Presswatch/Weasel Words and Deeds
Ledeen, Michael
PRESSWATCH WEASEL WORDS AND DEEDS W hen does a journalist take responsibility for what he writes, and when does he "fudge" it by wrapping various disclaimers around it? I don't know if this is a...
...One team member, Maj...
...What is it doing there...
...Hence, the United States shouldn't do anything vis.A-vis Eastern Europe that would threaten "the supremacy of Communism in the region...
...The phrase is, of course, highly misleading, since Communism is hardly supreme in the region...
...But the promises, critics say, were quickly broken...
...Finally, a thoughtful op-ed piece by Tom Killion in the Los Angeles Times on May Day...
...There may be a few apologists for the Sandinistas who are willing to say they believe the Nicaraguan government is "democratic," but you can probably count them on the fingers of one mutilated hand...
...intelligence has a rule that satellite photos must be confirmed by "humint'!-- human intelligence...
...A nasty piece of work by Mr...
...Perhaps Marvin Kalb, up at Harvard, is the right person to devote a few months to discussing this problem and making some dispassionate recommendations to his former brethren...
...Is there no one in the industry who, recognizes that it is time for some form of institutionalized accountability, at least in the field of national security...
...And that is because the ability of the Soviet Union to obtain advanced technology is perhaps the most important issue facing the Western world today...
...Arms control is a sideshow...
...The French are notoriously cynical about such matters (indeed, all matters), but they have taken very stern action in this case...
...Is there anyone around who doubts that Romania is one of the most repressive dictatorships in the world...
...The Pentagon now buys nothing from Toshiba, and many of us have joined in a voluntary boycott of the treacherous company...
...Moreover, he was shot while returning to his vehicle...
...Media spokesmen denounced the decision, claiming it threatened their First Amendment rights (and the likelihood of obtaining future leaks...
...The requirements seem to me to be the following: •a mechanism for at least trying to ascertain if a given story is damaging...
...Certainly not...
...The Miami Herald wrote an exceptionally good editorial on May 2, following a fine story by Sheila Rule in the New York Times on April 30...
...Yet it is only a matter of time before this, like Toshiba, becomes one of the year's truly big stories...
...If the media and the government do not find some way to deal with it, it is only a matter of time before somebody publishes something so offensive and so damaging to national security that Congress gets into the act...
...Soviet-Bloc Policy...
...Later on, Goshko notes that Romania is about to lose its status as a Most Favored Nation, because "President Nicolae Ceausescu's regime is unwilling to change what the United States regards as systematic repression of religious and political dissidents and restrictions on emigration...
...In other words, the famine is produced by the regime, as all three accounts make clear...
...That little phrase, "what the United States regards," is what attracted my attention...
...For tanks, that means the 14-man U.S...
...Barry...
...It's a friendly picture ("as he and revolution have matured, he says, he has come to realize the need for the forms of democracy . . . ") of a man who has well earned his reputation as the Sandinistas' leading Marxist...
...Indeed, they informed their own followers—in a printed document later made public by the U.S...
...We already have laws on the books (you can't name American intelligence officials, you can't reveal information about "signals intelligence," you can't "disclose information damaging to American military security to unauthorized persons"), but we don't have clear guidelines for the media in these areas...
...I don't know if this is a metaphysical question, or a political one (there is, of course, a substantial overlap), but it is prompted by two peculiar efforts at fudgemanship, and one fairly blatant bit of disinformation...
...Then, while breaking into a Soviet tank garage, Nicholson is shot by a Russian sentry and bleeds to death...
...Third, a straightforward bit of disinformation: in Newsweek's May 16 issue, there's a short piece entitled "A Failure of Intelligence," written by John Barry...
...Military Liaison Mission in East Germany...
...That has become more urgent because of the Supreme Court decision that leaking secret information to the media can constitute "espionage...
...Media Accountability, II Last month I suggested that it is necessary to create some sort of body that can help mediate the conflict between the media and the government on questions regarding the publication of secret information...
...It deals with the competition in tank/anti-tank technology between us and the Soviets, and contains an account of our efforts to find out what the Soviets were up to...
...First, the "rule" is at a minimum overstated, and at worst highly misleading, for there are many cases in which we accept evidence that has not been confirmed by human sources (there are lots of ways to confirm hypotheses, of which human inspection is only one and far from the most reliable...
...But our press, perhaps exhausted by the Toshiba matter, hasnot done much with it...
...the ability to hear from lawyers, government reps, and journalists about the propriety of publishing (or broadcasting) a given story...
...What resulted was a government led by the few but dressed in the garb of Western democracy, with an elected president and national assembly...
...We did not hear cries of "death to Mengistu" in those years (indeed, the passions of the young were stirred up to condemn the apartheid regime in South Africa, a place where, for all its undoubted evils, there is no famine), and we are not likely to hear any agonized reappraisals from the noisemakers now...
...But I digress again, for what is at issue here is that peculiar "critics say" in the second sentence...
...And this central fact, now fully acknowledged, is precisely what was missing a couple of years ago when the politically hip representatives of the rock music (excuse the oxymoron) industry were running around the Western world inducing mass guilt, and dunning our children for money to feed the starving Africans...
...The relevant paragraph reads: U.S...
...But the effect of Goshko's weasel words is to suggest that this view of Romania is somehow the unique property of the American government...
...The clock is ticking...
...the ability to punish those who violate reasonable guidelines...
...Arthur Nicholson, Jr., actually manages to climb inside a T-80 and take photos...
...This French company, with the assistance of a top general now in prison for espionage (having provided the Soviets with sensitive information about French nuclear programs, including the latest nuclear submarine), sold propeller-manufacturing technology to the Kremlin that is even more sensitive than the stuff that came from Toshiba...
...Exhibit A comes from John Goshko of the Washington Post, in an article sucked from the thumb of the Department of State about "Polish Unrest and U.S...
...First, the fudge...
...Exhibit B comes from a front-page story in the Wall Street Journal on May 16, a profile of Nicaragua's Interior Minister Tomas Borge, written by Michael Allen...
...When Allen describes the nature of the Sandinista regime, he resorts to one of those odd phrases that prompt the current sermon: With the advent of the Sandinista coalition came promises of a democratic government, not a Cuban-style revolutionary regime...
...Finally, the gratuitous snide remark at the end, in essence saying, "that ought to teach the Americans a thing or two...
...The last sentence is highly misleading, since the Sandinistas certainly did not pretend they were Western democrats...
...Intense pressure has been put on this team to prove or disprove the hints of Soviet advances...
...The details are coming out, but already enough is known to be able to say that it is much worse than Toshiba, and involves similar technology...
...The United States Congress caught up with the story, went on a rampage, and inflicted penalties on the Japanese...
...Toshiba Redux You may recall that last year's big story was the scandalous behavior of Toshiba, which illegally sold the Soviet Union equipment that made it possible for the Soviets to make very quiet submarine propellers...
...Now there is a followup, featuring a French firm called Forest Line...
...Americans trying to help him were physically restrained, and he was left isolated until he was dead...
...Rule wrote that "the fate of as many as two million hungry people depends largely THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1988 33 on how much military support Moscow is willing to commit to this country," and the Herald upped the ante: "If Moscow fails to act, from five million to seven million people could die...
...Or do you prefer Joe Biden...
...The thrust of the article is that the State Department—identified in the august person of Deputy Secretary John Whitehead—is afraid that things are heating up in the satellites, and that might get Gorbachev upset...
...And that will produce the worst of all possible worlds: legislation designed to prevent the last event, leaving everyone in a state of near-total uncertainty, lots of court cases, millions of dollars going into the pockets of the usual lawyers, years of court time that should be devoted to other matters, and the rest of the dreary scenario...
...Critics say" is another one of those weasely expressions designed to weaken the impact of by Michael Ledeen the truth: the Nicaraguan regime is anti-democratic...
...Ethiopia There has been some excellent comment on and coverage of the murderous policies of the Ethiopian regime...
...34 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1988...
...It's done quietly, gently introduced into one of the last paragraphs of the story, but good editors Michael Ledeen is senior fellow in international affairs at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.0 should have caught it and removed it...
...But I digress...
...Killion worked for fourteen months in a refugee camp in Sudan where Eritreans had fled, and tells us that "I never met an Eritrean who said he had come there because of famine' cited "lack of security" or other war-related problems...
...it's the Red Army that dominates...
...The limits of "humint" become clearer...
...This is because the Mengistu regime, supported by the Kremlin, is using famine as a weapon in its war against the Eritrean and Tigrean rebellion...
...State Department—that they had no intention of submitting their regime to the whims of the Nicaraguan electorate, and they infuriated Castro by speaking openly of their desire to install a Communist system and help spread Communist revolution throughout the region...
...Second, the vicious slander on Nicholson, who was not breaking into anything, but simply looking through a window...
...This issue is not going to go away, even though most of us wish it would...
...This is center ring...
Vol. 21 • July 1988 • No. 7
