that account of Musgrave's that he's "confirmed" here is one that the Sun reported more than a month ago. Not quite as newsworthy as Halbfinger wants it to seem. Given that talking to Musgrave seems to be all the legwork Halbfinger's done for this story, why has it taken so long for the piece to get into print, you might wonder? But let's recall that it was just a couple of days ago that Kerry's Vietnam service records were released—to the sound of another made-up controversy fizzling. With nothing to be got out of that dry hole, why not take another crack at smearing Kerry for his antiwar activism?

Yeah, that suggestion—implying as it does that Halbfinger's piece was being held in wait for an opportune moment—puts me a bit close to tinfoil-hat territory. But the Saturday version of A1 has been so devoted in the recent past to publishing RNC oppo that it's hard to avoid one's suspicion of an agenda being pursued.

posted by michael  6:02:47 PM  
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Perspective. Following the Bush campaign's decision in mid-February, under unwonted media pressure, to release (some, not the promised all, let's remember) of the records related to Dubya's service in the Texas Air National Guard, the NY Times produced five articles reviewing the documents and the controversy over the Bush service record—the first on Feb. 11, the last, by David Barstow ("In Haze of Guard Records, a Bit of Clarity"), on Feb. 15. [To put that activity in perspective: the Times has printed four articles this past week on the "controversy" over the release of John Kerry's military service records.]

In the same week, the Times also featured an article by Sheryl Gay Stolberg on Kerry's antiwar activities following his return from service in Vietnam ("Conservatives Shine Spotlight on Kerry's Antiwar Record"). [The article, a notably sloppy bit of reporting, accepted a doctored photo of Kerry and Jane Fonda appearing on the dais at an antiwar rally as more or less genuine, and the doctorer, a known stealth operative for Bush, as an independent, unaffiliated source. As Big, Left, Outside noted at the time, the photo had already been discredited before Stolberg's article was published.] Since then, three more substantial articles directly addressing Kerry's brief stint as an antiwar activist have appeared in the Times; two of them—a piece by Todd Purdum, on which I posted at the time, and yesterday's article by David Halbfinger—have been given above-the-fold prominence on A1. (If you add Jodi Wilgoren's report on Kerry's Meet the Press appearance last Sunday, which focuses on "contentious statements" Kerry made after his return from Vietnam about atrocities and war crimes, it's four, but we'll let that one slide.)

Three articles on Kerry's antiwar past, two on the front page, in the seventy days since Barstow tried to summarize the state of play on the Bush Guard controversy. (With two more articles close at hand.) And the count of NYT followups to said controversy in that seventy days? Zippo. Zilch. Not on the front page or anywhere else. But you already knew that, didn't you? About Kerry as a war protestor, well, the Times just can't seem to wrap its head around that one. But on Bush's dubious Guard service, the "bit of clarity" David Barstow managed to see on Feb. 15 remains all the clarity the paper can stand.

posted by michael  3:31:31 PM  
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