SwiftVets.com

[Jeff Carrington]

The Post has so much to answer for in the SBVT story, they are the most important failure to my way of thinking about the MSM. I am going to make this my next hobby. I am not going away, regardless of Nov. 2. They must answer, and I believe that eventually they will. This is the least I can do for SBVT. You have done (again) enormous service to your country and I admire and salute you all. --jc
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Going Downriver: The Post Takes a Powder

October 20, 2004
Mr. Leonard Downie, Jr., Executive Editor
Mr. Michael Getler, Ombudsman
The Washington Post


"The story is a legend now, but it really did happen." So begins page one of The News About The News: American Journalism in Peril, the book co-authored (with Post colleague Robert Kaiser, 2002) by Leonard Downie, Jr. It provides an omnibus review of the condition of American news media in the opinion of the authors.

The legend referred to is Watergate. Mr. Downie reminisces about the unfolding of the Watergate saga—he had a ringside seat as the direct supervisor of Woodward and Bernstein at the time—and the Post's role in driving the story into the national limelight. Downie's walk down memory lane winds up with, "Watergate became an example for the ages, a classic case when journalism made a difference."

An example for the ages. Yes it was. But that was then, and this is now, and the Washington Post has recently strayed a long, long way from that example.

Look at this exchange from a 10/6/04 Washington Post transcript of "Live Online", where Post readers submit email questions for Post staffers who then respond. This particular Wednesday featured none other than, Leonard Downie, Jr.

(a reader from) Washington, D.C.: You were recently quoted in Editor and Publisher as saying the following: "We are not judging the credibility of Kerry or the (Swift Boat) Veterans, we just print the facts."

Is this a misquote? If not, do you really believe it the job of a journalist to verify the credibility of a source prior to printing a story? How can facts be determined without reviewing the credibililty of the source? I thought checking your source was the first rule of journalism? I find this statement (the E&P quote) astonishing and I hope you take this opportunity to correct the record.

Leonard Downie Jr.: There is a difference between judging and giving readers all the facts. We have thoroughly investigated and analyzed the claims on both sides and presented them to our readers in very lengthy, detailed stories (which you can find on washingtonpost.com) and then let our readers do the judging.

Ah. In the same Q&A session, Mr. Downie describes his role as "ultimate gatekeeper for what is published in the newspaper". Mr. Downie also talks about being scrupulously non-partisan or ideological. Case in point, never participates in any political events, won't even vote in any elections. Post reporters may go ahead and vote, but that's about it. No other perceptible political behavior. Bottom line, Mr. Downie won't tolerate reporters' personal politics magnetizing any viewpoints in his news pages. Len Downie, meet Joe Friday. Just the facts, ma'am.

"We have thoroughly investigated and analyzed the claims on both sides and presented them to our readers in very lengthy, detailed stories . . . .". If we focus on the matter of the Swift Vets v. Kerry, which was the subject of the reader’s specific question—this declaration by Leonard Downie Jr. very simply amounts to executive hubris on the scale of Kenneth Lay saying he was above it all and didn't have a clue about the financial stealth going on at Enron.

The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth first read their manifesto against John Kerry, under a formal national spotlight, on May 4, 2004. More than three months went by when the Post pretended they were just-not-there. Three months. Can’t look. An imaginary bete noire. A large and politically diverse group of distinguished and decorated Navy war veterans, and the Washington Post, that lion of Watergate, still wearing those wilted laurels on its corporate pate,. . . .totally ignored them.

Imagine Woodward and Bernstein giving the ice-cold shoulder to Deep Throat. Or more accurately, dozens of Deep Throats, all with solid bona fides and very, very troubling affidavits to supply. Knock-knock, nobody home. Will that also stand as a Washington Post example for the ages, sirs?

Recall those high-tension Watergate days and the Post's outrage about Rosemary Woods (Nixon’s secretary) and the notorious 18 ½ minutes of 'accidentally' erased Oval Office tape? You could say what goes around, comes around, because your own "Woodsian moment" was the Post's repeated declination of invitations to interview the SBVT group and thoroughly analyze. . .those are your words. . .their official statements. How in the name of God is that not your job, on something of this national gravity, at this time? But you effectively pushed the "erase" button when you decided that, truth or not, it was potentially far too damaging—even ruinous—to John Kerry's claim to moral fitness. I doubt there’s anyone with an intellect and objective mind left in America who doesn't suspect that de facto censorship is what you tried to pull off. Is that relatively less or more harmful and disgraceful, than what Rosemary Woods did?

But the SBVT didn't melt away with the dawn like the bear under the bed, they hung tough. Tougher than tough. Just like you might expect from men of that character and honor. The Post finally broke radio silence on August 12 with an editorial jab titled, "Swift Boat Smears". We can zoom out slightly to see this considered editorial for the polemic that it really is. Unfit for Command, the phenomenal SBVT book, had been released and was in Washington Post hands at that time. In fact, only the previous day Tony Blankley of the cross-town Washington Times commented at length about the book in an op-ed. Blankley wrote, "The book appears to be meticulously researched and reported. It is replete with copious footnotes, a detailed index and two appendices." And: "The book has the ring of sincerity to it, and the mark of careful research and writing." Whether they agree with his viewpoints or not, most honest people would grant that Tony Blankley is a very intelligent and conscientious journalist. So you could reliably infer, that this was at minimum, a very serious book indeed, easily qualified for and worthy of the effort of checking out in some depth.

Yet Mr. Downie decided to go with "Smears." I would point to that as a window on the true soul of the Post. It is far more evocative of Rathergate, than Watergate.

The Post fired again on 8/20 with a front page story titled, "Records Counter a Critic of Kerry". Then, on Sunday 8/22, came a long Michael Dobbs front page story "Swift Boat Accounts Incomplete", along with a detailed diagram of the Bay Hap River (James Rassmann rescue) incident which the Post reconstructed from its investigation. (Note that nearly all of the focus is on one item pulled off the whole Swift Vets manifesto.) Given the lens of the Post's previously hostile treatment of the Swift vets, it is fairly easy to spot the agenda of the paper in the story. Dobbs extends the benefit of the doubt to Kerry, almost across the board. Still, it was by far the best attempt by the Post to do some actual investigation and analysis.

There are four key takeaways from this one lonely example of Watergate-style investigative reporting by the Post on the Swift vets story. (1) The Post seemed to dissect this single count, out of the overall indictment against Kerry, to serve as the proxy for all charges by the Swift vets. So: explode one, that explodes them all. If that's the intent, it's a foray into devious inductive reasoning. (2) Despite the detail contained in the story, the subheading of the article telegraphs the conclusion reached by the Post: "Critics Fail to Disprove Kerry's Version of Vietnam War Episode". For those of us hoping the topmost line of this overdue article signaled the possibility of Post balance for the first time, no such luck; the butcher's thumb went right back on the scale one carriage return later. (3) Michael Dobbs justified the Post interpretation reflected in the subheading, by observing at various spots in the body of the story, that "Navy records" definitively support the Kerry version with details of his bravado under intense and sustained enemy fire, that earned him a Bronze Star and a third Purple Heart. (4) Mr. Dobbs concedes that some open questions do remain, and sums it up with the advice, "Stay tuned."

Points #3 and #4 are especially instructive in reaching our own verdict about whether this is still the Watergate Washington Post or some dissolute and hard-to-recognize remnant. In the two months that have passed since this "stay tuned" alert by Mr. Dobbs, almost everyone has done just that. There has been a storm of discussion about Unfit for Command, and this "meticulously researched and reported" (Blankley comment) book rapidly became a #1 national bestseller. Literally mortified by this, everywhere the Kerry guard have chanted Dobbs' 8/22 finding: "Navy records. . .official Navy records. . . support Kerry” (repeat; shout if/as necessary to drown out facts). But meanwhile, the unsinkable fact is this: not one important and credible challenge to the accuracy of the Swift Vets bill of indictment, has been presented. The charges still stand unrefuted. Hissed at, mocked, cursed, and condemned everywhere. . . . but there they stand, demanding answers not provided, months later.

Any attempt to refute the charges measure for measure would be cyanide, quick and lethal to Kerry. He and his senior staff know this innately. Even providing partial detail could only become a whirlpool of intensifying doubt and a feeding frenzy on the internet, talk radio and neutral and conservative press. The reluctant mainstream news organizations would be sucked into the vortex, just as in Rathergate. His half dozen confirmed Swift confederates could never bail fast enough, even if they were far better at their job than they are. The result would certainly be Davy Jones locker in two or three weeks at most. The only lifeline in Kerry’s reach that is stout enough to hold him from being sucked under, is the “Navy records, official Navy records” mantra. Kerry and his staff are clinging to this with white knuckles, with all other defenses and assertions inexorably crumbling around them. If only Custer had such "Navy records" to clutch like magical relics of faith, he might have died of old age, no matter how many Indians were coming up the hill.

On 10/1, the Chicago Sun-Times published a front page story titled, "Did Kerry Write Own Report of Disputed Clash?", written by Thomas Lipscomb, a veteran reporter with excellent credentials. The story hinged on current intensive and expert analysis (including assistance from a senior Navy communications intelligence technician familiar with the case) of the after-action report on the Bay Hap River incident, as contemporaneously filed with the U.S. Navy. The analysis is that John Kerry. . .doing a fair imitation of Louis L'Amour. . .wrote that report. Remember, this is the key source document in the "Navy records".

So the U.S. Navy is not an Olympian god that writes only pure-truth reports on stone tablets. Mere mortals write those reports. Now, which mortal or mortals, that is the key question. Suddenly it seems all but certain that an unusually grasping mortal named Lt. John Kerry wrote that critical Bay Hap report, embellishing it wildly to puff his own goods, and in so doing, created the virtual reality from which all else has flowed in terms of "Navy records". Well, bust my scuppers, this is what the Swift vets have been saying right along, isn’t it?. Imagine that. And further the Swift vets say that similar Kerry fictions pollute several other key elements in his Vietnam service record as well. After “seared. . .seared” in Cambodia, “No Man Left Behind” at Bay Hap, those ludicrous ‘Captain Blood’ home movies with the reenactments, Bandaid and aspirin and cold cloth ‘battle wounds’, way premature and very dubious extraction from Vietnam, macabre stories of Genghis Khan sorties by GIs, boomeranging discarded medals/ribbons. . .can anyone doubt it is high time for yielding the benefit of the doubt to the Swift Vets for a change?

We had stayed tuned for Michael Dobbs, but alas, no Woodward or Bernstein he. It is apparent that Michael Dobbs, has turned in his gold detective shield. There simply will be no more incisive reporting on the charges in Unfit for Command. Does anyone actually believe it's because there is not enough substance there, or it doesn't/shouldn't count even if true? Does anyone actually, really believe that? You do Mr. Downie? O tempore, O mores. I worry for my sons, and for America.

With or without Mr. Dobbs, what if those bulletproof "Navy records" start to decompose once each in turn has its source traced and actually analyzed? That’s what just happened to the Bay Hap file. Be assured that you may anticipate more of the same. What conceivable explanation will the Washington Post then have for suppressing—like a Rosemary Woods encore—the crescendo of the story, “Swift Vets Charges Mainly Confirmed”? Far away now from the truthseeker of Watergate renown, ironically you will have become a meshing wheel in the clockwork of the Kerry-as-war hero fiction/fraud.

A lesser leitmotif of the Kerry side (and of many in the mainstream media) has been, "it all happened long ago". For them this means it has faded into near-insignificance in terms of revealing anything useful about the character and fitness of John F. Kerry as a potential holder of the baton as America's next wartime Commander in Chief. If that is so, then why not simply parole Charles Manson and stand him up for federal election someplace? After all, that was 1969 too, and the fact of “atrocity” also bears relation (i.e. Kerry, under oath claiming complicity in atrocities as yet undetailed). But it was w-a-a-y back there on the vanishing horizon. The bad judgment of Manson's youth should not be imputed to the mature adult he has become. It is not productive and in any event unfair to try to infer any correlations between then and the present.

The fact that John Kerry may have himself committed atrocities in Vietnam, is (remarkably to some) a minor issue in the current investigation. However the balance of the Swift Vets contentions against Kerry in Unfit for Command reads like a RICO indictment, including,

(i) falsifying contemporaneous military combat records and/or testifying falsely to cause an undeserved medal or medals to be issued; (ii) abandoning a combat command by fraudulently petitioning for special evacuation by reason of fictionalized "battle" wounds; (iii) covertly meeting with high-level officials of the enemy's government in wartime while still a commissioned officer under oath of service, (iv) lying to Congress (series of instances over a period of 25 years); (v ) tampering with and retrospectively altering official military records for personal accreditation, via willful serious misuse of the power and influence of his high government office; and (vi) providing intentionally misleading and incomplete information concerning existing adverse military records that might otherwise prove disqualifying for high public office.

It gets clearer with every passing day of Mr. Downie's roaring silence about any and all of the above that he and his cohorts at the Washington Post do not think this kind of stuff rises to the level of the public’s right to know. . .to be able to evaluate these issues most would believe are absolutely and unarguably vital to establishing the moral fitness of a president. If we apply this same yardstick of relevance to your Watergate days, that means we are left without a clue as to your relentless vendetta against poor Richard Nixon. Must have been bad chemistry or something that set you off. We always thought it was those other things, many of them similar to what Kerry allegedly has done.

It doesn't take a genius, just an average person who pays attention to your motion, to see the new course the Post is steering. There has been not a word in your pages about the major developments in the last few weeks: the now-established probability (Chicago Sun-Times story) that Kerry grossly distorted a combat record to get himself false glory and a couple of undeserved medals; or about the real possibility that Kerry retroactively altered his service record upon reaching the U.S. Senate (various reports); or that Kerry may be hiding the fact of a less-than-honorable discharge (various reports). But here's the real point: the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth look more and more, as each issue is tested and vetted, like the side that is telling the truth. In that dawning light it is simply outrageous that these honorable veterans have been consistently, emphatically, and unfairly dismissed and demeaned by mainstream media outlets, the Post's pages conspicuously among them.

In the waning moments of the campaign, with just about no time left to tell the American electorate what they vitally need to know, are so deeply entitled to know, about the really dark side of John Kerry. . .about the fact that after all, the Swift vets are very conceivably telling the truth, and Kerry is accordingly lying about a series of extremely critical matters. . . .the Washington Post has by any reasonable standard utterly defaulted its public trust. Instead of covering what any rational person who cares about American security knows is the real story, acres of space is granted to articles and columns about Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry, the George Butler film. (Post articles: "Upriver: Kerry In Command", 10/1; "Going Upriver: Kerry At His Deepest", 10/1; and "A Focused Friend: Years Ago, 'Upriver' Filmmaker George Butler Trained His Camera on John Kerry", 10/2). Yes, that George Butler, the underprivileged (in re: awards) filmmaker who holds the all-time record for Kerry sycophancy in terms of time on the job and devotion to duty.

Can it be possible that those Post reporters actually don't know the farce behind this film? About George Butler scrambling to overhaul his whole thought-to-be-completed movie, when Unfit for Command abruptly appeared and at once tore big holes in his screenplay's authenticity? Even after those repairs were frantically done, and Going Upriver was assumed finally ready, when the film was literally on the way to its premiere, another massive wart was discovered. It turns out that one of the key scenes pertaining to the Winter Soldier melodrama, featuring Our Hero interviewing an archetypal anguished atrocity-witness Vietnam soldier named Steven Pitkin. . . .has been faked! Entirely cooked up. Pitkin has filed a sworn affidavit saying he was coerced and coached, including by John Kerry, when they knew he had neither seen nor participated in any U.S. atrocities. Because he told them he hadn't, and objected to the script, but it was "air time", lights and cameras and live audience waiting in that gritty Detroit hotel meeting room, just get up there Pitkin and lie your okole off or don't expect a ride back to Baltimore.

Contrast non-vet Steven Butler with Carlton Sherwood, a genuine (Pulitzer-winning) journalist and (legitimately) decorated Marine veteran of extended combat on the DMZ in Vietnam. Sherwood has produced an acclaimed documentary titled Stolen Honor:Wounds That Never Heal, the subject is Kerry and Vietnam. Unlike the transparently contrived portrait Kerry painted by Butler, Sherwood tells a very different story—it is cinema verite shot from the perspective of U.S. prisoners of war held and tortured for long years in Hanoi. It is intensely unflattering to Kerry. But these are the gut-sincere views of men who have paid all but the maximum price for their citizenship, horrendous privation and suffering, with great courage and devotion to duty. What kind of person would censor such Americans?

Leonard Downie, Jr. and his cohorts would, and have. In contrast to Butler’s misleading and obsequious "study" and its jet of tribute from the Post, Stolen Honor is given short shrift. There is only a passage in a wider (multitopical) article by Post media critic Howard Kurtz, wherein Kurtz endeavors to hang an ‘attack film’ genre frame around Stolen Honor and talks about spidery ties to radical Republican interests. . . perhaps even the Bush campaign itself. Everything is cloud and controversy. Send in the clowns. Don't bother, they're here. The farce, or rather the fix, is in.

Bad journalism—failing to report important news, or reporting news shallowly, inaccurately or unfairly—can leave people dangerously uninformed. If that sentence sounds plagiarized—you’re right, it is. It’s verbatim, Downie and Kaiser, The News About The News: American Journalism in Peril, page 6.

More: "Journalists have a special role in preserving one of America's greatest assets, our culture of accountability." . . . "Accountability is a crucial aspect of our national ideology, which was based on the rejection of tyranny, defined by the founders as the unjust use of power."

I am one of many who feel that this time, what the Washington Post has committed by initially totally ignoring, and then so obviously underinvestigating and underreporting to the American people on the Swift Boats Veterans and POWs for Truth charges, goes beyond mere abuse of the Post’s massive power of communication and influence. The Washington Post is actually trying quite hard to employ that power to steer an election. Even worse. . .if that’s possible. . . Messrs. Downie, Dobbs, Kurtz and others have almost certainly by now developed their own sense of smell about Kerry and Vietnam. If they have not, they can only be aliens posing as journalists. Yet they persist in their course of wielding their powerful journalistic tools to airbrush and shadow whenever they can, and sometimes, just paint over entirely. Remember those Woodsian ninety-seven days of reverberating silence last summer. Lately we face a hushed Post when big developments point to Swift Vets’ truthfulness. It has become truly astonishing in its brazenness. You might call it, an example for the ages. Goodbye Watergate. Hello, Swifts and POWs.

And finally (from Downie and Kaiser book): "Anyone tempted to abuse power looks over his or her shoulder to see if someone else is watching. Ideally, there should be a reporter in the rearview mirror."

Sauce for the gander, Mr. Downie, let's turn that around and point it at you and the Post. Owing to your deliberate investigative failures and persistent bias on the Swift Vets v. Kerry story, the Post's Watergate days have slipped around the bend and are back there out of sight now. Instead, there are a lot of Americans, come what may on Nov. 2, that will be looming in your rear view mirror. Call them reporter-like. They have the internet and other new places and ways to apply their pens and raise their voices. They will have uncommon staying power like the splendid Swift Boat and POW Veterans for Truth have inspired them to possess and use. They will be appalled at what you did to obfuscate and sometimes even strangle the Swiftees & POWs legitimate charges against John Kerry. And they will be genuinely alarmed about what that tells them you might do next with that mainstream power you have, what you might be capable of, who knows when or what the stakes might be then. They will be resolved to mitigate that risk by diminishing your credibility so that more people will understand you are very clearly not the independent voice and diligent guardian you claim to be, that Watergate is indeed history and particularly in your case, gone for good, flatline in terms of any heartbeat of heritage.

And caution-objects in mirror may be closer than they appear. See you then.

Jeff Carrington, veteran
West Simsbury, CT

[Stevie]

well now, I don't know about UFC being unrefuted....

Bill O'Reilly says they did a 'massive' investigation and some things

were proven not true.... of course, he isn't going to tell us what they are.

We're to dumb and 'commone' to understand such things. These things

are for the upper crust to determine and then it is true. Right?

How dare we even question them ! or him .... he is O'Reilly ! He has

the largest audience on Fox.... he is their star! don't anyone even

think of questioning him.
_________________
Stevie
Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage
morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should
be arrested, exiled or hanged.

[Dimsdale]

Whew!! That one is a keeper, Jeff!! Right into my archives for future enjoyment.

A few comments (all positive!!):

[one more captins mast]

All of them, this newsnot ABOVE, the Boston Glob, Brokenjaw, Little

timmy rusty bucket, dan blather, the nite lie guy: ted gobble, gobble,

cutie currick etal, peterless jennings, new yuck times, lost angles

timeout, and on and on have this:

History comes on a huge white horse, the demon on the horse has

huge red eyes, they seem only to be looking at the guilty, and as

these guilty ones try to stumble away, as they look back the eyes

of the demon History are only ever closer, and the horse's hoofs

clop, clop, clop-------------- CLOP, CLOP, CLOP

JUDGEMENT COMES
_________________
the strange mr aj

[Navy_Navy_Navy]

What a great analysis - I love the allusion to Dobbs turning in his detective's shield.


And this is a quiet riot:

[Me#1You#10]

Jeff...you have surpassed even your best...another for the archives.

This is going immediately "upstairs" with highest priority.

My compliments...Sir.

[Ticker]

Wonderful!! You deserve to get some traction for your hard work and
eloquence. Keep up the good work. Bravo, Ticker

I think I see an error that needs correcting though. The Dobbs article
concerns the Bronze Star, not the Silver Star. Best wishes to you.

[kmudd]

When the Cambodia story came to light I emailed the Washington Post and asked them why their reporters were not smart enough to know Nixon was not even president in Dec 1968 ? I never got anything back.

[Jack Mclaughlin]

When a piece is so well written it is a shame if any person in this forum failed to read it. This is my third reading and if Mr. Downie fails to take notice then he is not doing his job properly or serving his readers in a responsible way. This letter should appear in its entireity on the op-ed pages but we must not hold our breathe.

Too many people give the Post too much credit for their Watergate reporting. From June 17th 1972 to Aug. 9th 1974 they created a climate of fear and intimidation unlike anything America had seen since the witch hunters of Salem Town. This is not an exaggeration. Judges and politicians alike were coerced with implicit threats if they failed to join in the political lynchings of the time. I could give scores of examples but bear with me for just one.

Contrast their treatment of Gordan Liddy with that of Sandy Berger. Liddy, along with 7 others made a clumsy and foolish attempt to enter the DNC at the Watergate hotel to find out what the democrats were up to in the upcoming presidential race. They were caught. No money, jewelry, or valuables were taken. Judge John Sirica sentenced Liddy to 20 yrs. in prison and a $40,000.00 fine when a 30 day, suspended sentence and a $500.00 fine would have been the appropriate punishment for a first time misdemeanor crime. Sandy Berger stole classified documents from the national archives and destroyed some of them. This is many times more serious crime than Liddys. Have you noticed how little attention they have given to this story?