David Weigel | October 3, 2006
Mark Foley could wreck the GOP majority, whether the Republican leadership made protecting their man a priority, and Bob Woodward challenges the Bush administration's authory... in the new Reason Express.
Help Reason celebrate its next 40 years. Donate Now!
Try Reason's award-winning print edition today! Your first issue is FREE if you are not completely satisfied.
In some ways, the most immediately interesting thing about
the Foley affair is that one newspaper uncovered a chunk of the
story last November and sat on it. The St. Petersburg Times talked
to a Louisiana page about the emails he received from Foley. Scott
Montgomery, the paper's government and politics editor, says the
emails involved "friendly chit-chat."...If an editor is
uncomfortable leaving readers to draw their own conclusions about
murky events and motives, maybe he should find another line of
work.
Or we can get out our tinfoil hats and suggest that the editor
might think the story would have a lot longer legs in the rundown
to elections.
Bob Woodward challenges the Bush administration's
authory
Authory?
Please, I just quit smoking...does it have to come to this?
Drudge says:
NYT: Ross said he learned about e-mails in August, but was too busy with Katrina and anniversary 9/11 to pursue them immediately...
So yeah, I'm going to go with Larry A's theory that the editor
might think the story would have a lot longer legs in the rundown
to elections.
Larry: the editor of the St Petersburg Times apparently thought
it was interesting enough that he put two reporters on it. But they
couldn't get two sources to agree on any one point and reluctantly
killed it. It's pretty explosive stuff and they weren't going to
run it without unambiguous confirmation.
ABCNews got pretty much the same lead the Times did and almost
immediately smoked out the second, and far more damning, set of
emails. It could be luck or the advantage of being a larger
institution. They could shake a lot more trees. That editor is
probably kicking himself for not staying with the story, and his
decision is probably open to debate, but he did have solid grounds
for dropping it. In no way is the Times better off for allowing
ABCNews to scoop them.
What's astonishing here is the House leadership's actions. They
were handed a stick of dynamite with the fuse lit and they stuck it
under their chair for safekeeping. Certainly if they had polled the
pages they would have found that Foley had a questionable
reputation. They likely would have turned up the same emails
ABCNews did. Granted, all politicians are at least partly evil and
mostly incompetent but they usually have some skill at politics at
least. What the hell were they thinking?
"Certainly if they had polled the pages they would have found
that Foley had a questionable reputation."
I thought "pol(l)ing the pages" was the problem.
As much as I would enjoy seeing evidence of nefarious motives on the part of the House Republican leadership for failing to investigate the Foley affair, I suspect the truth is more banal. The current Congress has been so incredibly disfunctional in performing basic legislative duties (at least on legislation I have monitored), the lack of effective response to the Foley revelations is hardly surprising.
Larry A's theory would make sense if the St. Pete Times had broken the story themselves a couple weeks ago, but instead they sat on it, and then kept sitting on it, as someone else scooped them.
Washington Post reporting this morning that the transcript's of
George Tenet's testimony to th 9/11 Commission includes his
description of the July 10 meeting, when he warned Rice about an
impending attack.
Repeat: they have the transcripts of Tenet's testimony to the 9/11
Commission, and this meeting is in the transcripts. Woodward's
charge has been proven correct.
Site comments/questions:
Media Inquiries and Reprint Permissions:
(310) 367-6109
Editorial & Production Offices:
3415 S. Sepulveda Blvd.
Suite 400
Los Angeles, CA 90034
(310) 391-2245