Katharine the Great

...Davis admitted that she was wrong on eight counts, failed to answer two charges, and held her ground on the rest—especially her contention that Bradlee had served the CIA...

...There was nothing substantially inaccurate about it...

...And you can obtain cash advances at more than 191,000 financial institutions worldwide...

...Or, if you don't receive an application in the mail, watch subsequent issues for an inserted application...

...What other card will let you do that...

...The fact is that a publisher does select, does make choices, does take the financial and other risks of his own judgments...

...but only the CIA accusation seemed important enough to draw the libel charge...

...Dulles was deputy director of the agency at the time...

...I wasn't as good a writer as I am now...

...No Other Credit Card Can Make This Statement IN THE NEXT FEW DAYS, YOU SHOULD RECEIVE NEWS OF A NOVEL WAY You CAN HELP THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR RAISE MONEY WITHOUT HAVING To CONTRIBUTE A PENNY A BRIEF DESCRIPTION FOLLOWS...

...Even critics of the book have pointed out that Davis was not well served by Harcourt Brace--which ended up settling out of court for $100,000 after she rolled out a breach of contract suit...

...And as if there weren't enough junkies around already, one of his reporters went out and invented another one...

...Katharine the Great, her 1979 biography of Katharine Graham, the Post's owner, was so despised by Mrs...

...December 1, 1979, he sent a sharp letter to Gene Stone, Davis's editor at Harcourt Brace: Dear Mr...

...That's how demoralized I was...

...That got Bradlee steamed...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1987 45 Since republication, Joseph says, he hasn't heard a peep out of Bradlee, even though Davis has included new information on the CIA allegations...

...It also said that Bradlee "further advised that he was sent here by Robert Thayer, who is the head of the CIA in Paris...

...Graham is not the work of an amateur, and a source at the Post says it hurt the famous publisher...

...On Dave Shiflett is a writer living in Virginia...

...So I rang him up...

...Graham because both had somewhat distant relationships with their mothers...

...The book has recently been republished by National Press of Bethesda, Maryland...

...Who knows what other calamities have been privately suffered in this patriotic cause...

...But the usual practice is to correct mistakes, not shred the book...

...Just think...

...By republishing,,she has overcome a strong challenge to her reputation at a critical point in her career...

...Think up a new angle, and you'll never have another sober day...

...except for CT, NJ, and PA...

...He stated that he was supposed to have been met by a representative of the CIA at the airport but missed connections...

...t this point, conservative Postbashers scratch their heads...

...I am told I should sue you, although, as an editor, libel suits are an anathema to me...

...and Peter, who came to your house that day of your birthday with me and my wife, is now himself a publisher, President of Peter Jovanovich & Christopher Morris, Inc...

...He also saidhe had not worked for or with the CIA, and that neither Thayer nor the CIA was involved in countering propaganda about the Rosenberg prosecution...

...The portrait Davis draws of Mrs...

...When scolded on these points, she shrugs and smiles...

...Anyone with casual acquaintance with me knows that Miss Davis is lying...

...I send you good wishes, Yours, Bill P.S...

...Mr...

...Then again, if it is true, Bradlee's assault on Deborah Davis represented the attempted infanticide of a young writer's career in order to save himself some "embarrassment...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR VISA CARD goes any other credit card you might be carrying one better...

...Joel Joseph, president of the threeyear-old company, offered $25,000 for the book...

...And an annual fee of $15 (or even lower, as may be required by applicable law) for subsequent years...

...Denounce the...

...Post in the morning and drink free that night...

...So not only will you enjoy the benefits of carrying a VISA card without paying any annual fee for the first 12 months, you'll also be supporting the principles and programs of one of this country's finest conservative journals—at no cost to you beyond the costs of carrying an American Spectator VISA, the competitive terms of which you'll find outlined below...

...Following the KAL 007 shoot-down, they denounced the Post's coverage with such fury that you'd have thought that Bradlee piloted the Soviet attack plane...

...But that's probably a charge he wouldn't mind...

...A 25-day grace period on purchases.* Cash advances and Convenience Checks...

...About a week after the Bradlee letter, a reporter from the Post called Stone asking if he'd been fired for working on the book...

...The victims here are Graham and Bradlee, not Davis," he said...

...This is far from an airtight case, of course...

...Indeed, the challenge for the professional Post-basher is to find new sins to denounce...

...I am enclosing a partial list of the inaccuracies that deal only with me . . . 39 factual errors in the 39 pages where my name appears...

...Sometime that December, the shredding began...

...The memo said Bradlee had called to say he'd just flown in from Paris and wanted "to look at the Rosenberg file in order to answer the Communist propaganda about the Rosenberg case in the Paris newspapers...

...I know what it's like to want approval from somebody and not get it," Davis says...

...Compare what this card offers to what others promise and you'll see some obvious advantages...

...Following this goodwill exchange, Bradlee asked Jovanovich to write a piece on "editorial blackmail" for the Post's Outlook section...

...Davis also makes it obvious, that she thinks Mrs...

...From an initial printing of 10,000, 8,000 have been sold, and there's another printing planned...

...After talking with most of the principals," wrote David Ignatius in the Wall Street Journal, "this reporter offers this judgment: the book and its tortured thesis are total rubbish...

...The "it" referred to the book you have recently published called "Katharine The Great...

...I thought it was an important book and I thought killing it was absurd...

...D avis, meanwhile, was having her hide tanned...

...The generations follow fast, don't they...

...She also described a farm as being equipped with "shotguns for hunting deer and rifles for quail-shooting parties," which must have made things easy when it came time for cleaning the birds...

...These shortcomings aside, the book reads well, especially if you like the Fawn Brodie school of writing...

...But if the Post were doing a story on, say, Pat Buchanan, and found a similar memo, it would surely use it...

...Why'd Joseph do it...

...And it seems elementary to me that editors should not be liars...

...The juiciest is a memo, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, written December 13, 1952 by a prosecutor in the Rosenberg case...

...That is one of those lies that should make it difficult for you to sleep at night...

...It's also possible that the memo was all wrong, and one wonders what the accused has to say about this latest assault...

...Among them: No annual fee the first year...

...If ever we should meet again, I would like to tell you some of my thoughts on what I have come to recognize as a kind of "editorial blackmail," in which persons say that if you reject a work or demand meticulous documentation you are repressing free expression and limiting the truth...

...As I grilled her KATHARINE THE GREAT: KATHARINE GRAHAM AND THE WASHINGTON POST Deborah Davis/National Press (Bethesda, MD)/$17.95 Dave Shiflett 44 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1987 over lunch at the posh Hamburger Hamlet, Davis gave a clue by letting fly this beatitude: "If everyone on all sides were honest all the time there wouldn't be much need for wars...

...She makes clear that she does not want a charge of malice on her rap sheet...

...Davis, for one thing, is a pretty tough number, and held up pretty well when the dragon cut-loose...

...Who can say...

...Its republication represented a victory for Davis...

...Sincerely, Benjamin C. Bradlee Many of the inaccuracies were trivial, some more important...

...She didn't accuse him of actually having been on the CIA payroll, but said only that he had produced various materials on the agency's behalf...

...You'll be able to spend liberally while making a statement that's unmistakably conservative...

...After thinking it over a couple of months, Davis decided to bite...

...Graham and Post editor Ben Bradlee that they convinced Harcourt Brace Jovanovich to feed all 25,000 copies to the shredder—eight years before 011ie North made the appliance respectable...

...What I can do, however, is to brand youas completely irresponsible, to tell author friends to steer clear of you as though you had the plague, to brand Miss Davis as a fool, and to put your company in that special little group of publishers who don't give a shit for the truth...

...Stone: You were quoted in Friday's Wall Street Journal as saying that Harcourt Brace Jovanovich "did everything we could to make it as accurate as possible...

...She responds that while writing the book she had dreams in which she sat aroundand talked with members of the Graham family, and actually felt pretty close to them...

...Graham was monstrous in her treatment of striking Post pressmen...

...That will cause many a conservative to tip his hat toward the Post building at 15th and L in downtown D.C...

...The book's an analysis from the left...

...Bradlee is not commenting," said a spokeswoman, "but if he were, he would say that it is all untrue...

...I made mistakes," she says...

...Other disinterested parties were to join in later, including Post columnist Richard Cohen, who wrote in the Nation that KTG was a "fat, dumb book" whose destruction was not an act of violence against its author...

...She also says her original manuscript contained footnotes, but her publisher wanted the book to be more of a page-turner and so dropped them...

...Graham's distress, which I said I thought was rotten of her...

...Tell Donny, if you will, that Stephan (who was at Harvard and in Vietnam with him) is now a lawyer in California...

...Unpleasantries ensued...

...And even though her book might not get quoted in the Encyclopedia Brittanica, she has succeeded in sinking a tooth through the legendary hide of Ben Bradlee...

...Many might write such a sentence, but few would allow someone to publish it...

...She and Graham might even get along if they met, though Graham refused her requests for an interview...

...W hen National Press brought the book out May...

...In the book it sometimes appears that Davis takes pleasure in Mrs...

...Bradlee did tell UPI that Thayer was CIA station chief in Paris when he was working in the embassy...

...He's been accused of publishing state secrets, giving aid and comfort to the enemy, and running a protection racket for the ghost of JFK...

...He has been trying to get in touch with Allen Dulles but has been unable to do so...

...On January 10, 1980, Katharine Graham wrote a letter to William Jovanovich, chairman and president of Harcourt Brace, thanking him for "looking into the inaccuracies in the book" and questioning Davis's mental state—and more...

...That could be because Davis calls Mrs...

...In this way The American Spectator can benefit if you use a Convenience Check to pay off your other credit card balances...

...I thought I might republish in maybe twenty years...

...Apply for The American Spectator VISA as soon as you receive your application...

...In fact, for the first six months of this program, the Spectator will also earn royalties every time you obtain a cash advance or write one of the Convenience Checks with which you'll be provided...

...Deborah Davis found a new angle, and, unlike conservative Post critics, she drew return fire...

...Attacking the Post in Washington is like throwing a stone at a Soviet tank in Kabul: it won't damage the target, but it is symbolically significant...

...So what are we to think...

...It was unclear at first if Davis was going to cry or come at me with her thumbnails...

...I knew it would be an uphill battle, and I didn't know if I had the strength to fight it...

...30, it had been cleansed of many errors...

...She also identified with Mrs...

...That's because every time you use it to make a purchase, a royalty equal to one half of one percent of the price of your purchase will be given to The American Spectator...

...She also seems to have an unhealthy attitude toward the CIA...

...Davis, however, made a charge that conservatives would never think to make, even if they had the goods...

...A competitive annual percentage rate of 17.5% (or even lower, as may be required by applicable law...

...What could she have said that they haven't...

...Davis points out that this was her first book, and that her editor was even younger than she...

...I cannot tell you how pained I am by the circumstances which have caused you, quite unnecessarily, distress and concern...

...Ignatius is now at the paper himself...

...Philip Nobile, formerly of New York magazine and now editor of Penthouse Forum, said Davis "is simply shameless, an embarrassment to her profession...

...Who is this woman...

...It has been a bitter lesson for me, but even so, your feelings in this matter are not to be compared with my own...

...She boasts about not calling me in the same Wall Street Journal article...

...Note that for billing purposes, Convenience Checks are treated as cash advances...

...Far from doing everything you could do to make the book as accurate as possible in matters that concerned me, you must have done nothing, absolutely nothing, for the book is riddled with reckless disregard of facts about me...

...Just for starters," she wrote, "the total professional credentials coming in were a very few freelance articles...

...Unless it turns out that the new evidence was faked, which no one has claimed, there's at least some reason to believe that Ben really was a 1950s Commie-basher for the CIA...

...It took me a couple of years after the book was killed to regain my equilibrium," she says...

...She says many other notable things, and it's hard not to be charmed by her, even though parts of her book read like they were written by the late Mikhail Suslov, especially her rants about class and money...

...Other problems with KTG include unsourced allegations, drawing conclusions without facts, and antic observations: "The mysterious ways that men, particularly newsmen, cement their friendships, helped along by Scotch, cigarettes, and girlie pictures coming in over the wire, produced a vision that allowed them to mistake femininity and shyness for weakness...

...This may seem of small consequence to you—the casual libeling of someone who has spent more than 30 years as a journalist...

...Graham her husband's "stooge," for instance, and complains about her "bitchy" and "irrational" behavior...

...She said that Bradlee, as a press attache for the American embassy in Paris during the early 1950s, had bashed Commies for the CIA...

...Of course she did not even try to check anything with me...

...Others have turned themselves into carping retromingent skunks in the commission of their anti-Post duties...

...Obviously, the more you use this card instead of an ordinary credit card, the more The American Spectator will benefit...

...Ignatius's father had been president of the Washington Post Company, so he might know...

...Jovanovich responded on January 15, including everything in his letter save a proposal of marriage: Dear Kay: You are generous to write to me as you have...

...These things should be checked out, as Bradlee pointed out in his letter to Davis's editor in 1979...