Spooked?

I have been to Langley, VA. In 1963, I was a CIA-recruit. I went to Washington, DC just prior to MLK's "I Have A Dream" speech. I went to vague office addresses in DC where I was picked up by a limo or a bus and transported out the GW Parkway to a road marked — not CIA — but Bureau of Roads or somesuch. After a ride off the parkway of a few miles, I saw CIA headquarters. The building was Pentagonesque. After a battery of tests and interviews (including a psych evaluation and a polygraph), I was told that I was hired. I was given a cover employer (an import-export outfit in DC) like Valerie Plame Wilson. The stunner was my exit interview as I was given cash out of a lockbox in a lower desk drawer by my CIA handler. I was given hundred dollar bills to cover my airfare and expenses. Wow! Unfortunately (or the reverse), Lee Harvey Oswald murdered JFK and LBJ ordered a freeze on all federal hiring. By the time (a year-and-a-half later: 1965) that the CIA contacted me again, I had other plans and that was my last brush with the CIA. Too bad Valerie Plame Wilson didn't have my luck. If this is (fair & balanced) relief, so be it.

[x Washington Post]
CIA Yet to Assess Harm From Plame's Exposure
By Dafna Linzer

More than Valerie Plame's identity was exposed when her name appeared in a syndicated column in the summer of 2003.

A small Boston company listed as her employer suddenly was shown to be a bogus CIA front, and her alma mater in Belgium discovered it was a favored haunt of an American spy. At Langley, officials in the clandestine service quickly began drawing up a list of contacts and friends, cultivated over more than a decade, to triage any immediate damage.

There is no indication, according to current and former intelligence officials, that the most dire of consequences -- the risk of anyone's life -- resulted from her outing.

But after Plame's name appeared in Robert D. Novak's column, the CIA informed the Justice Department in a simple questionnaire that the damage was serious enough to warrant an investigation, officials said.

The CIA has not conducted a formal damage assessment, as is routinely done in cases of espionage and after any legal proceedings have been exhausted. Yesterday, after a two-year inquiry into the leak, special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald issued a five-count indictment against Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, for perjury, obstruction of justice and making false statements during the grand jury investigation.

Fitzgerald has not charged anyone with breaking a law that protects the identities of undercover operatives.

Nonetheless, intelligence specialists said the exposure of Plame -- who operated under the deepest form of cover -- was a grim reminder of the risks spies face.

"Cover and tradecraft are the only forms of protection one has and to have that stripped away because of political scheming is the moral equivalent to exposing forward deployed military units," said Arthur Brown, who retired in February as the CIA's Asian Division chief and is now a senior vice president at the consultancy firm Control Risks Group.

"In the case of the military, they can pack up and go elsewhere. In the case of a serving clandestine officer, it's the end of that officer's ability to function in that role."

Plame entered the CIA 20 years ago as a case officer at age 22. She spent several years in intensive training at home and abroad, and traveled widely, often presenting herself as a consultant.

Her official employer, listed in public records, was a Boston firm, now known to have been fictitious, named Brewster-Jennings & Associates. And during her years undercover she studied at the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium.

When she met her future husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, an ambassador, several years later at an embassy party, she introduced herself as an "energy analyst." It was a story she would tell her closest friends and neighbors for years.

All that changed after Wilson publicly revealed in The Washington Post and the New York Times on July 6, 2003, that he had officially investigated, and discounted, claims by President Bush that Iraq was trying to buy a key ingredient for nuclear weapons from Niger.

"The fact is, once your husband writes an op-ed piece and goes political, you have no immunity, and that's the way Washington works," said Robert Baer, who served in the CIA's clandestine service.

Eight days later, Novak, citing two senior administration officials, wrote that Wilson's trip was arranged by his wife, whom Novak identified by name as a CIA officer. The column generated speculation that the Bush administration had purposely blown her cover to try to discredit Wilson -- a critic of the administration's case for war.

"Blowing the cover of a CIA officer is the cardinal sin in the intelligence business: It could wipe out information networks and put lives at risk," Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), ranking Democrat on the House intelligence panel, said in a statement.

For Plame, the most serious consequence may be professional.

"It's possible that no damage was done [to national security] but she can never [work] overseas again," said Mark Lowenthal, who retired from a senior management position at the CIA in March.

Lowenthal said he was unaware of the extent of damage that may have been caused by exposing Plame, who worked in the Counterproliferation Division at CIA headquarters in Langley.

"You can only speculate that if she had foreign contacts, those contacts might be nervous and their relationships with her put them at risk. It also makes it harder for other CIA officers to recruit sources," Lowenthal said.

Intelligence officials said they would never reveal the true extent of her contacts to protect the agency and its work.

"You'll never get a straight answer about how valuable she was or how valuable her sources were," said one intelligence official who would speak only anonymously.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

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W Is A Bourbon: He Learns Nothing And He Forgets Nothing

The Bushies' disdain for the CIA is an echo of The Trickster's own disdain for the CIA (except where it involved E. Howard Hunt) during his own time of troubles. There is something delicious in the parallels between The Trickster and Dub. Unlike G. Gordon Liddy (who went to the slammer), The Scooter is going to go "John Dean" and roll over on The Dickster and the other thugs who make up the current administration aka The Confederacy of Dunces. From Dub on down, there is hubris and "a desire to pay the bastards back." It was revenge for a failed election attempt in 1960 that laid The Trickster low. It will be revenge for a failed election attempt in 1992 that will bring Dub down. If this is (fair & balanced) delicious irony, so be it.

[x Journal of Intelligence]
Reexamining the Distinction Between Open Information and Secrets
by Stephen C. Mercado

“Open sources often surpass classified information. . .”

We need to rethink the distinction between open sources and secrets. Too many policymakers and intelligence officers mistake secrecy for intelligence and assume that information covertly acquired is superior to that obtained openly. Yet, the distinction between overt and covert sources is less clear than such thinking suggests. Open sources often equal or surpass classified information in monitoring and analyzing such pressing problems as terrorism, proliferation, and counterintelligence. Slighting open source intelligence (OSINT) for secrets, obtained at far greater expense when available at all, is no way to run an intelligence community. Also, we must put to rest the notion that the private sector is the preferred OSINT agent. In the end, I would contend, the Intelligence Community (IC) needs to assign greater resources to open sources.

Mistaking Secrecy for Intelligence

Judging from their words, too many policymakers and intelligence officers mistake secrecy for intelligence. President Nixon, for example, once belittled the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in words that capture the common mistake: “What use are they? They’ve got over 40,000 people over there reading newspapers.”[1] The president’s remarks, reflecting a persistent misperception, echo even now within the Intelligence Community. Recent CIA recruiting literature suggests to applicants: “You can be on the sidelines, reading about global events in the newspaper. Or you can be at the heart of world-shaping events . . . ” in the CIA. The brochure proposes a world divided between those who read newspapers “on the sidelines” and those with access to “intelligence” within the Agency. George Tenet, a recent director of central intelligence, was fond of defining the CIA to audiences both within and outside the Intelligence Community with a curt phrase: “We steal secrets.” Neither from reading the CIA’s recruiting brochure nor listening to its chief would one learn that the Agency includes an OSINT service that produces the lion’s share of its intelligence.[2]

Deeds also reflect the mistaken notion that secrets are all important. The Intelligence Community now includes large, well-funded agencies for overhead imagery intelligence (IMINT), signals intelligence (SIGINT), and human intelligence (HUMINT). By all accounts, most resources in the Intelligence Community go to such IMINT and SIGINT activities as developing reconnaissance satellites, collecting signals, and analyzing the take. OSINT, the stepchild of the Intelligence Community, lacks its own agency. The Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), the largest IC organization devoted to open sources, resides in the CIA. Other OSINT units are scattered within the Department of Defense and the State Department. Alone and in the aggregate, OSINT organizations have few people and little funding. Despite numerous surveys putting the contribution of open sources anywhere from 35 to 95 percent of the intelligence used in the government, OSINT’s share of the overall intelligence budget has been estimated at roughly 1 percent.[3]

Indistinct Categories of Intelligence

Those who swear that secrets are the only true intelligence, in contrast to mere “information” found through open means, would do well to consider the indistinct character of the categories of overt and covert in intelligence. Information hidden behind walls of classification and special access programs may prove no more than equal in value to material available to the public.

Overt and covert streams of intelligence are by no means completely parallel and distinct; they often mingle and meander over one another’s territory. Covert reports at times are amalgams of press clippings. And newspaper editors, for their part, frequently publish stories based on accurate leaks of classified material. Examples abound. Veteran CIA case officer James Lilley learned early in his career how Chinese agents had “swindled” his office with supposedly inside information on Chinese developments that later proved to be “embroidered versions of articles from provincial Chinese newspapers.”[4] Similarly, European con men reportedly passed off Soviet newspaper articles as intelligence from behind the Iron Curtain to operatives of the CIA and the West German Gehlen Organization in the 1950s.[5] More recently, journalist Bill Gertz of the Washington Times has leaked classified information in his stories. His published photocopies of actual intelligence documents underscore how the overt and covert streams mingle.[6]

The more one considers the problem, the less distinct appears the distinction between open information and secrets. Let us consider the case of the B-29 bomber aircraft, whose use in the Second World War was reportedly classified. Samuel Halpern, an officer of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), recalled how he once surprised an admiral by referring in his briefing to the B-29 Super Fortress bombers. When the admiral demanded to know how Halpern knew of the “highly classified” aircraft, the OSS officer replied that he had learned of the bomber through monitored Japanese radio broadcasts.[7] In short, what is classified to some is open information to others. This can lead to the absurd situation where foreigners learn details of US intelligence operations in their country through their national media, while the American public and Intelligence Community remain unaware of the overseas exposure. Perhaps “unilateral secret” would be the proper term for this phenomenon![8]

The Value of Open Sources

Not only are open sources at times indistinguishable from secrets, but OSINT often surpasses classified information in value for following and analyzing intelligence issues. By value, I am thinking in terms of speed, quantity, quality, clarity, ease of use, and cost.

Speed: When a crisis erupts in some distant part of the globe, in an area where established intelligence assets are thin, intelligence analysts and policymakers alike will often turn first to the television set and Internet.[9]

Quantity: There are far more bloggers, journalists, pundits, television reporters, and think-tankers in the world than there are case officers. While two or three of the latter may, with good agents, beat the legions of open reporters by their access to secrets, the odds are good that the composite bits of information assembled from the many can often approach, match, or even surpass the classified reporting of the few.

Quality: As noted above, duped intelligence officers at times produce reports based on newspaper clippings and agent fabrications. Such reports are inferior to open sources untainted by agent lies.

Clarity: An analyst or policymaker often finds even accurate HUMINT a problem. For example, when an officer of the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence (DI), reads a report on a foreign leader based on “a source of unproven reliability,” or words to that effect, the dilemma is clear. Yet, the problem remains with a report from a “reliable source.” Who is that? The leader’s defense minister? The defense minister’s brother? The mistress of the defense minister’s brother’s cousin? The DI analyst will likely never know, for officers of the Directorate of Operations (DO) closely guard their sources and methods. This lack of clarity reportedly contributed, for example, to the Iraqi WMD debacle in 2002-03. The DO reportedly described a single source in various ways, which may have misled DI analysts into believing that they had a strong case built on multiple sources for the existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.[10] With open information, sources are often unclear. With secrets, they almost always are.

Ease of use: Secrets, hidden behind classifications, compartments, and special access programs, are difficult to share with policymakers and even fellow intelligence officers. All officials may read OSINT.

Cost: A reconnaissance satellite, developed, launched, and maintained at a cost of billions of dollars, can provide images of a weapons factory’s roof or a submarine’s hull. A foreign magazine, with an annual subscription cost of $100, may include photographs of that factory’s floor or that submarine’s interior.

Beyond this general argument for open sources, I would maintain that OSINT often equals or surpasses secrets in addressing such intelligence challenges of our day as proliferation, terrorism, and counterintelligence. When a nation develops a weapon of mass destruction, for example, hundreds or even thousands of engineers, scientists, and manufacturers may join the program. Bureaucrats and traders may sell the weapons abroad. The OSINT target is immense. Engineers attend conferences; scientists publish scholarly articles; manufacturers build production lines; bureaucrats issue guidelines; and traders print brochures for prospective clients. Many paper trails wind around the world beyond whatever may surface in the media.

Before terrorists act, they issue warnings, religious leaders of their community deliver sermons, and political leaders plead their cause. Open sources, while they may not tell us where the next bomb will explode, do allow us to understand the terrorist agenda and act thereby to address grievances or launch competing campaigns for hearts and minds.

When foreigners seek to tap US technology abroad or on our soil in order to evade embargoes or leapfrog the R&D process at our expense, open sources may alert counterintelligence officers to their activities. For example, the National Counterintelligence Executive has published reports based on Korean media from both sides of the DMZ to bring to light North and South Korean efforts to acquire Western technology both abroad and in the United States.[11]

The Cost of Slighting Open Sources

Arguing that we need to rethink the distinction between open information and secrets, which is more blurred than many think, and that OSINT is often more useful in addressing intelligence challenges, I would further maintain that Washington’s slighting of open sources is no way to run an intelligence community. In earmarking only one of every hundred dollars in the intelligence budget and assigning some similarly meager percentage of IC personnel to OSINT, our policymakers and intelligence executives are learning less than possible about our nation’s challenges while paying a higher price than necessary. DO officers without access to foreign media published uncounted numbers of bogus reports based on Chinese, Soviet, and other newspaper articles. We are also almost certainly spending large sums today to obtain covertly information similar or identical to that openly available. Rather than learn through HUMINT or SIGINT that a scientist of interest attended an international conference, for example, would it not be better simply to acquire, then print or report the contents of the conference proceedings? Open acquisition would likely be less expensive, and all policymakers and analysts would have access to the information.

Policymakers and intelligence executives would also do well to resist the siren call of those who argue that we should simply privatize OSINT. Private corporations are an excellent source of dictionaries, software, and contractors for our government. But private companies alone are no substitute for accountable, dedicated OSINT professionals in government offices.[12] Let us take the vital issue of translation as an example. Contractors— whether individuals, translation agencies, or research companies (the latter generally subcontracting with translation agencies or independent translators for the talent they lack in house)—today translate most of the foreign newspapers, scientific journals, and other open information for the Intelligence Community. They do so under the lead of cleared OSINT officers who, knowing both the requirements of the Intelligence Community and the mysteries of the foreign media, manage the translation flows to provide answers to intelligence questions. Staff officers are also available to translate priority items themselves on a crash basis when contractors are unavailable. Staff officers serve one master. Contractors, busy with a mix of assignments from corporate and government customers, often are unavailable when most needed.

Ideally, in my view, the government should develop its own sizeable cadre of translators. Yet, that would be much more expensive than the present system. Some would argue for the opposite path of privatizing OSINT, which would mean intelligence analysts, case officers, and others buying their translations directly from the private sector without OSINT officers to apply their general requests against the appropriate media for the right information or to edit, often heavily, contractor translations that are frequently of poor quality.

The above logic, which applies to media analysis, targeting, and other OSINT functions as well as to translation, suggests that the government should retain its OSINT capabilities. The Intelligence Community requires staff officers to lead the contractors. To use an analogy from history, private corporations may have supplied the aircraft, landing craft, and rifles for D-Day, but General Eisenhower, his military staff, and soldiers in uniform took the beaches at Normandy.

Assigning Greater Resources

I have maintained that (1) secrets are not identical to intelligence; (2) the distinction between overt and covert sources is more blurred than commonly imagined; (3) open information often equals or surpasses classified material; (4) slighting OSINT is no way to run an intelligence community; and (5) the private sector is no substitute for the government in applying open sources to address today’s intelligence challenges. I can only conclude that Washington needs to assign greater resources to open sources. Whether we create a national OSINT center or leave FBIS and its counterparts right where they are is less important than the issue of dollars and people. Putting all the meager OSINT offices together in a single center, without added funding, would be analogous to a poor man combining several small bank accounts into one—he would still be poor. With greater resources, perhaps a doubling of OSINT spending to roughly 2 percent of the intelligence budget, we would see an impressive increase in intelligence available to all in government. It would even permit covert collectors to focus with greater precision on areas truly beyond the reach of open sources.

---

Footnotes

[1]Charles E. Lathrop, The Literary Spy: The Ultimate Source for Quotations on Espionage & Intelligence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004).

[2]I came across the brochure, Challenges for a Changing World, while on a college recruiting trip in 2003. For an example of DCI Tenet’s fondness for the phrase “We steal secrets,” see an account of his 1999 speech at his alma mater, Cardozo High School in Queens, New York, in Vernon Loeb’s “Back Channels” column, The Washington Post, 18 June 1999. In my use of the word intelligence, I mean vetted information from any source. For more on how I define intelligence, see my article “Sailing the Sea of OSINT in the Informa­tion Age,” Studies in Intelligence 48, no. 3 (2004): 50–51.

[3]The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) develops reconnaissance satellites. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) provides IMINT. The National Security Agency (NSA) handles SIGINT. The CIA devotes most of its resources, apart from its analytical direc­torate, to collecting HUMINT and devel­oping technical support for such operations. FBIS, established in 1941 in the Federal Communications Commis­sion, exists today as an OSINT service within a HUMINT organization. For OSINT’s contribution and its funding, see Joseph Markowitz, “The Open Source Role,” Horizons 1, 2 (Summer 1997): 1–2.

[4]James Lilley, with Jeffrey Lilley, China Hands: Nine Decades of Adventure, Espio­nage, and Diplomacy in Asia (New York: Public Affairs, 2004), 82–83.

[5]For reference to the European cons and an earlier account by Ambassador Lilley of the China debacle, see Evan Thomas, The Very Best Men: Four Who Dared: The Early Years of the CIA (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 154.

[6]For an example of Gertz’s use of leaks, see the copies of classified documents in the appendix to his book Betrayal: How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security (Washington, DC: Reg­nery, 1999). The appendix, titled “The Paper Trail,” covers pages 217–84 of a book running 291 pages. In other words, his classified appendix accounts for nearly one page of every four in the book.

[7]Samuel Halpern, “Remembering 109,” OSS Society (Fall 2001), 5; accessed at www.oss.org.

[8]While the US media has no habit of exposing CIA and DoD actions and organi­zations in East Asia, to pick a region, the same cannot be said of the Asian media. Pyongyang’s press, for example, publishes articles detailing the alleged flights each month of US reconnaissance aircraft against North Korea. Seoul reporters, too, engage in the sport of “spot the spook” by telling Korean readers that this or that office of the US Embassy is a CIA station. Even the media in Japan, our bedrock partner in the Pacific, repeatedly treat the public to stories of US officers under non-official cover and other sensitive topics.

[9]The image of CIA officers tuning in CNN to watch the breaching of the Berlin Wall underscores this point. See my article, “Sailing the Sea of OSINT in the Informa­tion Age,” Studies in Intelligence 48, no. 3 (2004): 47.

[10]Walter Pincus, “CIA Alters Policy After Iraq Lapses,” The Washington Post, 12 February 2004: A1.

[11]For a report from the National Counter­intelligence Executive on Pyongyang mobilizing overseas Koreans to acquire foreign S&T information, see “Overseas Koreans Contributing Technical Litera­ture to DPRK,” Counterintelligence News & Developments, September 2001. For a story about South Korean plans to build a biotechnology facility in California, see “South Korea: Biotech Consortium To Build Tech-Transfer Facility in San Diego,” News & Developments, January 2002. Both reports are available on line at www.ncix.gov.

[12]I do not maintain that contractors are a different species from intelligence officers. Indeed, they are often our retired col­leagues who have traded staff badges for contractor badges.

Stephen C. Mercado is an analyst in the CIA Directorate of Science and Technology.

Copyright © 2005 Journal of Intelligence

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A Word Of Advice To Dub And His Minions

Ol' Mark Twain knew the human condition. If this is (fair & balanced) truth, so be it.

If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything. (Mark Twain)

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Another Reason W Should Appoint Patrick Fitzgerald To The Court

The dumbo masquerading as the senior U. S. Senator from Texas, Kay Bailey Hutchinson opined on "Meet The Press" last Sunday that "perjury was a technicality." If the Kennedys had a grandfather nicknamed "Honey Fitz," Scooter and his co-conspirators (the WHIG) are having a "Sour Fitz." If this is the (fair & balanced) truth, so be it.

[x Slate]

When another reporter asked him to respond to Republican characterizations of the perjury charges as "technicalities," the mild-mannered (Patrick) Fitzgerald came as close as he ever did to a firebrand Tom Cruise speech from A Few Good Men. "That talking point won't fly," he replied, the eagle embroidered on a blue curtain behind him seeming to swell in size and flutter in the wind as he continued, "The truth is the engine of our judicial system. If you compromise the truth, the whole process is lost … if we were to walk away from this, we might as well hand in our jobs." But Fitzgerald's last words before opening the (press) conference up to questions retreated once more to the impersonal language of civil service: "Let's take a deep breath," he concluded, "and let justice process the system."

Copyright © 2005 Slate

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Patrick Fitzgerald For Supreme Court Justice

Scooter was the first (not the last?) of Dub's gang to do the perp walk to jail. Scooter has resigned and his legal costs are on his tab, not Uncle Sam's. The Grand Inquisitor — Patrick Fitzgerald — who is an equal opportunity tormentor (not just Dumbos) — should be Dub's choice to succeed Sandy-Baby (as styled by John Riggins) O'Connor. Any other nominee will have a helluva time getting confirmed by either the Left or the Right. Anyway, Scooter is gone and Turd Blossom is next. If this is (fair & balanced) gloating, so be it.

Cheney Adviser Resigns After Indictment

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, was indicted Friday, Oct. 28, 2005, on charges of obstruction of justice, making a false statement and perjury in the CIA leak case.

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It All Started With Mr. Nice

Mr. Nice (Bob Novak) is a jerk. He is not a patriot, either. If the Scooter does the perp walk out of the White House, Novak ought to be right behind him. If this is (fair & balanced) disdain, so be it.

[x Slate]
The Novak Report
When the Plame indictments come down, the columnist will have a lot to explain.
By Jack Shafer


Mr. Nice aka Robert (Bob) Novak
Click on image to enlarge for framing. 

What will he say when he's unmuzzled?

Robert Novak has only half-kept the vow he made two years ago not to talk about the Valerie Plame case until the Fitzgerald investigation concludes. Seeing as that hour is upon us, I eagerly await his version of events.

But Novak won't have an easy time telling his story. Since publishing his infamous July 14, 2003, column that outed the covert CIA officer, Novak has made a mash of it every time he's discussed the subject. Tracking his many inconsistent statements about how and why administration sources leaked Valerie Plame's name to him and whether he would surrender the names of confidential sources have been the liberal watchdogs at Media Matters for America and others. To straighten the record, Novak will need an Ingersoll-Rand DD-70 tandem asphalt roller.

Rereading the original Novak outing column, I can't fathom why so many people—then and now—read the Novak piece as part of a conspiracy to "punish" Plame's whistle-blowing husband, Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. Compared with the usual Novak formula, partisan slashing and stiletto jabs, the column reads almost like a straight and substantive news story. It reports how the CIA came to send Wilson to Niger to investigate allegations about Iraqi attempts to purchase uranium. It also measures the political fallout from Wilson's July 6, 2003, op-ed in the New York Times. In that op-ed, Wilson famously wrote of his Niger trip, "I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

But because the paragraph in which Novak outs Plame arrives with little in the way of context, it's provided readers with ample reason to interpret. Novak writes:

Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him. "I will not answer any question about my wife," Wilson told me.

Some interpret the paragraph as Novak's way of denigrating Wilson: The assignment was an act of nepotism. Others take a harder line, believing that Novak was helping the administration blow Plame's cover as direct retaliation, an act that maimed their political foe Wilson by putting his wife in personal danger and ending her career. Still others view the outing as the administration's warning for future whistle-blowers: Cross us and we'll come gunning for you and your family. Ambassador Wilson subscribes to most of the above.

But these interpreters don't know bob about Novak. When he attacks people, he does it with a skywriter, not an airbrush. So, what was Novak's intention? What motivated him to reveal her identity? Eight days after the column appeared, Novak made the administration officials' disclosure sound lackadaisical, telling Newsday (July 22) that his sources had approached him with the information. "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me," Novak said. "They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it."

As Media Matters points out, Novak started to change his story a couple of days after the Department of Justice announced an official investigation of the leak. In his Oct. 1, 2003, column, Novak assures readers that his "role and role of the Bush White House have been distorted and need explanation" and that he "did not receive a planned leak," i.e., the administration hadn't planted the story with him for political gain. Novak writes that the information came to him during "a long conversation with a senior administration official." Novak had asked the official why Wilson had been sent to Niger, and the official said Wilson's CIA wife had suggested him. "It was an offhand revelation from this official, who is no partisan gunslinger," Novak writes, and the information was confirmed by a second administration source who said to Novak, "Oh, you know about it."

So, which is it? Was the Plame information "given" to him by someone who "thought it was significant" and did not require him to "dig it out," as he told Newsday in July? Or did he learn about her during a long conversation in which he had taken the initiative to inquire about why the CIA sent Wilson to Niger, as he writes in his October column?

When Tim Russert asked Novak about the inconsistencies on the Oct. 5, 2003, edition of Meet the Press, Novak waved his hands and said there were none.

Another contradiction: As Media Matters notes, Novak expressed absolutely no qualms about Wilson's qualifications for the Niger job in his July 14 column. In fact, he devotes a whole paragraph to showcasing Wilson's impressive résumé. But in his Oct. 1 column, Novak retrofits his July mind-set, describing himself as puzzled by the Wilson assignment as he read the ambassador's Times op-ed. Novak writes:

I was curious why a high-ranking official in President Bill Clinton's National Security Council (NSC) was given this assignment. Wilson had become a vocal opponent of President Bush's policies in Iraq after contributing to Al Gore in the last election cycle and John Kerry in this one.

Novak engaged in similar retrofitting of his July mind-set in October appearances on CNN's Wolf Blitzer Reports and the aforementioned Meet the Press.

So, again, which way was it? If Novak really believed that the ambassador was a partisan hack when he wrote the July column, why didn't he write it that way?

Another thing Novak's ultimate Plame column will have to wrestle with is why he has repeatedly cited the advice of his attorneys as the reason he won't answer reporters' questions about the investigation, even questions about whether he's testified before the grand jury. (Another nod is due here to Media Matters.)

"My lawyer has asked me not to talk about the investigation at all," he told Meet the Press on Oct. 5, 2003.

When Amy Sullivan interviewed him for a profile in the December 2004 Washington Monthly, Novak forbade discussion of the Plame business. Novak's assistant told Sullivan that if she brought the subject up, "the interview will be immediately terminated."

Interviewed on CNN's Inside Politics (June 29, 2005), Novak said, "As somebody who likes to write, I'd like to say a lot about the case, but because of my attorney's advice I can't. But I will."

"Though frustrated, I have followed the advice of my attorneys and written almost nothing about the CIA leak over two years because of a criminal investigation by a federal special prosecutor," Novak wrote in his Aug. 1, 2005, column.

Novak's endless citation of his lawyer's advice poses the question, What is his legal liability? He did nothing criminal in publishing Plame's identity, so he's not protecting himself by keeping silent. So, who is his silence protecting?

Could it be that he's been using his "attorney's advice" to hide the fact that he testified before the grand jury? Testimony there is secret—unless, of course, the person who testified shares the information with the public. Matthew Cooper and Judith Miller, who were subpoenaed by the grand jury, finally gave testimony after receiving waivers from their sources. They also wrote about their testimony for their publications because the waivers put the information on the record.

Has Novak kept mum about the case so he won't have to explain how or why he gave up his confidential sources? Or what sort of waiver he received? In the past he's made sweeping statements about the importance of keeping confidential sources confidential. On Oct. 16, 2003, while visiting a college in Florida, Novak explained why he would never give up his confidential sources.

"If I did, I would be finished in journalism," the Boca Raton News quoted him. "I talk to people off the record all the time. It's the way America gets a lot of its information."

Also to be resolved in Novak's forthcoming piece is his insistence in his Oct. 1, 2003, column and in television appearances that his source for the Plame information was not a "partisan gunslinger." As I write this, Karl Rove and Scooter Libby are regarded as the most likely sources of the leak. Campaign manager Rove by anybody's measure is a partisan gunslinger. If I were feeling charitable to Novak, I would be willing to call Libby (State Department, Department of Defense, "former Hill staffer") just a gunslinger whose only partisanship is about protecting the administration. But I'm not feeling charitable.

When Novak paints his masterpiece about the Plame case, I hope he tells his readers more about his "CIA source." When he appeared on Meet the Press in October 2003, he volunteered to Russert that he had "one source at the CIA who says [Plame] was not a covert operative." The chapter about Novak in Wilson's book The Politics of Truth is chockablock with references to Novak's alleged CIA source.

Wilson writes that six days before Novak's Plame column appeared, an unnamed friend of his approached Novak on a Washington, D.C., street near George Washington University and accompanied the columnist for a couple blocks. Novak didn't know that the friend knew Wilson as the two engaged in conversation about the Niger affair. The friend asked Novak what he thought of Wilson.

Novak responded, "Wilson's an asshole. The CIA sent him. His wife, Valerie, works for the CIA. She's a weapons of mass destruction specialist. She sent him," and then the two parted.

The friend immediately called Wilson, and Wilson got in touch with Novak two days later. Novak apologized to Wilson for talking to a stranger about his wife but also repeated his claim that a CIA source had told him that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA. When Novak asked Wilson to confirm it, Wilson he told him he didn't answer questions about his wife.

Wilson called Novak after the column appeared and, among other things, asked him why he'd cited "two administration officials" and not his CIA source when he unmasked Plame. Novak said, "I misspoke the first time we talked."

So, did Novak have a CIA source about Plame, as he stated on Meet the Press in October 2003 and to the stranger he talked to on the street in July 2003 and to Wilson in their first conversation in July? Or did he not, as he said to Wilson in July after the column appeared?

One last peculiarity for Novak to explain: He opposed the Iraq war, as did Wilson. One would think that Novak would sympathize with the ambassador on matters of foreign policy rather than describe him as an "asshole" to a stranger even before the outing column appeared in print.

******

I've not included the running dispute between Novak and former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow over whether Harlow sufficiently waved Novak away from naming Plame, because it would require another 2,000 words. To review the dispute yourself, see this Aug. 1, 2005, column in which Novak responds to what Harlow told the Washington Post. Rest assured no covert CIA officers were exposed in the writing of this column. Send e-mail to slate.pressbox@gmail.com. (E-mail may be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)

---

Chris Suellentrop assessed Novak in 2003 and, regarding the leaker story, concluded, "my guess is we won't learn anything more from listening to Robert Novak." Jacob Weisberg warned Democrats not to gloat over the Plame investigation earlier this month. And instead of writing these columns about the Plame investigation, "Stop the Investigation!," "Free Matt Cooper," "Nixon Lives!," and "Memo to Cooper and Miller," among others, Jack Shafer should have written a book.

Jack Shafer is Slate's editor at large.

Copyright © 2005 Slate

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Turd Blossom and Scooter Aren't Alone: Take The Quiz

Use the Comment feature below this post to request the correct answer. If this is (fair & balanced) pedagogy, so be it.

[x Washington Post]
Political Trivia Quiz

Who was the only sitting cabinet member in recent history to be indicted while in office?
Raymond J. Donovan, Ronald Reagan's secretary of labor
Henry G. Cisneros, President Clinton's secretary of housing and urban development
Mike Espy, President Clinton's secretary of agriculture
John M. Poindexter, President Reagan's national security adviser

Copyright © 2005 The Washington Post

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Just What The World Needs: A New History Site

An Internet junky receives all sorts of tips about new resources on the Web. Just today, one of my tipsheets touted a new history Web site: WorldHistory. If this is (fair & balanced) spamming, so be it.

Depending on what type of student you were, history may or may not have been your favorite subject in school. Of course, if you were like some students, the very concept of actually having a favorite subject may have been too much for your brain to comprehend. The fact of the matter is that history doesn’t have to be a boring overview of the dates when political events happened. The schooling system sculpts your thinking into that mold, but much more in involved in history. Obviously, anything that took place before this very second is history, and the scope of what that includes is ridiculously vast. Click on WorldHistory to learn what happened in the past.

When you arrive at the site, feel free to type in any topic that you want to learn about. As you would expect on a world history site, you can search for information on someone like George Washington, but you can also use it to learn more about George Clooney's past. The dates are accurate, and the details are specific. The "This Day in History" page is helpful for figuring out what happened in the past on that exact day, and you can even have this information e-mailed to you. Whether your tastes are for political, pop culture, or any other information in between, WorldHistory will try to tell you about it.

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Move Over, Clement and G. Harold, Here Comes Harry!

It's eerie as we approach Halloween. The Trickster — back in his second term — attempted to fill Supreme Court vacancies with a pair of losers: Clement Haynesworth and G. Harold Carswell. The Trickster also had the joy of Watergate and indictments and unindicted co-conspirators during that same second term. Dub was forced to withdraw Harry's nomination to the Court just hours ago. The possibility of indictments and unindicted co-conspirators in L'Affaire Plame is delicious. If this is (fair & balanced) gleeful anticipation, so be it.

[x NYTimes]
Miers Failed to Win Support of Key Senators and Conservatives
By Timothy Williams
WASHINGTON, Oct. 26 - Harriet E. Miers withdrew her nomination for the Supreme Court this morning after her selection by President Bush led to criticism from both conservatives and liberals.

In recent days, several prominent members of the Republican Party had begun to publicly question Ms. Miers's nomination, suggesting was not conservative enough on issues such as abortion. Others, including Democrats and Republicans, have questioned Ms. Miers's lack of judicial experience since her nomination was announced on Oct. 3.

Democratic senators had also sought White House documents from Ms. Miers, who is the White House counsel, that might have given clues to her judicial philosophy.

Concern among conservatives over her views on abortion and judicial philosophy heightened on Wednesday when The Washington Post reported that Ms. Miers, in a 1993 speech in Dallas, spoke approvingly about a trend toward "self-determination" in resolving debates about law and religion, including those involving abortion rights and religion in public schools and public places.

In a statement today, President Bush said he had "reluctantly" accepted her decision to withdraw.

"It is clear that senators would not be satisfied until they gained access to internal documents concerning advice provided during her tenure as the White House - disclosures that would undermine a president's ability to receive candid counsel," Mr. Bush said in the statement.

The president added: "Harriet Miers' decision demonstrates her deep respect for this essential aspect of the constitutional separation of powers - and confirms my deep respect and admiration for her."

Mr. Bush said that he intends to fill the Supreme Court vacancy "in a timely manner."

In a letter to the president, Ms. Miers wrote that the confirmation process would have presented "a burden for the White House and our staff that is not in the best interest of the country."

She said that she had resisted surrendering internal documents, including legal advice to the president, because to do so would have interfered with the independence of the Executive Branch.

"Protection of the prerogatives of the Executive Branch and continued pursuit of my nomination are in tension," she wrote. "I have decided that seeking my confirmation should yield."

Copyright © 2005 The New York Times Company

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Iraq Ain't WWII, Victor!

Farmer Hanson is the intellectual darling of the neocons. In an Op-Ed piece in the NYTimes, Hanson attempts to equate the Iraq disaster with WWII by placing the 2K casualties (and risin') in Iraq "in context" with casualty counts at Guadalcanal, Omaha Beach, and Iwo Jima. This utter nonsense was not addressed yesterday by Richard A. Clarke (former terrorism expert in both Republican and Democrat administrations) on NPR's "Fresh Air with Terry Gross." Clarke, ostensibly hyping his new novel about the coming oil crisis (and war) in the Middle East in 2010, was asked about Iraq by Terry Gross. In his dispassionate and unemotional voice, Clarke detailed the incalculable costs of the Iraq (mis)adventure to the U.S., above and beyond the body count. Clarke would smash Farmer Hanson and his specious nonsense that Iraq is a minor skirmish compared to WWII. Dub and the Dickster fired Richard Clarke because he told them the truth: Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and Iraq posed no threat to U.S. security. In addition, Clarke was smarter than either of those two bozos. The Iraq (mis)adventure has undone all that the Allied victory in WWII accomplished. That is the real connection between Iraq and WWII. Farmer Hanson's attempt to downplay Iraq because we haven't experienced the battle losses of WWII (yet) is what endears him to the neocons and the West Wing bozos. Farmer Hanson's dog won't hunt. If this is (fair & balanced) realpolitik, so be it.

[x NYTimes]
2,000 Dead, in Context
By Victor Davis Hanson

As the aggregate number of American military fatalities in Iraq has crept up over the past 13 months - from 1,000 to 1,500 dead, and now to 2,000 - public support for the war has commensurately declined. With the nightly ghoulish news of improvised explosives and suicide bombers, Americans perhaps do not appreciate that the toppling of Saddam Hussein and the effort to establish a democratic government in Iraq have been accomplished at relatively moderate cost - two-thirds of the civilian fatalities incurred four years ago on the first day of the war against terrorism.

Comparative historical arguments, too, are not much welcome in making sense of the tragic military deaths - any more than citing the tens of thousands Americans who perish in traffic accidents each year. And few care to hear that the penultimate battles of a war are often the costliest - like the terrible summer of 1864 that nearly ruined the Army of the Potomac and almost ushered in a Copperhead government eager to stop at any cost the Civil War, without either ending slavery or restoring the Union. The battle for Okinawa was an abject bloodbath that took more than 50,000 American casualties, yet that campaign officially ended less than six weeks before Nagasaki and the Japanese surrender.

Compared with Iraq, America lost almost 17 times more dead in Korea, and 29 times more again in Vietnam - in neither case defeating our enemies nor establishing democracy in a communist north.

Contemporary critics understandably lament our fourth year of war since Sept. 11 in terms of not achieving a victory like World War II in a similar stretch of time. But that is to forget the horrendous nature of such comparison when we remember that America lost 400,000 dead overseas at a time when the country was about half its present size.

There is a variety of explanations why the carnage of history seems to bring today's public little comfort or perspective about the comparatively moderate costs of Iraq. First, Americans, like most democratic people, can endure fatalities if they believe they come in the pursuit of victory, during a war against an aggressor with a definite beginning and end. That's why most polls found that about three-quarters of the American people approved of the invasion upon the fall of the Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad in April 2003.

The public's anguish for the fewer than 150 lost during that campaign was counterbalanced by the apparently easy victory and the visible signs of enemy capitulation. But between the first 200 fatalities and the 2,000th, a third of those favoring the war changed their minds, now writing off Iraq as a mistake. Perhaps we could summarize this radical transformation as, "I was for my easy removal of Saddam, but not for your bungled and costly postwar reconstruction."

Part of the explanation is that, like all wars against amorphous insurgencies, the current struggle requires almost constant explanation by the government to show how and why troops are fighting in a necessary cause - and for the nation's long-term security interests. Unless official spokesmen can continually connect the terrible sacrifices of our youth with the need to establish a consensual government in Iraq that might help to end the old pathology of the Middle East, in which autocracies spawn parasitic anti-Western terrorists, then the TV screen's images of blown-up American troops become the dominant narrative. The Bush administration, of course, did not help itself by having put forth weapons of mass destruction as the primary reason for the invasion - when the Senate, in bipartisan fashion, had previously authorized the war on a score of other sensible writs.

Yet castigating a sitting president for incurring such losses in even a victorious or worthy cause is hardly new. World War I and its aftermath destroyed Woodrow Wilson. Franklin Roosevelt's closest election was his fourth, just as the war was turning for the better in 1944 (a far better fate, remember, than his coalition partner Winston Churchill, who was thrown out of office before the final victory that he had done so much to ensure). Harry Truman wisely did not seek re-election in 1952 in the mess of Korea. Vietnam destroyed Lyndon Johnson and crippled Richard Nixon. Even George H. W. Bush found no lasting thanks for his miraculous victory in the 1991 Gulf war, while Bill Clinton's decision to tamper Serbian aggression - a victory obtained without the loss of a single American life - gave him no stored political capital when impeachment neared.

Americans are not afraid of wars, and usually win them, but our nature is not militaristic. Generals may become heroes despite the loss of life, but the presidents rarely find much appreciation even in victory.

Television and the global news media have changed the perception of combat fatalities as well. CNN would have shown a very different Iwo Jima - bodies rotting on the beach, and probably no coverage of the flag-raising from Mount Suribachi. It is conventional wisdom now to praise the amazing accomplishment of June 6, 1944. But a few ex tempore editorial comments from Geraldo Rivera or Ted Koppel, reporting live from the bloody hedgerows where the Allied advance stalled not far from the D-Day beaches - a situation rife with intelligence failures, poor equipment and complete surprise at German tactics - might have forced a public outcry to withdraw the forces from the Normandy "debacle" before it became a "quagmire."

Someone - perhaps Gens. Omar Bradley, Dwight Eisenhower or George Marshall himself - would have been fired as responsible for sending hundred of poorly protected armored vehicles down the narrow wooded lanes of the Bocage to be torched by well-concealed Germans. Subsequent press conferences over underarmored Sherman tanks would have made the present furor over Humvees in Iraq seem minor.

We are also now a different, much more demanding people. Americans have become mostly suburban, at great distance from the bloodletting and routine mayhem on the farms of our ancestors. We feel cheated if we don't die at 85 in quiet sleep rather than, as in the past, at 50 right on the job. Popular culture demands that we look 40 when we are 60, and with a pill we can transform fatal diseases into the status of mere runny noses. (Admittedly, this same degree of medical technology has kept the death total in Iraq a far smaller percentage of overall casualties than it would have been in any earlier war.)

Our technology is supposed to conquer time and space, and make the nearly impossible seem boringly routine. Ejecting a half-million or so Iraqis from Kuwait halfway around the world in 1991, or stopping Slobodan Milosevic from killing civilians is not just conceivable, but can and should be done almost instantly with few or no American lives lost. With such expectations of perfection, any death becomes a near national catastrophe for nearly 300 million in a way the disasters at the battles of Antietam and Tarawa were for earlier, fewer and poorer Americans.

If our enemies similarly believed in the obsolescence of war that so heartlessly has taken 2,000 of our best young men and women, then we could find solace in our growing intolerance of any battlefield losses. But until the nature of man himself changes, there will be wars that take our youth, and we will be increasingly vexed to explain why we should let them.

Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Hanson was a full-time farmer before joining California State University, Fresno, in 1984 to initiate a classics program. In 1991 he was awarded an American Philological Association Excellence in Teaching Award, which is given yearly to the country's top undergraduate teachers of Greek and Latin. Hanson is the author, most recently, of A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian Wars.

Copyright © 2005 The New York Times

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The Great Prevaricator?

There cannot be a smarmier writer in our midst than Doris Kearns Goodwin. That Tim Russert on "Meet The Press" and Don (I-Man) Imus continue to lionize this serial plagiarist is astounding. The woman has been disavowed by numerous universities who canceled her speaking engagements on their campuses. Kearns Goodwin has been removed as Pulitzer Prize Judge by the administrator of the Prizes. Now, Steven Spielberg is going to make a film version of her recent Lincoln bio; Liam Neeson will portray The Great Emancipator. There seems to be no end to this woman's chutzpah. However, the Mechanics' Union of Northwest Airlines has targeted Goodwin (a member of the Northwest Airlines Board of Directors) on her current book tour. The union nails Goodwin to the wall as a serial plagiarist in a pamphlet distributed at each of her promotional stops. If only Tim Russert and the I-Man had as much sense of right and wrong as numerous universities, the Pulitzer Prize board, and the Northwest Mechanics' Union. If this is (fair & balanced) disdain, so be it.

[x HNN]
How the Goodwin Story Developed

Editor's Note 10-6-05 Doris Kearns Goodwin's new biography of Abraham Lincoln, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, has generated renewed interest in the scandal of 2002, when it was revealed that she had borrowed passages from other writers without proper acknowledgement. This page tracked the story as it unfolded. The story proceeds in chronological order. The latest entry features columnist Alex Beam's discovery that copies of her tainted work, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, had not been withdrawn from booksellers' shelves as had been promised.

The Weekly Standard first published Bob Crader's story on its website on Friday January 18, 2002 at 6:10 pm. It was then published in the January 28 paper edition of the magazine.

The Associated Press on Monday January 21 published half a dozen different versions of the story, citing the Weekly's account.

On January 22 the Boston Globe published the first newspaper story about Goodwin, who lives in the Boston area. The Globe reported for the first time that Goodwin had paid Lynne McTaggart an undisclosed amount in their settlement. Goodwin told the paper she's "absolutely not" a plagiarist. She said there were extensive footnotes" in The Fitzgeralds. She said that her mistake was not properly marking quotations in her 900 pages of hand-written notes. She explained that this was the "first big work of history I have ever done." The Globe story pointed out that in 1976--eleven years before--she had published Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream. Ms. Kearns added that at the time she criticized Joe McGinniss she was unaware she had borrowed quotes without attribution.

On the afternoon of the twenty-second Slate.com published an article by Timothy Noah that provocatively claimed Goodwin "has not only committed plagiarism, but lied about whether it was plagiarism (and, incidentally, paid hush money to one of the people she plagiarized)." Noah observed that if a freshman at Harvard (where Goodwin sits on the Board of Overseers)had done what she did, the punishment would have been severe: "Harvard policy," according to the school handbook, "requires instructors to report all suspected cases to the Dean of the College, and most such cases are ultimately adjudicated by the Administrative Board. If the majority of Board members believe, after considering the evidence and your own account of the events, that you misused sources, they will likely vote that you be required to withdraw from the College for at least two semesters."

On January 23 the New York Times published its first story on the controversy. The paper did not advance the story, but used a startlingly blunt headline: "Historian Critical of Author Is Also Found to Plagiarize." A picture caption stated plainly that Goodwin "says carelessness led to plagiarism in a book she wrote in 1987." The article itself did not describe what Goodwin did as "plagiarism." (The online edition of the NYT carried this more circumspect headline: "Historian Says Publisher Quickly Settled Copying Dispute." The picture caption read: "She attributed her use of others' work in a book she wrote in 1987 to carelessness.")

On the afternoon of January 23 the Weekly Standard published a letter by Joe McGinniss about l'affaire Goodwin. He expressed his admiration for Ms. Goodwin but charged that she had mischaracterized his book out of a duty "she was expected to perform as a member of the Kennedy extended family." He insisted that "her complaint about my work was essentially baseless--that I quote from her repeatedly in my text, in each case placing quotation marks around the words used, and crediting her as the source." He noted that he even acknowledged her help in an author's note published, he pointed out, "in the original edition of the book, not added later."

Later on the twenty-third the Weekly Standard ran another story, this time featuring an interview with Lynne McTaggart, author of the book on Kathleen Kennedy. This was the first time McTaggert had ever spoken out. She said she felt compelled to after Goodwin misconstrued the record. Goodwin had told the Boston Globe that just a few paragraphs had been borrowed without proper attribution from McTaggert. McTaggert charged that so many of her words had been copied that she decided not to ask Goodwin to put them all in quotes. "I never asked for quotations [because] I felt it would be impossible because of the sheer number of them. It would have taken hours and hours of determining what was an exact quote, almost an exact quote, and what was a close paraphrase. . . . So we said it was enough to attribute everything that came from my book."

Eight days after the story first broke Goodwin defended herself in a piece in Time.com. She blamed the entire mess on faulty note-taking. She did not address the charge of hypocrisy (i.e., accusing Joe McGinniss of the same offense of which she herself was guilty). Unlike Stephen Ambrose, she did not claim that it was a legitimate practice to drop into her book whole passages from another without using quotation marks.

On Saturday February 23, 2002 the Goodwin story took a new turn. Ms. Goodwin told the New York Times that "she failed to acknowledge scores of [additional] close paraphrases from other authors." She said that after the January flap she had asked her researchers to stop working on her next book, which is about Lincoln, so they could do a thorough check of possibly borrowed passages in her Kennedy book. She said that was when she discovered that many more passages had been borrowed. She said that at her request Simon and Schuster is going to destroy the copies of the book on hand and publish a new corrected edition in the spring. This will cost the publisher about $10,000.

In January when the story broke Goodwin explained that she had changed her methods after the Kennedy book to ensure accuracy. She told the NYT, however, that "she continued taking notes and writing in longhand."

Goodwin declined to identify the borrowed passages or the books they came from. That Saturday night History News Network revealed the names of three of the books, providing a list of borrowed passages.

On Wednesday February 27, USA Today ran an editorial ridiculing both Goodwin and Ambrose. The editorial began: "Half-truths. Implausible denials. Secret payoffs. Shredded documents. The elements of the Enron scandal? Nope, the reaction of big-name historians to revelations that they plagiarized parts of their popular histories on the Kennedy family and World War II."

Later on Wednesday the wires reported that Goodwin was bumped from her PBS perch on "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer." PBS said that Goodwin and the show's producers agreed she should go on indefinite leave until "she gets her situation resolved."

HNN reported that Goodwin was making phone calls to editors to preserve the reputation of her Pulitzer Prize winner, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. Both she and her publisher, Simon and Schuster, insist that the Roosevelt book is free of the kinds of errors that cropped up in the Kennedy book.

Also Wednesday, the University of Delaware announced that it had withdrawn an invitation for her to speak at graduation in May. University President David Roselle explained: "We thought better to just cancel the appearance than to have her talk in front of our students and their families."

The following day the NYT ran two stories mentioning Goodwin, one by David Kirkpatrick announcing Goodwin's departure from the Jim Lehrer show, the other by Martin Arnold taking both Goodwin and Ambrose to task for their "lame" excuses. The Arnold article appeared on the front page of the Living Arts section, guaranteeing it a wide audience.

The Boston Globe, which first broke the story that Goodwin had paid McTaggert money, published two columns at the end of February and the beginning of March that came to opposite conclusions about the course the controversy has taken. First, Alex Beam commented, "In her public and private statements, this most decorated of popular historians seems to be asking for sympathy that would routinely be denied someone not so fortunate as to downplay her mistakes in a full-page essay in Time magazine, as she has, or on PBS. Maybe if I had heard one fewer time what a great historian she was I could feel more sympathetic." Then, a few days later Thomas Oliphant wrote that she was being unfairly maligned. He noted that she was being hounded by Philip Nobile. Oliphant's column, titled: "The Smearing of Goodwin," began, "Enough Already." Nobile responded with a letter to the paper in which he argued that Goodwin was guilty of a 15 year long cover-up. The Globe is publishing his riposte.

The following day Jonathan Yardley attacked writers/editors and Goodwin herself for using euphemisms to describe what she did. "There are any number of good old-fashioned words for what this certainly seems to be, but the one that was most commonly used until recent vintage brought things up to date was 'plagiarize,'" Yardley wrote in the Washington Post. "The ever-helpful and pithy Mr. Webster defines it as: 'to steal and pass off as one's own (the ideas or words of another); use (a created production) without crediting the source . . .; to commit literary theft: present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source.' But Goodwin, in fessing up to her transgressions, said they were 'absolutely not' plagiarism. Instead, she said, she had 'borrowed' phrases and passages and facts from Lynne McTaggart ...."

Later in the day the Post's online edition reported that Goodwin had "pulled out of the Pulitzer panel." The article explained: "Pulitzer board administrator Seymour Topping said Monday that Goodwin 'decided not to participate' when the 18-member board meets April 4 and 5 to decide on the 21 prizes for work done last year. Topping said the decision was made after consultation this weekend between Goodwin and board chairman John Carroll, editor of the Los Angeles Times."

Writing in defense of Goodwin on March 3, mobylives.com columnist Dennis Loy Johnson noted that she has been the victim of a smear campaign organized by an anonymous emailer using fake Harvard addresses. The emails have been sent to the media, including HNN, challenging reporters to dig deeper. Johnson took note of the irony: "Some anonymous person using false addresses wants me to go after Doris Goodwin for falsely claiming someone else's work as her own -- that is to say, somebody using fake attributions wants me to go after somebody for using fake attributions." He concluded: "The worst thing Doris Kearns Goodwin has possibly done has been to lie to make herself look good. Her anonymous detractor, however, has lied to try and destroy somebody."

David Greenberg, uncharacteristically sitting out the controversy for weeks, finally entered the Slate fray on March 5, with a column titled, "Mistakes Were Made." Of the two, Ambrose and Goodwin, Greenberg argued that Ambrose's offenses were far worse. He thumbed his nose at the academics critical of his methods, while she apologized. "Ironically," Greenberg concluded, "Goodwin seems to be the one suffering more—-having her membership on various boards questioned, her speaking invitations withdrawn. Because the reputation she wants to protect lies with elites, not just with an undiscerning mass, she couldn't shrug off her plagiarism and still preserve her reputation, even if she wanted to. She's in an impossible bind: The more she tries to fix her mistakes, the more attention she draws to them."

On March 6 Goodwin spoke at the College of St. Catherine in Minnesota. According to a local press account, "Goodwin had planned to talk about 'Democracy in Times of Crisis,' but she said she wanted to confront the charges against her and she changed her topic to 'The Writing of History: Problems and Pleasures.'" In her talk she spoke about the joy of writing. She gave the same explanation she has given before for the mistakes that cropped up in the Kennedy book: a bad system for taking notes. The paper reported that at the end of her talk she was given a standing ovation.

Her comments thus far did not seem to mollify here critics. The following day the Buffalo News ran the following quotation from Edward O. Smith Jr., chairman of the history department at Buffalo State College. "This is sort of an academic version of Enron," he said, referring to both the Ambrose and Goodwin controversies. "It's about filching other people's words and ideas."

On Sunday March 10 the New York Times featured an article by free lancer Tom McNichol that seemed to advance the Goodwin story. McNichol, identified in a tag at the bottom as "a contributing editor for Wired, [who] has written humor for Salon," reported that "the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin has been rocked by more charges of plagiarism, this time concerning her love of baseball," as recounted in her book, Wait Till Next Year, a memoir of her youth as a Brooklyn Dodgers fan. McNichol went on to say that "it appears that many of Ms. Goodwin's baseball memories were 'borrowed' from other sources," including Roger Kahn. Most of the charges seemed entirely convincing. Two did not. McNichol wrote that Goodwin claimed that she had stood at home plate at Yankee Stadium before a roaring crowd, an anecdote "that is now believed to have been adapted from the life of the Yankee great Lou Gehrig." He also indicated that the plot of her memoir followed closely the film "The Bad News Bears."

McNichol's piece was published in the far-right column on the second page of the Week in Review, a page devoted to hard news. Many readers took the charges seriously. Half a dozen wrote to HNN to alert us to this sudden new development, including a past president of the American Historical Association.

What these readers did not realize was that the Times has used this space in the paper from time to time to feature spoofs. Goodwin's supporters say the paper misled readers. [Disclosure: the editor of HNN was taken in last year by another column in the same space about President Bush and the nicknames he gives people.] A spokesperson for Ms. Goodwin told HNN:

"The piece in yesterday’s Times in the Week in Review section by Tom McNichol has nothing to do with reality. It is apparently intended to be a spoof or an attempt at humor. We regret that the New York Times decided to publish it at all. We especially are disappointed that the Times published it in the Week in Review section on a page that otherwise had only hard news. That apparently increased the confusion so that people thought the story had some basis in fact when of course it didn’t. As far as we’re concerned it’s really nothing more than a small joke in bad taste. We are making this known to the New York Times."

On Monday March 11 the Harvard Crimson broke with Goodwin, recommending that she resign her position as a Harvard overseeer. In a front page editorial in the online edition, the student paper argued that she should have to play by the same rules as students: "For students who have committed plagiarism, as Associate Director of Expository Writing Gordon C. Harvey points out in Writing With Sources, 'any letter of recommendation written for you on behalf of Harvard College—including letters to graduate schools, law schools, and medical schools—will report that you were required to withdraw for academic dishonesty.' With this policy, it is clear that the College does not think that students who have committed plagiarism should be able to proceed, unaffected, with their career goals. Why then, should an adult who is more experienced, much less a professional historian, continue in her position in the University without consequence?"

Three days after the NYT ran McNichol's satire, the paper published a correction: "Some readers have mistaken the article for a factual report. It should have been explicitly labeled a satire." In its defense, the Times noted that the piece appeared "in a position usually reserved for humor, and the author was identified as a humor writer."

The controversy cost Goodwin another speaking engagement in March. She was scheduled to give a lecture at James Madison University on March 15--James Madison Day. But the school withdrew the invitation "after Goodwin acknowledged she had quoted other writers without sufficient attribution in her book about the Kennedys." Lawrence S. Eagleburger was tapped at short notice to replace her.

Concern that the attacks on Goodwin went too far, amounting to a witchhunt, several magazines in March began rallying to her defense. Natasha Berger in the American Prospect concluded that Goodwin had been maligned, specifically citing attacks on her integrity in the Washington Post and Slate:

"There is no proof the theft was intentional, and in this case, intent matters. Accidental plagiarism is something of an oxymoron, after all. Nor is it exactly fair to argue, as [Slate's Timothy] Noah does, that Goodwin is getting her just desserts because a 'Harvard undergraduate' caught doing the same thing would be punished with suspension. Goodwin's position in no way corresponds to that of a student. Her years of valuable -- and blameless -- scholarly work merit the benefit of the doubt."

On March 13 the University of Kansas became the third school to withdraw an invitation to Ms. Goodwin. She had been scheduled to deliver the first talk in the university's new Dole Institute of Politics Presidential Lecture Series. David McCullough was named as her replacement.

The announcement was made by the Institute's director, Richard Norton Smith, who once was one of her students. "On a personal level, of course it was a difficult decision," Smith confided. "On an institutional level, it was an easy decision. I'm well aware this is going to be a defining moment in the Dole Institute."

Just how many words did Goodwin borrow from Lynne McTaggert? On March 16 McTaggert herself gave the answer in an op ed in the New York Times. The answer: thousands of words. "Whether Ms. Goodwin had used footnotes or even quotation marks around the passages taken from my book would not have mattered," McTaggert wrote. "It was the sheer volume of the appropriation — thousands of my exact or nearly exact words — that supported my copyright infringement claim." (Editor's Note: McTaggert in January in a letter to the Weekly Standard indicated that Goodwin had borrowed dozens and dozens of phrases; she did not mention thousands of words.)

In a searing conclusion, McTaggert wrote "it is important not to excuse the larger sins of appropriation. In this age of clever electronic tools, writing can easily turn into a process of pressing the cut-and-paste buttons, or gluing together the work of a team of researchers, rather than the long and lonely slog of placing one word after another in a new and arresting way."

Lawrence Tribe rose to Goodwin's defense on March 18 in a letter to the Harvard Crimson, which identified him as "a staff writer." (A Harvard graduate, Tribe contributes pieces to the paper from time to time.) Tribe chided the editors for lecturing Goodwin and called their demand that she step down as overseer "nonsense."

He noted that Goodwin, an old friend, admitted making mistakes transcribing her notes. "But there can be no doubt that, unlike the student who turns in someone else’s work as her own and hopes the instructor won’t notice the cribbing—-the student for whom the Harvard disciplinary rules to which the Crimson editorial referred were principally written—-Goodwin, who cited the very sources she has been accused of not crediting, had not the slightest intention to deceive, to claim originality for thoughts that were unoriginal, or to appropriate another’s deathless prose in hopes that she might be credited with a literary gift that belongs in truth to someone else."

Later that same day Slate's Timothy Noah took Tribe to task, identifying two weaknesses in his argument. First, Tribe indicated that Goodwin should be spared because she had not intended to deceive readers; under Harvard's standard, Noah observed, intent doesn't matter (though as he subsequently conceded in response to a reader complaint, Harvard punishes less harshly students who plagiarize unintentionally). Second, Tribe approved of Goodwin's settlement with McTaggert; Noah noted that the trouble with the settlement was that the addition of a few footnotes did not change the fact that numerous passages from McTaggert remained in Goodwin's text as if they were Goodwin's own. That McTaggert found the settlement satisfactory was beside the point: "By agreeing to Goodwin's terms, McTaggart became a party to that fraud."

On March 21 mobylives.com published a story by Philip Nobile entitled: "DID DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN COPY 'IN NO ORDINARY TIME,' TOO? . . . THE STORY SHE TRIED TO KILL." Nobile claimed that he had found examples of copying in Goodwin's Pulitzer-Prize winning book on the Roosevelts. Two Boston Globe columnists -- Alex Beam and Thomas Oliphant -- given a sneak peek at his evidence, earlier concluded that the passages did not amount to plagiarism.

Editor's Note: Nobile originally offered this piece to HNN. HNN initially agreed to publish it, then decided against doing so after receiving a phone call from Doris Kearns Goodwin. According to a statement printed on the homepage of mobylives.com, "Nobile says Goodwin has gotten the History News Network — where he is a contributing editor — to suppress his latest investigation of her work, after he let it be known that he was going to accuse her of plagiarism in yet another book." Actually, we simply reconsidered our decision on the basis of the facts that we now had before us. We concluded that each of her books has to be judged on the merits. We became convinced that Nobile's examples of alleged copying in the Roosevelt book did not raise sufficient doubts about her credibility to warrant publication.

On March 23 the Associated Press reported that the McTaggert/Goodwin fight had become nastier, McTaggert complaining that Goodwin had taken the "heart and guts" of her book about Kathleen Kennedy. McTaggert charged that "they have copied passages appearing on 91 of the 248 pages of my book." She added, "and at least 45 of 94 pages of Goodwin's book that discuss Kathleen Kennedy contain my material." Michael Nussbaum, Goodwin's attorney, responded: "It is preposterous for McTaggart to say that Goodwin copied 'thousands of words' from McTaggart or that Goodwin ... took the 'heart and guts' from McTaggart's work."

By the end of March the Goodwin story finally lost steam. Several days in a row there wasn't a single mention of Doris Kearns Goodwin in the major media. But she did pop up on David Letterman's show, Dave telling her, "I know your work a little bit, and you're no skunk." And on March 31 the NYT published a story critical of her campaign to win redemption from the media. The paper reported that she had been "working with Robert Shrum, a political consultant" and noted that Senator Ted Kennedy, a friend, had even intervened on her behalf when she was dropped by the Dole Institute. (Goodwin denied that she had asked the senator to intervene.) The story included this quotation from Robert C. Darnton, a professor at Princeton: "If she is organizing a P.R. campaign to exculpate herself, that strikes me as unprofessional conduct." Darnton was identified as a former president of the American Historical Association.

The following week, on April 8, the executive director of the OAH, Lee W. Formwalt, sounded more sympathetic, telling Newsday that he and fellow historians doubt that she was guilty of deliberate wrongdoing. "I think probably most would give her the benefit of the doubt on that," he said. (Editor's Note: Mr. Formwalt told HNN on April 13 that he made his remarks to Newsday in an interview conducted some 7 or 8 weeks before the article appeared, at a time when information about the Goodwin controversy had just begun to emerge.)

On April 5, on the eve of the award of the 2002 Pulitzer Prizes, Philip Nobile asked the Pulitzer Board to consider revoking Goodwin's 1995 prize for No Ordinary Time. His reasoning: the "prize was obtained under false credentials. Had the Board known in 1995 that she was a practicing plagiarist in the paperback of 'The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys,' no award would have been granted." Nobile in years past had asked the Board to revoke the prize awarded in 1977 to Alex Haley, who was accused of plagiarism in connection with Roots. The Board declined. Former chairman Russell Baker told Nobile in 1993, "The history of the Board is not pure." Baker added: "Should we make an effort to amend the past? What's done is done."

On Saturday morning, April 13, members of the Organization of American History (OAH), attending their annual convention in Washington, D.C., crowded into the Renaissance hotel auditorium to hear Robert Caro, Nell Irvin Painter and Goodwin talk about the secrets of vivid writing. Goodwin, however, was a no-show. Sitting in her place was Richard Smith, who'd been drafted on Monday as a last-minute substitute. What had happened? Ten minutes into the discussion C-Span's Brian Lamb, host of the televised event, cryptically explained that Goodwin simply couldn't make it, leaving the audience to wonder what had happened. Here's the story, as recounted in HNN's History Grapevine: Despite the controversy, Goodwin had led OAH officials to believe she was going to attend the session, which had been arranged a year ago. Monday when they came to work they found an email from her assistant. She wouldn't be coming after all. "Goodwin had really hoped to be there on the 13th," the email explained, "even in the midst of this difficult time. But it turns out that she and her husband have to be in London on business for a few days during that period. She promises that she will make this up to you in the future at whatever session you would like her to attend."

That Goodwin remained a presence at the session despite her absence was evident in passing references several panelists made in the course of their remarks. Asked at one point how he writes his books, Rick Smith answered: " I was going to say I make it up as I go along, but that is not a phrase I want to use these days." Later he was asked if he uses graduate students to help with his research. Never has, he said, "and in the current climate" wouldn't think of it.

The following message appeared on the website of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater mid-April: The University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and historian Doris Kearns Goodwin have mutually agreed to cancel her scheduled keynote address on April 25 to the National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR) 2002....NCUR will draw an expected 2000-plus undergraduates from more than 200 universities. Since plagiarism is a highly charged topic on college campuses, conference organizers were not in a position to speak for more than 200 campuses as to the appropriateness of Goodwin as the keynote speaker."

While little was published about the Goodwin controversy in late April, her critics remained eager to discredit her. HNN received several emails alerting us to unflattering references to Goodwin in the media. The anonymous emails came with the return address: dumpgoodwin298@boston.com. One email referred us to New York Magazine in which Goodwin's name was used as a cultural metaphor for theft in an article about fashion designer Nicolas Ghesquière: "After it was revealed earlier this month that the beautiful boy wonder at the head of Balenciaga had copied the most photographed showpiece of his spring collection -- a vest -- tassel-for-tassel, some people assumed he would become the Doris Kearns Goodwin of the fashion world."

Three months after the Goodwin story broke, Ms. Goodwin continued to be represented by the Washington Speakers Bureau, despite the cancellation of several important lectures (noted above). The bureau's website indicated that she was still drawing tens of thousands of dollars per lecture. On a scale of one to six, she ranked five, collecting fees between $25,000 - $39,999.

After trying for months to work out an agreeable arrangement with the Pulitzer Board, Goodwin finally resigned at the end of May. She explained: "After the controversy earlier this year surrounding my book `The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys,' and the need to concentrate now on my Lincoln manuscript, I will not be able to give the board the kind of attention it deserves." Upon her departure Board administrator Seymour Topping indicated that it had ended its investigation of the charge that she was guilty of plagiarism.

On August 4, 2002 the Los Angeles Times, which had ignored the Goodwin story, published a long piece putting the scandal into perspective. About midway through the story, which was written by Peter King, however, there was this bombshell:

For this article, The Times contracted with an outside reader to select a half-dozen or so of the books listed by Goodwin as source materials and simply follow the footnotes, randomly reading passages of "No Ordinary Time" against the other works. The process, which consumed roughly one full workweek, produced nearly three dozen instances where phrases and sentences in Goodwin's book resembled the words of other authors.

Goodwin's response?

As for any parallel language reflected in the passages, she said: "As long as a person is credited," on occasion there is "leeway to use some of the words. Just using individual words now and then, and when it is clear where it is coming from, that is what paraphrasing is." Moreover, she said, in some instances, references to the source were included in the text.

In some cases, she said, "if you had the whole thing quoted, you would lose the flow of the narrative." In others, the language in question was simply a common expression--how many ways are there to describe, say, a "white linen suit" or a camera being knocked "to the ground"?

And in still others, Goodwin said, sequential action was being described, and to tamper with the language would be to risk inaccuracy. She offered as an example of this the similarities between her description of Roosevelt's Guantanamo Bay visit and that of Sherwood: "This chronology and structure had to be adhered to in order to describe the visit accurately. Furthermore, the end-note anchor phrase of 'At Guantanamo Bay, etc.' clearly alerts the reader that general information about the Guantanamo Bay is derived from Sherwood's book."

Finally, Goodwin said: "The most important thing I keep coming back to, and what most people would agree with, is that the standard to be met in every instance is providing appropriate credit to the source."

A week after the LA Times story broke, political writer Mickey Kaus, writing in Slate, wondered why Goodwin isn't "toast": "Either nobody reads the Los Angeles Times, or it's summer and nobody reads anything, or people are sick of the Doris Kearns Goodwin plagiarism story -- but for some reason attention hasn't been paid to a fairly damning front-page Times piece that knocks one of the remaining props out from under Goodwin's defense."

Kaus noted that Goodwin had continuously maintained that the Roosevelt book was pristine. Her spokesman, lawyer Michael Nussbaum, had told the NYT that "Everything is fully credited and attributed" in No Ordinary Time. Yet the LAT showed that there were dozens of examples of copying, at least one, egregious.

Kaus concluded that the editors of the paper were to blame. They buried the lead. Not until midway through the piece, Kaus noted, did the reader learn about the copying in the Roosevelt book.

Just days after Slate's piece, the Boston Globe's Alex Beam called the LAT's article "damning." He reported that "Goodwin and Nussbaum are mounting an aggressive defense of her actions":

The LA Times article is "junk journalism," Nussbaum says. "Any time you put passages together side by side, yes, the inference will come forward that because the passages resemble one another there must be something wrong with the scholarship." Nussbaum adds that Ropes & Gray "looked at every single footnote without exception and then went to every source to see if the footnote was correct, proper, and met the highest standards of scholarship. We gave `No Ordinary Time' a clean bill of health, and we stand by that."

August closed out with a damning article by the Weekly Standard, the magazine that started the Goodwin brouhaha in January. The article, titled "Repeat Offender," began: "Like history, plagiarism tends to repeat itself." The magazine went on to recount the revelations in the LA Times, including this example of what appeared to be copying:

HUGH GREGORY GALLAGHER in FDR's Splendid Deception: "FDR had made it a rule, during his first campaign for governor, that photographers were not to take pictures of him looking crippled or helpless. . . . It was an unspoken code, honored by the White House photography corps. If, as happened once or twice, one of its members sought to violate it and try to sneak a picture of the President in his chair, one or another of the older photographers would 'accidentally' knock the camera to the ground or otherwise block the picture."

GOODWIN in Ordinary Times: "If, as occasionally happened, one of the members of the press corps sought to violate the code by sneaking a picture of the president looking helpless, one of the older photographers would 'accidentally' block the shot or gently knock the camera to the ground."

The Weekly acidly concluded:

Goodwin's response? "There are thousands of footnotes in the book . . . and they are really good footnotes."

As for language swiped from other authors? "I took the notes," she told King. "And they were in my longhand. And then, when they got into the text, that was the mistake." The "mistake," Goodwin still insists, occurred because a researcher didn't "cross-check" the quotations with the original material, but she doesn't want to blame someone else. "That was her responsibility to cross-check it, but she didn't. But that doesn't matter. It's mine. I'm the one." So it was the researcher's responsibility to make sure she didn't plagiarize, but it was Goodwin's book? Got it.

THE LATEST

On September 23, 2002 Philip Nobile, in an article published by HNN, took the LAT to task for declining to publish the 30-odd parallels the paper's researcher discovered in Ms. Goodwin's Kennedy book. The paper maintained that the parallels are "work product." Mr. Nobile argued in a series of emails reproduced on HNN, that the paper had an obligation to reveal its evidence so readers could judge for themselves the egregiousness of Ms. Goodwin's alleged copying.

In October 2003 the NYT published an article about the widespread phenomenon of cheating. The article included Goodwin as an example of a celebrity who got caught violating standards of good behavior. In response, about a dozen historians came to her defense.

In the fall of 2005 Ms. Goodwin began giving media interviews again in conjunction with the publication of her new biography, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, published by Simon & Schuster. Thomas Mallon, in the Atlantic Monthly reported on two extensive interviews. In an effusively positive and lengthy piece Mallon, the author of a book about plagiarism, indicated that Goodwin preferred not to discuss the subject of the 2002 controversy and asked to go off the record when the subject came up. Most of his article concerned her new book, which he indicated showed Goodwin to be a master at narrative history.

Writing in the Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam reported his discovery that a promise to make amends for the past had not been carried out:


In the midst of her troubles in 2002, Goodwin announced to The New York Times that she had asked Simon & Schuster to pulp all paperback copies of the tainted ''Fitzgeralds" book so that she could publish ''a thoroughly corrected edition this spring." But on Monday I bought a new paperback copy of ''Fitzgeralds" that had no sign of any corrections. ''We did exactly what we said we were going to do," says Simon & Schuster's Hayes. ''We did pull all our copies as promised. We weren't aware that other copy [from St. Martin's Press] was out there."

The promised corrected edition of ''Fitzgeralds" may be forthcoming after Goodwin finishes her current book tour, Hayes says.
A few days later Slate's Timothy Noah< /A> ripped into Goodwin for failing to follow-through on hr promise:

I have misrepresented Ms. Goodwin's actions, and I owe her an apology. In my earlier columns, I portrayed Ms. Goodwin as somewhat craven for correcting her faulty text only when bad publicity required it. What I should have written was that Ms. Goodwin was really, really craven for saying she was going to correct her faulty text and then, once the braying media pack scampered away, not doing it!

In late October 2005 Goodwin's past became useful fodder for Northwest's Mechanics' Union. Goodwin serves on the board of the union. In its stuggle with the company the union is putting pressure on board members. The union released a pamplet entiled, "The Great Emancipator Meets a Great Prevaricator." 100,000 copies were said to have been printed. The same week it was revealed that Steven Spielberg has optiond her Lincoln book for the movies.

Copyright © 2005 History News Network

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