The great puzzle

Andrew McCarthy looks at Tenet's attempts at public rehabilitation.

He addresses the canard of the "16 words" and the State of the Union address and concludes.

Shame on the administration for not vigorously defending itself

But this raises a larger question: Why won't they fight?

There have to be at least a dozen cases where lies and half-truths have taken hold and the White House has done little or nothing to set the record straight. I find this puzzling.

This public lethargy as they lose credibility is one of the enigmas of the Bush years.

Hitch the cheap shot artist

Hitchens is usually an astute critic. Even his piece on George Tenet is mostly on the money. One point though, is beneath him:

His ridiculous agency, supposedly committed to "HUMINT" under his leadership, could not even do what John Walker Lindh had done—namely, infiltrate the Taliban and the Bin Laden circle.

The problem was never getting operatives into Afghanistan. I have no doubt that CIA could have positioned dozens of people inside the camps. The deal breaker was getting the information back to Langley and, eventually, getting our people back out.

HUMINT is always a tough nut versus closed societies. OSS and SOE had appalling loses in WWII. The same is true with CIA and MI6 in the Cold War in Eastern Europe. See more here and here and here.

Reade Seligmann writes to the blog hooligans

KC Johnson has it over at his place.

I think that Seligmann illustrates just how reckless and misleading the press coverage of this case was and is. Say what you want about the "lax culture" or the appropriateness of the party, the fact remains that he did not "fit the profile" they drew and in many ways he stands in opposition to it.

An underclassman, he had nothing to do with organizing the party.

Many lacrosse players had run-ins with the law. RS had none.

Many of the lax run-ins with the law occurred before Seligmann arrived at Duke.

He was a good student and good athlete.

He did charity work.

On the afternoon of the party, thousands of college students were getting drunk on Spring Break. Reade Seligmann played golf.

When the lax party started to turn sour, he bailed. He left long before Nikki and Precious. He was not there for the arguments and insults.

He called a cab and went for burgers. He even gave the cabbie a nice tip.

The only reason his name is discussed is because the DPD and DA gave a multiple choice test with no wrong answers.

There are those who still try to find a way to smear his name. It can't be the facts, so it must be the agenda.

Draft weekend

I love the NFL. I'm always interested in who the Steelers pick. But i just can't buy into all the hoopla around the draft itself. Days and weeks of speculation about players whose value in the NFL is still unknown. I just cannot get into it.

Football Outsiders takes a look back on one expert's hits and misses.

I've never understood why bad teams use the first overall pick. One single player is not going to help the Raiders or Texans. Why not trade the pick away and get two or three additional very good or great players.

My theory is that this week marks the point of maximum collective happiness for NFL fans. Right now, we can all dream that our teams will be much better in 2007.

I've never known what to make of Michael Scheuer

A few years ago the Right hated him because he criticized Bush. OTOH he never seemed to fit as a Democratic apologist given his willingness to criticize Clinton.

In the Washington Post he takes on George Tenet and his new memoir.

Tenet Tries to Shift the Blame. Don't Buy It

Bushies won't like it because he considers the Iraq War a terrible mistake. Anti-Bushites will not like it either because he still faults Clinton for failing to go after bin Laden. Tenet really won't like it because Scheuer believes the book is a transparent attempt to cover up his many failures as head of CIA.

Duke lacrosse: The Post grades itself

Not surprisingly, they give themselves a better grade than KC Johnson did. That is easy to do when you just ignore some of the most egregious items your paper cranked out.

Their ombudsman does hit on a key issue:

Overall, coverage of the Duke case suffered from a common journalistic malady: dependence on "the authorities"; in this case, prosecutor Michael B. Nifong, who now faces ethics charges. Journalists almost always depend first on the official explanation, whether of police, prosecutors, government spokesmen, the military or "experts." That is journalism's Achilles heel, whether it involves intelligence on Iraqi weapons or a rape charge in Durham.

That is true as far as it goes, but it ignores the fact that one of the Posts columnists went way beyond that. As recounted here Andrew Cohen forcefully attacked those who tried to challenge the official version and did it in a particularly nasty and dishonest fashion.

Duke lacrosse: Ten days in March

What we know as the Duke Lacrosse case began on on 24 March when the News and Observer ran a front page story on a DNA dragnet that a judge ordered for the lax team

DNA tests ordered for Duke athletes

In the thirteen months that followed that story the narrative has veered from one extreme to another. We went from privileged white males committing atrocities on a poor black student to the complete exoneration of the accused.

The story, however, does not begin with Mike Nifong. Nor does it start at 24 March. It begins in the early hours of 14 March when an uncooperative drunk was taken into custody by the Durham police. When she was hauled to Durham Access, she claimed that she had been raped.

The AG's report makes it clear that the charges were bogus and the accuser was never credible. Some officers in the DPD recognized that. Yet, somehow, the DPD pressed forward. They investigated for 10 days and determined that a crime had been committed. Further, they convinced Nifong's office that the DNA dragnet was necessary to solve this (non-existent) crime.

To date, we have very little information on why the DPD came to this conclusion. Nor do we know who the drivers were for the hoax. Nifong may have been at the controls later, but someone else set this train in motion.

Durham city manager Baker is promising a report on the handling of the case by the DPD.


I'm dubious on the value of that report. Baker, after all, is the man who assured us that the accuser never changed her story.

Duke released the March 14 campus police report Tuesday. That came a day after a study found that Duke administrators were slow to act because their initial internal police report indicated Durham officers had said only misdemeanor charges were likely.

Baker, who spoke with police officials Tuesday about the chain of events, bristled at the implication that city officers did not believe the accuser. He said that the incident was classified as a sexual assault about 30 minutes after the woman arrived at the hospital and that investigators were quickly put on the case.

"Any assertion that the Durham Police Department didn't take this case seriously or indicated that it would blow over is completely contradicted by the facts and our actions," Baker said.

Baker said he has never received any indication that the woman said she was raped by 20 men or that she changed her story.

"I have no idea where that came from," Baker said. "I've had a lot of conversations with the investigators in this case and with officials at Duke, and at no time did anyone indicate the accuser changed her story. If that were true, I'm sure someone would have mentioned it to me."

Off the top of my head, i can think of a bunch of questions that need answers.

1. Why did the police lie about the Kroger's call? Why did they tell a judge in their applications for warrants that the accuser called 911 to report the rape?

2. Why did the police pretend that they did not know who made the first 911 call? (The one that claimed that a crowd was hurling racial slurs at passing motorists). Very early on DPD knew that the call was made by Kim. Yet they released it to the public and pretended that they did not know who made it.

3, Why did the police use list-servs and CrimeStoppers to solicit information from the public while they neglected to interview the neighbor, Bissey, until he contacted them? What kind of investigation were they running?

4. Why did the DPD tell Baker that the accuser never changed her story?

5. Why does the DPD permit investigators to dispense with notes and rely on their memory alone?

6. Why was the DPD so uninterested in Precious's cell phone?

7. Why did the DPD disregard Sgt. Shelton's assessment of Precious? He was on the scene and events have shown that he was correct. Yet, the DPD ignored him and bought into the hoax.

Duke lacrosse and wrongful conviction

The smug losers in the MSM now chide the supporters of of the exonerated lax players with tales of innocent men who went to prison. Like ABC's moronic Terry Moran, they want to know why we don't discuss those cases.

A better question is why do they only bring up those other cases now that their auto-de-fe was interrupted. They, after all, get paid to cover courts and trials. They are pundits who can write about anything they want. Why didn't they write about the men who were wrongly convicted instead of trying to railroad three innocent college students?

Radley Balko is not of their ilk. He has credibility on this issue. When he calls on the anti-Nifong camp to look at other cases, he deserves a hearing. He is absolutely correct to point out that the actions of Nifong are not unique to Durham.

We need a debate on how we can improve the system. I offered a couple of ideas here. We also need to address the use of "forensic science" by police and prosecutors.

1. Fraud is all too common. No surprise since the people who usually fight fraud are the beneficiaries of this crime.

2. When prosecutors base their case on forensic experts, the defense has to be given the resources to confront them.

3. I'd like to see a blue ribbon panel of scientists examine "forensic science" and how it is used. I'd like to see them address the conceptual issues: what is real science and what is junk science, what should be the qualifications for scientific experts.

I'd also like to see them address procedures. A real scientist can do sloppy research which invalidates his findings. How, then, should a crime lab operate to ensure that their findings are reliable and valid?

By all means, though, let the discussion begin.

Duke lacrosse: "On your marks, get set..."

This should be interesting.

AG to release Duke lacrosse report Friday

Typically, this kind of Friday document dump is a great way to bury a story. In the lax case, however, the real action as been online. That means "Vinnie in the Bronx" is going to have all weekend to chew over everything that ends up on the web. For those who are interested, here's where the action will be:

KC Johnson owns this story like Redford and Hoffman owned Watergate.

LieStoppers will probably weigh in. More importantly, their sidebar is loaded with automatically updated links to other sites that have followed the case.

The LieStoppers forum is the best place to see how the "wisdom of crowds" and "emergent collaboration" work. The collective knowledge of the posters there dwarfs anything the MSM can bring to this case.

Talk Left Forum and Court TV will probably show us the limits of such collaboration. Watch a few trolls and sock puppets do their best to impede the dialogue.

I've been critical of the News and Observer through out this case. It will still be a must read, though, because Joseph Neff is a great reporter.

This does not make a strong case for the value of college degrees

MIT Dean Says She Lied on Resume, Quits

MIT Chancellor Phillip L. Clay said in a telephone interview that another MIT dean had received a phone call questioning Jones's credentials, prompting an inquiry that took several days. It found that Jones had claimed to have degrees from Union College, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Albany Medical College, but she had no degrees from any of those schools.

I know lying is bad. So i wont't defend her on that score. But she worked for MIT for 28 years. If those degrees were so important, why did no one notice that she was not up to the job?

If she was up to the job, then don't we have to question the value of those credentials?

NFL: The three-four and moneyball

Nice write-up on the Steelers and their impending switch to the 4-3 defense

Not all linebackers and defensive ends are created equal

Dallas coach Wade Phillips makes an interesting point:

"It's harder to find defensive linemen to play a 4-3 and pay for all of them," new Dallas Cowboys coach Wade Phillips said at the NFL meetings last month. "In this day and age, where salary cap is so important, D-linemen are the highest-paid guys. And to get the guys we had in Philadelphia with Reggie White and Jerome Brown and Clyde Simmons, there's no way you could keep those guys [in this day and age]. They didn't keep Reggie anyway.

"I think linebackers, in reality, are a little bit cheaper, and you can find more of them. You can find more guys who are instinctive, who can run. Some in-between guys sometimes are good at outside backer. It seems to fit better as far as the personnel and really the money that you have to spend on guys on defense."

Given the popularity of the book Moneyball, i'm surprised we don't see more of this type of analysis in the NFL.

David Halberstam

I guess that speaking no ill of dead thing is out of fashion.

David Halberstam (1934-2007)

Portrait of the prize-winning reporter as an engorged ego.

Shafer thinks that Halberstam's enduring work is his journalism from Vietnam.

I'm not sure those stand up all that well. I posted on him and his compatriots in January. (Here and here and here)

OTOH, i really liked his books. He was a diligent reporter and he collected hundreds of great stories. When he drew a portrait it was painstakingly crafted with a host of little details and a dozen little vignettes. His big serious books were filled with these portraits. Agree or disagree with his conclusions, i found the books to be a joy to read.

I recently finished The Education of a Coach and can recommend it highly. I learned alot about the current NFL and even came to admire the Patriots's coach after reading it.

I knew Hitchens would come through

He tackles the media and public reaction to Virginia Tech in Slate. Is there a more bracing writer alive today?

Warning: If you are the sort of person who watches Nancy Grace and fights back tears as she drones on about poor Laci and little Conner, DO NOT CLICK THAT LINK .First, it is a little above your reading level. (OK, a lot above your reading level.) Second, what parts you do understand will just make you mad.

Why do we have these TV-driven sob-fests? The networks put them on because they are easy. “Emotional vampires” some one called the reporters. That is right but only partly right. They feed on the sadness but they are also drawing out the raw emotions for an audience that sits happily transfixed as they wallow in their grief.

Who are these people? And why do they do this?

It was my friend Adolph Reed who first pointed out this tendency to what he called "vicarious identification." At the time of the murder of Lisa Steinberg in New York in 1987, he was struck by the tendency of crowds to show up for funerals of people they didn't know, often throwing teddy bears over the railings and in other ways showing that (as well as needing to get a life) they in some bizarre way seemed to need to get a death.

Let me float an idea here. What if the public grief is not an end, but a means? A cover charge, so to speak, to get in on the big media event. Cry, build an impromptu shrine, drop off a teddy bear, and suddenly you are in some twisted way, part of the story.

Maybe the grief junkies are bizarre little narcissists.

Just a thought. Not a comforting one.

Useful creativity

This book looks like a real winner.

#ad

The authors are consultants and their website offers a capsule case study that makes for interesting reading [Dead link; their home page is here.]

Going by my own experience, a great deal of wasted effort could be saved by their methods.

I once worked for a company that wasted nine months and big consultant fees brainstorming and refining new growth strategies. The “consensus” altenative was to enter a huge new (to us) market. The problem was that the market had entrenched competitors and slim margins. (But it was huge!)

A majority of the management team kept gravitating to that alternative as a solution for all our growth challenges. It took eight months to bring the real finance professionals into the loop. Once they crunched the numbers, the idea was dead.

The company wasted two strategic planning cycles because of their dilatory ways. In the first one, the mesmerizing idea of a huge new market kept them from dealing with the root problems in their core markets. The second cycle became a mad scramble to find a way to meet the profit shortfall created when the root problems worsened and the new growth failed to materialize.

MacArthur said that “councils of war breed timidity”. In business, this timidity can hide behind a mask of bold future possibilities. Brainstorming becomes a means to avoid confronting the hard realities of the present.

Duke lacrosse: The News and Observer

Melanie Sill continues to defend the now discredited story that helped ignite the conflagration. (“Dancer gives details of ordeal”) Please understand, she tells us, it was written on deadline. It takes time for the whole truth to come out.

So true, and yet, so sad. It is one of those pointless little rules of the journalism game. Somehow, getting it first is more important than getting it right.

Oddly enough, just a few weeks ago she was defending the N&O by emphasizing how careful they were.

Often, when people thrash around making contradictory arguments they are trying to defend the indefensible.

I offered a partial defense of the N&O here. The initial coverage by the N&O was understandable if unfortunate. What was and is inexcusable is the slow, grudging way that the paper acknowledged the truth.

It took an almost unprecedented pronouncement by the AG--INNOCENT-- before the N&O saw fit to revise their portrait of a shy student who was new to dancing. They mostly ignored the evidence for a year and then weighed in when the issue was no longer in doubt. In the battle for the truth, they acted like REMFs.

They have never explained how their trained reporter and their editors got conned so easily.

This is not a case of all’s well that ends well. The lax team still lives under the suspicion that “something happened”. That suspicion was planted and bloomed because of the early reporting by the N&O.

Unlike Newsweek, the N&O has not tried to explain what happened that night. They are moving on.

Rather, they are moving on and covering up. Their reporting now is focused on DA Nifong. He is the fall guy. While the prosecutor richly deserves his fate, there are other parts of the frame-up that deserve examination.

Mike Nifong did not enter the case until 23 March. Between the party and his entrance, the DPD and DA’s office did a 180 degree turn. Initially, they believed they were dealing with an uncooperative drunk who told contradictory stories. For some reason they later reversed course and pressed forward. They became so convinced that she was telling the truth that they lied in official documents, lied to the public, ran bogus photo line-ups, and asked for DNA tests on all the white members of the team.

Why?

The N&O now tells us that the DPD is refusing to answer any questions about the case. Where is the outrage at this “blue wall of silence”? The N&O could not contain their anger when the lax players did not confess. Yet, now, they are willing to give the police a pass. It is a very odd sort of double-standard. Public servants with arrest power are accorded less scrutiny than college students accused of a crime.

In the early days of the hoax the Durham city manager weighed in and announced that the accuser had never changed her story:

Baker said he has never received any indication that the woman said she was raped by 20 men or that she changed her story.

"I have no idea where that came from," Baker said. "I've had a lot of conversations with the investigators in this case and with officials at Duke, and at no time did anyone indicate the accuser changed her story. If that were true, I'm sure someone would have mentioned it to me."

Now that we know that the accuser almost never told the same story twice, Baker’s comments are more than interesting.

There are only three possibilities:

Baker did not do much investigating.

Baker lied about what he learned

The DPD lied to Baker.

Funny thing. The N&O has been strangely silent on this matter. Why is the most influential newspaper in North Carolina such a lazy watch dog?

Editor Sill arrogantly tells her critics to read what her paper wrote about the lax case. She would be better off if she gave that advice to the people who work for her. The N&O’s reporting is filled with important facts and tantalizing clues that the paper has never pursued.

Furthermore, why isn’t the N&O interested in the actions inside of Nifong’s office? Joseph Neff has documented Nifong’s and Wilson’s attempts to shore up the frame job through witness intimidation, concealing evidence, and violating procedures. What were the assistant DAs doing while this was going on? Why have they been allowed to hide in Nifong’s shawdow?

The N&0 sent 9--NINE--reporters out to document the lax team’s misdemeanors but they watch an out of control DA for a year and only Neff and Jarvis are sent to chase the story?

The lacrosse players are roundly condemned for boorish behavior. The N&O used their pages to document their run-ins with the law, their reputation on campus, and their relations with their neighbors. They were happy to open their op-ed pages to those who loathed everything the team stood for. They are less interested in the seedy and exploitive world of strip clubs and escort services that thrive in and around Durham.

The lacrosse captains have apologized for throwing the party. Duke is actively working to curtail the drinking and partying of their students. What is Durham doing to clean up its seamy underbelly? What is the N&O doing to bring the problem into focus? Why is the N&O not concerned with all the other men who exploit Precious and other women like her?

The N&O will probably keep pretending that they covered themselves with honor on this story. There is as yet no 12 step program to overcome journalistic obtuseness.

Doing justice to the absurd

Andrew Ferguson takes on Katie Couric's double plagiarism.

Putting Words in Her Mouth

The end of the affair

For a long time, i thought The Atlantic was the best magazine in the country. But they keep making changes and few are for the better. Chapomatic is right on the money in his assessment.

Duke lacrosse: John Feinstein jumps on to the sinking ship

I thought that the New York Times had locked up the prize for the most ill-informed, stubbornly stupid, arrogant, and dishonest commentary on the Nifong hoax. John Feinstein, though, has put the Washington Post back into the race with what may be the greatest single performance of the year.

I hope KC Johnson or someone at LieStppers will tackle this stinking mess of lies and innuendo.

UPDATE: KC does discuss just that here. As does Bill Anderson here.

Hack work

In the media train wreck known as the Duke lacrosse case, the real damage was done by pundits who used the case to promote their pet causes. They grabbed a headline, a few unverifiable facts, and leaped upon their hobbyhorses.

This is not an ideological problem; it is a pundit problem. The American Thinker demonstrates this today with a nasty little piece that blames the VT murders on the prolongation of adolescence. See, Cho was not the problem; his behavior was somehow natural:

The astonishing thing is that, with all this barrage of instruction, titillation, and humiliation, only one middle-class boy misses the point, shorts out his social conditioning, and fires up his hard wiring. It's a testament to the effectiveness of our cultural conditioning system, or at least the tolerance of modern young people for rank, unapologetic oppression.

To my lights, this is as bad as anything the Gang of 88 wrote.

Worth remembering

This old article from Slate is interesting in itself. It is especially pertinent now because it underscores just how it wrong intitial reporting can be in complex, breaking stories like the Virginia Tech murders.

At last we know why the Columbine killers did it