Presswatch / Billy Lie
Ledeen, Michael
"Presswatch / Billy Lie" - a cover for anti-Semitism. Not always. At any rate, if all those who object to certain aspects of Israeli policies should pass for anti-Semites, Israel itself would have more of them...
...9 pR:ESSWA~C~ BILLY LIE I got a real insight into the way the news business is manipulated in late October, following publication of a story by Arnaud de Borchgrave and myself in the New Republic...
...Page 19 for the Times...
...New authors welcomed...
...Showing a profit is not the primary motivation...
...The story bad it that Billy Carter had met in Libya with Yasir Ararat--the head of the PLO--and George Habash-the most extremist Palestinian terrorist leader, and head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine...
...Box 1969 Bloomington, IN 47402 Ph'asc send...
...They only cared about the possibility that Billy may have gotten more...
...Illustrated, very controversial...
...In the denial the ~o THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1980 Times' national news editor was quoted as saying that I had been interviewed and had said that there was only one source for the story, that the source was unreachable, and that the Times had tried to obtain documentation or confirmation for our story and could not...
...Enclosed Is $7 per shirt, three for $18...
...But this leaves us with the question, why did they buy it (for a r e p o r t e d $500...
...Paris Green on White...
...PI.[s PRINT ADI)Rt!SS CITY STATE ZIP by Michael Ledeen meantime, the story was front-page news all over the country, and indeed worldwide (it was the cover story in Now/in England, for example...
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...Policy in the Middle East...
...Columnists: When we look back on the stuff written during this overlong campaign, Carl Rowen will have to be singled out for the sheer partisanship of his writing...
...de Borchgrave-Ledeen story...
...in fact he must continually increase sales if he is to keep his job...
...Finally, we wrote that Jimmy Carter had prevailed upon Egyptian president Anwar Sadat to call off an Egyptian operation designed to topple the Qaddafi regime in Libya, and that Billy had received an extra $50,000...
...X Large Paris Green on Gold...
...Box 877 Bloomington, Indiana 47402 PLEASE PRINT NAME ADDRESS CITY STATE ZIP Total Enclosed: $ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (Indiana residents please add 4% sales tax) MONEY-BACKGUARANTEE Returnintenda~ifnot ~tisfied...
...One person from NBC news said that a colleague of his had been unable to check our story...
...No more than Giscard d ' E s t a i n g , who also recognizes these two rights, does Mitterand hold the miraculous secret of how to reconcile them...
...So that even if Burt had somehow convinced himself that our conversation had been an " i n t e r - view" (he had said he was not working on the story when we spoke, so I doubt he told his editors that he had conducted an interview with me), the Times was not entitled to write what it wrote...
...After recounting the story of our article and the Times (terming the newspaper's behavior a "pre-emptive s p i k e " ) , Accuracy in Media pointed out that the Times had neglected to inform its readers about other aspects of the Billy Carter saga in the past...
...William E. Simon PREVENTING MEDICINE An examination of National Health Insurance...
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...We Jews were deeply encouraged by Francois M i t t e r a n d ' s remarks [after the attack...
...Large...
...He knows that if he excels at his job he will not only make a living wage but also enjoy prestige and a measure of financial success...
...That was all...
...Nixon's The One--in 1980) Please send me my very own American Spectator Turkey Jacket (White on Navy Blue) Enclosed is $12 per jacket, Three jackets for $30...
...Second, he knows that he must produce a product that is salable and competitive in price...
...Saying that business is about money-making is equivalent to saying that all employment (including, of course, Berns') is about moneymaking...
...The American S p e c t a t o r Reprint Department P.O...
...If they d i d n ' t intend to print it, they could have saved money, a f t e r all, by simply ignoring it in the first instance, and then picking it up from the wires later on for sake of completeness...
...It is said, and I agree, that we must be prudent in our relations with the Arab countries...
...The terms of syndication provide that only one newspaper in each area may purchase rights to the article, and this meant that the Post and the News--along with Newsday --could be effectively blacked out for at least 24 hours, by which time the story might be " d e a d . " I'm nor sure about this, but the subsequent behavior of the "news" s t a f f of the paper certainly indicates a guilty conscience...
...But when he spoke of the Near East, he recognized both the right of the Israelis to " l i v e in peace within secure and recognized b o r d e r s , " and the right of the Palestinians to have a nation...
...Medium...
...Thanks, Mary...
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...Political Buttons at $1...
...Couldn't they have given us 30 seconds for our . . . real news...
...Still, with all that the Times did a lot better than the Washington Post, which chose to ignore the New Republic story altogether, and whose first story on the J u s t i c e Report suggested that it was a purely political operation...
...Large...
...TPdvUi Dept...
...Last, t h e r e is the matter of the coverage of my deposition before the Special Subcommittee of the Senate THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1980 31 MICHAEL LEDEEN ( Continued jgom page 31...
...Whatever one may think about the Times, its behavior was highly unprofessional toward me, and clumsily politicized in its treatment of the (Continued on page 40...
...X Large Paris Green on Light Blue...
...The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility issued a report to the Senate on "Billygate," concluding, inter alia, that the President had been most uncooperative (stonewalling is the term that used to be applied), that Billy Carter had r e p e a t e d l y lied, and that Attorney General Civiletti had at least once stated an untruth, and "knew he was dissembling when he said it...
...Here journalists only cared about one thing: the $50,000, and the evidence for it...
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...In Antwerp, the site of another anti-Semitic attack [earlier this year], the bomb was thrown by Arabs led by a Palestinian organization...
...One final point: The two newspapers that most ostentatiously ignored the story both endorsed Carter, and may have felt our story was too damaging to their candidate so close to election day...
...The French authorities are not unaware of the sources of the funds and weapons used by e x t r e m i s t s - - b y Irishmen, Basques, Corsicans...
...The networks totally ignored the New Republic story, but gave adequate time to the J u s t i c e Report, dropping it when their hostage extravaganza finally showed some signs of life on the last two days before the election...
...If a country goes beyond these limits, it runs the risk of losing its soul, and also of losing its life...
...Large...
...But the next day we found that the story bad not been run at all, but was buried on the very last page of the first section (page 34, for the record), under a headline proclaiming that Billy denied meeting with Arafat...
...But one's complacence toward the oil producers--who are also buyers of our weapons--has its limits...
...I n the meantime, a related story was breaking, this time from Capitol Hill...
...I must have listened to an average of t h r e e denials a day from poor Ed Muskie...
...Nuke The Whales...
...Was all that necessary...
...The "story" mentioned our article, carried a grudging acknowledgment from Billy (who had never responded to our phone calls) that he had met Habasb, and also a denial of meeting Ararat or of receiving the extra money...
...I am sure the author would feel put upon if it were asserted that his only SAVE YOUR GAS...
...copies of' 'Radical S h e i k s " . . . . . . . copies of " P r e v e n t i n g Medicine' l'incl(,sed is my the'ok fi~r...
...But when I repeated this under oath, the newsies acted as if I had "revealed a source," for most of the stories treated it that way...
...The upshot of these events, in my opinion, is that we are in a pretty bad way...
...He (if he is normal) feels that his motivation is to do a good job, his objective to excel at what he's doing...
...At the end, she captured the mood of the two contending camps best of all...
...it's called censorship...
...Roam the world 1st class by freighter or cruise ship at tremendous savings...
...Especially since, in the long run, this demagoguery would not help him...
...And not a single television journalist asked us anything about the story...
...imagine the smiles you will bring when people reach into their Christmas stockings and find a bumpersticker reading, "Have You Slugged Your Kid Today...
...Why shouldn't the government say that the Corsican independence fighters are being supplied by Libya...
...Large...
...I told him that this was not surprising, since after all Arnaud and I had obtained a world scoop: Not even Senate investigators had uncovered this information...
...And since she didn't like it at all, that took some doing...
...C 0 R R E S P 0 N D E N C E "ODD0PDDI@D00OOI@00D0IP~Q@90D0QDoI0D0000O@@000IOO@OQ@QO@m00@00DO0O00000DQioQQOUUOQ@QQ0DPPOQ@6QBPPI00mbD~OQQ@Db00P0OO0~0PP00QOmDP9QQO@0bPPO00Omb0B06Q@6QO90Q@QQb Corporate Concerns -1 Walter Berns' "The Corporation's Song" in your September issue, while ostensibly a defense of corporations, manages to achieve somewhat the opposite effect...
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...Some people suspected that the Times had bought it in order to kill the story in New York, at least for a while...
...American Brands is a large international corporation, with more than a dozen more or less autonomous subsidiaries (to emphasize the autonomy and the filial relationship the subsidiaries are called "profit centers...
...Everybody must "make money...
...From our April 1977 issue...
...1 Available V Douglas 1. Feith RADICAL SHEIKS A fr('sh l.()k at U.S...
...it is a by-product of excellence, i THE SATURDAY EVENING CLUB'S MULTI-PURPOSE ORDER FORM Please send me my very own American Spectator Tee Shirt...
...His "Business (busyness) is about money-making" is not only denigration of business but also a misreading of human motivations and personal objectives...
...QOO6QQOIQOOQQBQQQIQ61Q@QOQOOgOOO@Og40@OOO@Q@OlOO@O~OIOg@OQQQOOODOQDOgQO@OQ@QO @ 40 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1980...
...To make this point more apparent, consider how a large corporation conducts its business...
...This latter charge would be used as an excuse for ignoring the story by people at the networks as well...
...Caution: I Speed Up For Small Animals...
...Enclosed is $7 per shirt, three for $18...
...From our April 1980 issue...
...totally run by East Germany, and that the head of the Libyan Foreign Liaison Office--the person who aN ranged for the $220,000 " l o a n " to Billy--was himself a high intelligence official...
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...Pretty serious stuff, no...
...Judiciary Committee, charged with investigating the Billy Carter saga...
...The Post ignored the story--just before endorsing Carter--and the networks did the same...
...The rest of the material--top government and intelligence sources for the meeting with Habash and Ararat, a recent Libyan defector for the activities of the East Germans and the Libyan intelligence organization, highlevel Egyptian and West European sources for Jimmy's intervention with Sadat--did not interest them...
...Anyone who tries to explain away Billy Carter's ties with Libya by saying that Qaddafi's support of terrorism is only "alleged," and then blaming the whole thing darkly on a pro-Israel lobby, has in my opinion given up journalism for flacking...
...The evidence in this case--as s t a t e d in our s t o r y - - w a s the testimony of Signore Papa, the man who brought Billy to Libya in t h e . f i r s t place...
...We are analyzing French antiSemitism when the true authors of these crimes may belong to terrorist organizations that can be traced to Libya, and probably beyond...
...And so it is with corporations...
...Or the fun of wearing a "Nuke The Whales" tee shirt while caroling the neighbors...
...I had, to be sure, had a brief semi-serious conversation with my friend Richard Burt in the newsroom, when he had asked me if one of the sources named in our article--Michele Papa of Catania-would be able to confirm what we had written...
...That's not reportage at all...
...BEAT INFLATION...
...His final "they will have to clean up their old act" follows the party line of the I l l AUTHORS WANTED BY NEW YORK PUBLISHER Leading subsidy book publisher seeks manuscript.~ of all types: fiction, non-fiction, poetry, scholarly and juvenile works, etc...
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...The Times obviously didn't think it was worthwhile...
...The Times reacted by placing the ad in the second section, and resorted to the unusual device of placing a denial--masqueraded as a news story - - n e x t to the ad...
...If he has achieved all these objectives he knows' his profit c e n t e r is aptly named...
...Write us now and we '11 do our very best to get your stuff to you before Christmas...
...Business is about meeting the needs of people...
...Thus it was only to be expected that his colleague would be unable to get confirmation...
...The point is that his day-today concerns are not with making money but with excelling at his job...
...At any rate, if all those who object to certain aspects of Israeli policies should pass for anti-Semites, Israel itself would have more of them than France...
...In the Reprints V...
...Yes, The Saturday Evening Club may have j u s t the things you want to brighten up this holiday season...
...But this does not excuse them for burying the Justice Report the following days...
...the individual must make a living wage...
...motivation is financial and his only objective a living wage...
...I n conclusion, I wish to recall one essential fact: We do not know who the killers are...
...Now of course everyone is competing to break onto the national news broadcasts, and authors always give their own work higher marks than neutral observers, bur I r e s e n t the blaCkout by the networks at a time when they were giving five minutes a night to rumors about an imminent hostage release...
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...Large...
...I laughingly said I doubted Papa would be available to confirm a story that had probably enraged his Libyan paymasters (Papa is the man who invited Billy Carter to Libya...
...Each profit center is a corporation headed by a p r e s i d e n t . The day-to-day concerns of such a man are, first of all, about his j o b - - h e knows he cannot do certain things without being fired...
...He would demean himself were he to exploit a national tragedy f o r electoral ends and lend himself to the s i n i s t e r comedy of an anti-fascist front with Communist party leader Georges Marchais...
...Mary McGrory, on the other hand, for all her passion for Carter and against Reagan, still gave her readers the benefit of her great wealth of political instinct and experience...
...The New Republic syndicates these articles through the New York Times' syndicate, and we were surprised to learn that one of the first newspapers to buy the story from the syndicate was the Times itself...
...The corporation must show a profit or it cannot live...
...In addition, we revealed that the Libyan intelligence organization was Michae/ Ledeen is Executive Editor o/the Washington Quarterly...
...It was a shocking performance, since even the printed article in the New Republic had identified multiple sources for various aspects of our story, and no one from the Times had spoken to me in an attempt to get documentation or confirmation of the New Republic story...
...One week after publication, Reed Irvine's gadfly operation Accuracy in Media bought half a page in the Times to raise these and other questions openly...
...Have You Slugged Your Kid Today...
...Third, he knows that he must sell the product aggressively...
...In order to get additional evidence and some further leads, he would have had to speak to one of us...
Vol. 13 • December 1980 • No. 12
