You’d be right as to who was wielding the spoon: ‘Team B’ embeds or left behinds in one or more, likely two given AP standards, USG agency &/or contractor “partners” (more accurately, customers) within the USG intelligence community. It wouldn’t be any with active current inquiry status, or else these sorts of ‘mistaken impressions’ wouldn’t have been open to being claimed. I’d most strongly suspect one with a board stocked with former US military personnel, some of those hundreds of retired general officers and admirals who ply their subidized semi-retirement life having drinks and dinners with and plying their successors with visions of vast storehouses of military supplier and contractor cheese.
I STILL believe NYT’s got the story wrong. The issue is about what gets released pursuant to FOIA requests by media types seeking to exploit the right wing customer base thirst of dirt on Hillary Clinton. But a number of intelcom players, starting with NSA and definitely including the CIA and FBI CONTEL officers, are jealous about what gets released possibly adversely affecting their own operations, either past, present or future (I suspect mainly past.). The concern only INCIDENTALLY touches on Hillary Clinton as SOS and then as former SOS, because the ‘affected’ agencies want to know whether the messages they’re concerned with form part of the message stream involving State and other intelcom players that are being reported back into the FOIA process by State. If so, those intelcom players want to be heard and heeded resisting the release of those messages within the context of judical supervision of the FOIA process.
Even worse, it was a smear that reinforced pre-existing notions of Hillary Clinton - that she is untrustworthy, that she doesn’t play by the rules, etc. Those are the lies that are the hardest to refute. It will take a lot more than a couple of short published “corrections” to undo the damage.
using information from senior government officials
“You had the government confirming that it was a criminal referral,” Baquet told Sullivan. “I’m not sure what they could have done differently on that.”
DaveyJones, I think you need to consider the integrity and reputation of the Congressional GOP leadership when you claim they’re “fantasy government” officials. Obviously, Bengazi hearings are still taking place, so there simply MUST be something there… the investigate and redirect tactic worked with President Clinton the first time, so why ruin a good thing?
Actually, it doesn’t touch on her at all. This is entirely about how the State Dept. deals with CURRENT FOIA requests. It has nothing to do with her dealing with classified material as SOS, or even with how State dealt with FOIA requests when she was Secretary.
If anything, it could possibly be construed as a swing at Kerry, but its dealt with so far down in the bureaucracy, that even that isn’t credible.
My point is, I am questioning that this “government official” even exists. As near as I can figure out, it seems to be a clerk that you submit your FOIA requests. There doesn’t seem to be any evidence that they spoke with someone higher up the food chain that actually knew what was going on.
If Gowdy or one of his staffers planted this bee in their bonnet, then I suspect they did it at several degrees of separation. They would have known how badly off base calls for criminal investigations were, and how quickly it would have come undone. (Just make a phone call to the State IG’s office, for example…or the Intelligence IG, or the DoJ itself).
This sounds more like some overzealous reporters and editors, editing the time worn phrase “If if bleeds, it leads” into “If it bleeds, it leads, and if it isn’t bleeding, stab it a few dozen times”. My bet would be that said reporters/editors will be found to have a very cozy relationship with the Bush campaign.
NYT admits it needs to be more transparent. Simple fix–automatically add after every reference to Hillary the words “whom we do not like”. Everyone will be warned to take what follows with a block of salt.
The Clintons were always NOK (Not Our Kind) to the most influential people in NY and DC. Which, as they will surely tell you, are the only 2 cities that matter.
Celebrating success based on merit is fine - unless it happens to people from Arkansas or Georgia (Carter).
It’s horrifying to me that snobbery and pseudo-aristocratic judgmentalism sprouts up in this country. THAT is what the Revolutionary War was about IMO, and what allowed push-cart owners to become millionaires. At least, 100 years ago it did, not so sure now.
And still no apology to Hillary… Dean is really the worst editor. Is this why he got fired from his previous job? Just the worst and is showing how awful he is day after day after day, The NY Times is now a rag because of him. Just worthless!
Sullivan, the best Times public editor in years, nonetheless acts like this was just any old reporting error and minutely examines the process by which this particular story became a train wreck, without once noticing the gigantic, flare-lit trumpeting elephant crammed into the room with “Clinton Rules” painted on its sides. That’s the real problem. The Clinton Rules mentality is so deeply engrained in the paper’s culture they literally can’t see it, even when it’s dropping fifty pound loads of shit on top if their heads.
SUBJECT: Potential Issues Identified by the Office of the Inspector General of the
Intelligence Community Concerning the Department of State’s Process for the
Review of Former Secretary Clinton’s Emails under the Freedom of Information
Act (ESP-15-04)
Michael Schmidt, who was the co-author of this debacle, has become this year’s Judith Miller. I sigh whenever I see his byline on a story about Hillary as he seems to have it in for her - and that was before this steaming pile of shit went in the paper. Notice now, whenever there is a tangential story - one recently about her testimony before the Benghazi committee, for example - he shoehorns in a line about the Inspector Generals, trying desperately to save face with his “scoop.”
I thought the Hillary-hating at the NYT would be confined to Maureen Dowd’s increasingly bizarre columns but I guess not. Pathetic.
An editor involved with the story, Matt Purdy, told Sullivan that the newspaper botched the story “because our very good sources had it wrong.” Executive editor Dean Baquet agreed that the blame for the bad information shouldn’t lay with the reporters and editors on the story.
I’m sorry - absolutely no excuse. Your sources (probably directly inside the RNC) weren’t ‘very good’. They were flat-out wrong. It’s not an apology to say, but we thought we had it right. You didn’t - own it.
Blame the information on the reporters and the editors, who did not check, check and re-check, especially on something so crucial and subject to misinterpretation, as this is.
Irresponsible reporting. Not even close to journalism. Shame on you.
I wonder if Hillary doesn’t have a libel case available here. As a public figure, the standard for libel by the media as defined by Sullivan is “actual malice”. But false imputation of criminal activity to a person, as was certainly present in the original article, is "defamation per se and a clear pattern of such “mistaken imputations” is not a long step from “actual malice”. Ultimately, I suppose, it depends on whether suing the NY Times at the present time is a sound political move or not. As long as Trump is threatening to sue everyone who disagrees with him, it’s probably not. It would just seem as petty and thin-skinned as Trump is.
Besides, the Times is doing enough damage to itself. One of the first rules of campaigning is “Never get in the way of a perfectly good train wreck.” Or as Pliny the Elder put it, Optimumque est, ut volgo dixere, aliena insania frui.
