Presswatch/Missing the Tower Story
Eastland, Terry
$210,000 in 1987; firms with fewer than 500 employees have increased their share of total employment and of innovations; the portion of the work force that is self-employed has risen....
...then all editors emerituses...
...To encourage you to subscribe immediately, we will send it to you as a bonus with your subscription...
...That's easy: it would have been published all over the place...
...The President can nominate Mr...
...The agents offered her anonymity "to confirm and expand" on the allegations of misconduct, but having no firsthand knowledge of any misconduct on Tower's part she declined the offer...
...When the news of the Ayatollah's death threat against Salman Rushdie broke, I was visiting the Jack Nicklaus Academy of Golf in Orlando, Florida, trying to straighten out my swing...
...And note that the bureau did 500 interviews in its investigation of Tower...
...But Waldenbooks had taken it off its shelves, so I couldn't get a copy...
...The time for temporizing, for weighing one's options, for playing it safe, is past...
...The victims of this dread disease had nothing to look forward to but a life of gradually increasing ennui, culminating in intellectual death...
...The time has come for me to lay bare my soul and speak my piece, knowing full well the immense personal danger I risk in doing so...
...Let he who is without sin cast the first stone...
...And it's yours to keep even if you obtain a full refund under our guarantee...
...This aspect of the Tower story deserved reporting, not only for its own sake but also for its implications...
...q 36 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1989...
...I stood by in silence throughout Salman Rushdies lonely ordeal as thousands and thousands of other more courageous, more principled, betterdressed writers flocked to his cause...
...I asked whether he wanted me to speak on the record or off...
...A good question...
...Here, now, I will say what I have to say—and if this be folly, then let the devil take the hindermost...
...And most of the journalism did observe the "protected" nature of this vote created by the fact that the FBI report could not be cited publicly, since it had the status essentially of a classified document...
...T here's another element to the FBI 1 story that was underreported: how such an investigation is virtually guaranteed to come up with dirt—or at least "rumors" of dirt—on a nominee...
...story did point out that senators who had firsthand knowledge of John Tower at variance with the material in the FBI report nonetheless cited the latter as their reason for voting against him...
...Any business investments that might involve a possible conflict of interest...
...Coming in Liberty: 3 Thomas Szasz on "The Myth of the Rights of Mental Patients" Szasz demonstrates again why he is the leading critic of contemporary psychiatry...
...The constitutionally significant fact about the Tower background investigation was that once again the bureau served two masters even though, on paper, it is subordinate to the President Terry Eastland is resident scholar at the National Legal Center for the Public Interest...
...Free with your subscription...
...But these terms take us into a messy, subjective area...
...We'll understand," he said...
...So I asked why anyone would want to go off the record...
...Happily there is now a cure: the new bi-monthly review of politics, culture and ideas— Liberty...
...The Washington Post's Ann Devroy did a good job reporting this trend, plucking a fine quote from a knowledgeable political scientist to the effect that FBI agents, like doctors, are fearful of malpractice suits...
...If the system works in its intended furtive fashion, the word of the liar is protected and the character of the subject may be destroyed...
...The irony, of course, is that it would be only the unethical leaking of lies that could expose lies...
...We'll send you a copy...
...By the time I realized what was going on, E. L. Doctorow had spoken his mind, Nat Hentoff had spoken his mind, Christopher Hitchens had spoken his mind, and Norman Mailer had spoken his mind...
...Fine," he said...
...After a straightforward interview in which I said all I knew—and it was all positive—I was asked whether there was anything I might wish to add...
...And Liberty's editors bring a variety of viewpoints and experience: • Murray Rothbard, the economist and political theorist whom William F. Buckley, Jr calls, "the dominant figure in the libertarian movement...
...see a few reports about the riots in Pakistan and Iran on the local TV broadcasts, but Florida State had just lost a heartbreaker to Louisville a couple of nights before, and I was sure that the local media were hyping the Rushdie death threat to...
...wally, what would have happened had the bureau's background investigation been leaked...
...6. My wife threw a fit...
...The bureau does a minimum of 34 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1989 "The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult" by Murray Rothbard This analysis of the internal dynamics of the Rand cult in New York City in the 1950s is based on Rothbard's first hand observations...
...When an ideological publication arrives, do you put it on your coffee table and say, "I'll get around to it, one of these days...
...Now, because a background inquiry can also include specific follow-up questions that originate on Capitol Hill, it tends to be more searching than ever before...
...Susan Sontag...
...q PRESSWATCH MISSING THE TOWER by Terry Eastland Fr he media told the Tower story 1 from many angles but failed to report a key aspect involving the FBI...
...Nothing in this process," she observed, "safeguards the subject of the inquiry from distortions and outright lies except the possibility that such lies might be leaked to the press, causing the accuser's word to be put on record...
...take Floridians' minds off another disappointing Seminoles' season...
...Exactly how this tale will unfold is difficult to predict...
...Last year you wrote a story about the Mafia...
...Thus Tower's accusers, anonymous and otherwise, could have spoken "officially" from the FBI report itself...
...Coincidentally, on the day Tower was voted down, I got a call from an agent doing a check on a Bush nominee...
...I had other commitments...
...his famous line, "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue," earned him (and Goldwater) a place in Bartlett's...
...There is a time to hedge one's bets, a time to play it safe, a time to hide ones bushel beneath one's bushel basket...
...During the Reagan years the bureau sometimes acquired another boss: the Senate...
...The bureau doesn't enjoy being burned...
...then poets...
...I am, in fact, the 234,567th American writer to express his views on Wfaire Rushdie, meaning that only a couple of copy editors from Field and Stream and the guy who writes "The Phantom Passenger" for the Philadelphia Daily News remain to be heard from...
...Karl Hess, former speechwriter for Barry Goldwater...
...It takes one to know one...
...If you get assassinated, that means I'll have to watch Pee-Wee every Saturday morning with the kids...
...But so much for that: "This situation," said Nunn, "created the appearance of using public office for private gain...
...House told how the agents who interviewed her said they had received an anonymous letter saying that if they wanted "derogatory information on John Tower," they should contact House...
...Hope for the suffering...
...Fast, Fast, Fast Relief...
...So it could take me a while to write the story...
...3 Bill Bradford on "H...
...In what othDo you have any of these symptoms...
...Beware," warns the Economist, "of arguments for the rationalization of industries...
...Liberty is now available without your doctor's prescription...
...And what I have to say is this: There has to be a better way...
...You're really incredible, you know that, Joe...
...Such episodes have made the bureau ask more and more questions...
...The FBI thus worked exclusively for the administration—at least until recently...
...Fine," I said, "but the mail service in this town is really bad, so if it gets lost, don't blame me...
...Not until I returned to my home in New York and saw the horrible news covered in big-time, professional, Gannett newspapers, did I realize how badly I had misjudged the situation...
...Whose perception counts...
...Either way, there's a continuing separation of powers story here, one taking place not in the courts but in the political arena...
...You have the fruits of Liberty to gain...
...And as with the Rehnquist nomination, the committee on several occasions directly transmitted its questions to the Justice Department, as if it were part of the legislative branch...
...He said I could speak either way...
...The time has come to speak boldly and forthrightly, to join with my brothers and sisters in arms and say what I have to say about Salman Rushdie, his book, and the abyss he will gaze into every day for the rest of his life...
...have been told it's no big deal just to let it all hang out...
...3 David Friedman on "Private Law Enforcement in Medieval Iceland" Friedman illuminates the Viking legal system of Iceland's romantic past and finds remarkable support for private justice...
...On at least one nomination, William Rehnquist's, the Senate bypassed the White House and told the Justice Department, the FBI's parent agency, what it wanted asked...
...Whatever the case, the time has come when I can no longer remain silent on the subject of Salman Rushdie...
...Some committees requested that the administration direct the bureau to ask more questions (typically more specific queries) regarding certain nominees...
...Any personal and business credit matters...
...He sent the book, but the kids hid it, and I only just found it under the bed...
...The Armed Services Committee, under Sen...
...True, I did Joe Queenan is a senior editor at Forbes...
...Fine," I said, "but I don't have the book...
...George Bush said the book was deeply offensive without ever having read it...
...I'd be damned if I was going to join this rush to judgment without having at least read the book that had caused all this fuss...
...You can say whatever you want, and you can say it anonymously...
...and works only for him...
...The alternative is for Bush to decide not to pick Tower-types who invite Nunns to come knocking on the bureau's door...
...Granted, it's hard to know how the bureau might otherwise find out about a nominee other than by asking questions and encouraging full responses, even anonymous ones...
...then newspaper columnists...
...Attitudes toward members of racial and ethnic minorities...
...q AMONG THE INTELLECTUALOIDS A TIME TO STAND by Joe Queenan T here is a time to run and a time 1 to stand, a time to flee and a time to fight, a time to bleat and a time to roar...
...I'm getting sick of this stuff, Joe...
...One day I got a call from an editor at The American Spectator...
...As it was, plenty of stories went around based on leaks about what was in the report, and we would simply er publications do you consistently find the work of such provocative writers...
...Then you wrote a story about the guy who tried to kill Ivan Boesky...
...It would have been wrong to publish the report—journalism must observe at least a principle of process here—but the atmosphere in Washington is such these days that ethical means are routinely sacrificed for the sake of ostensibly ethical ends...
...Well, I've had it up to here, buster...
...Any civil lawsuits...
...But is there not something wrong with a process that protects liars and senators who rely on liars...
...I had already committed myself to four days of complete and utter relaxation, so not once during my visit did I read a newspaper...
...recall the Ginsburg nomination in 1987, when reporters found out about drug use the bureau never even heard about...
...House characterized the interview procedure as "rumors begetting rumors" that offers "anyone with the slightest shred of gossip" a chance "to pass it on through official channels" and thus "widen the web of innuendo" in which a nominee is snared...
...1. I was out of town...
...It was my wholehearted conviction that the game plan was: First, novelists would have their say...
...she exploded when she found out that I was prepared to go public with my thoughts on Salman Rushdie...
...A "Special Inquiry Investigation"— "Spin," as it is called within the bureau—is designed to yield information on a great variety of subjects...
...But now the time has come when my silence must end...
...ne notable exception was the Wall Street Journal's Karen Elliot House, who discussed the bureau's interview with her in an op-ed piece on March 7. House covered Tower for the Dallas Morning News seventeen-years ago, and there were rumors then about Tower's associations with, as the phrase goes, "women to whom he was not married...
...Most of the journalism on the Tower...
...This will bring to power a new set of decision-makers: the bureaucrats and politicians who have demonstrated their management skills by running the business they are supposed to know something about—government— at a $170 billion annual loss...
...May 1989 KW Volume 2, Number 5 / THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1989 35 In the end, of course, Tower ran into problems not only because of his personal life...
...then contributing editors to prominent intellectual digests...
...If you are suffering from tired ideology, order a one year subscription to Liberty today, and every second month you will receive relief in the form of Liberty's fast-paced, exciting articles and reviews...
...2. I thought we were supposed to speak out in declining order of fame...
...Finally, many observers worry that the infatuation with Japanese-like research consortiums is a serious diversion from the main business at hand: taking the hard steps necessary to improve the competitive environment in which American firms must operate...
...Another question for Bush: Does he want to continue fashioning the rope with which the Senate can hang his nominees...
...You mustn't forget that controversial story I wrote about outrageous 12b-1 fees on no-load mutual funds," I reminded her...
...Columnist Richard Cohen wrote a March 5 piece in the Post's Outlook section in which he did a mischievous thing—he applied the appearance standard to journalism...
...Eli, eli, lamasabatanna...
...And so forth...
...L. Mencken's Illegitimate Offspring" Bradford criticizes those who mimic Mencken without understanding his thought or approaching his wit...
...Never before published, and until now circulated only among Rothbard's close friends, his penetrating analysis reveals details of Rand's New York City circle not reported by Barbara Branden in her recent Rand biography...
...Honest...
...El condor pasa...
...First, some context...
...But there have been extenuating circumstances, and in the following paragraphs, I would like to discuss them...
...The FBI isn't trying to discover the truth about what's said...
...Also, you guys pay peanuts...
...Unless the Bush White House decides it's time to return the FBI to its constitutional place, within the executive branch, and tells the Senate to do its own investigations, there will be confirmation battles in which Senate committees again force the FBI to work for both branches of government...
...Most likely, more government-financed consortiums will emerge, injecting government into the high-tech business...
...Are you tired of essays that apologize for the idea of human liberty, instead of joyously advocating liberty and exploring its possibilities...
...X and send him up to the Senate for confirmation without doing any kind of inquiry into the nominee's fitness, past, and so on...
...So the FBI received the Senate's questions and asked them...
...Any job dismissals...
...Oi vey...
...3 John Hospers on "Individualism: Open and Closed" Prof Hospers examines haw individualists deal with vexatious problems, and identifies two vastly differing approaches...
...Sam Nunn, writing in the Washington Post, admitted there was "no evidence that Sen...
...And then you wrote a story about international arms dealers...
...Yet few journalists pointed out that a background investigation is geared to finding out the worst that can be said about a person, whether it's true or not, and that this makes it just the kind of document that a willful Senate can use just as it did in the Tower instance, to reject a nominee...
...Any contacts with representatives of a foreign country (especially a hostile one...
...4. I couldn't get the book Rajiv Gandhi banned the book without ever having read it...
...Fine," I said, "but if the delivery man leaves it on the porch when I'm not here, don't blame me if some teenage punk steals it and I never get back to you...
...Any details of private life that could be used for blackmail...
...Are all perceptions created equal...
...Sam Nunn, had specific questions it wanted the bureau to ask...
...Those are Nunn's italics, designed to shore up a weak case that could produce "no evidence" of any wrongdoing...
...Until recently there was no cure for tired ideas...
...Act Today...
...I figured I should wait until Joyce Carol Oates and Marty Peretz and John Podhoretz had expressed their views before expressing my own...
...Tower provided his clients with classified information...
...Ayatollah Khomeini put out a contract on Rushdie without ever having read it...
...I admit that I have been slow to respond to the crisis...
...Unless journalism— and Sam Nunn and his colleagues— starts insisting on a more objective standard than mere "appearance" provides, few people in any line of work will be in a position to avoid being charged with unethical behavior...
...Were it not for the sake of protocol, I would have spoken up a whole lot sooner...
...Liberty offers you the best in libertarian thinking and libertarian writing...
...Well Federal-Express it...
...3. I thought we were going in alphabetical order...
...R. W. Bradford, editor of Analysis & Outlook...
...There is no legal requirement here, but over the years, as a protective measure, Presidents adopted the practice of routinely asking the bureau, the government's premier investigative agency, to do a "background investigation" on nominees...
...Who's to say what appears which way...
...Right...
...Or was that a tide...
...Tom and Dicky Smothers...
...If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem...
...Fine," I said, "but I should point out that I'm changing jobs and I have lots of deadlines to meet, and my sister just had an operation...
...5. Even when I finally did get the book...
...Next month, I will share my thoughts on Joe Stalin...
...thirty-five interviews per nomination, and human nature being what it is, it's doubtful that even Mother Teresa could emerge from a background investigation without a few anonymous hits...
...Like Nunn and many of his colleagues, Washington journalism has been intoxicated (if I may use the word) with appearances and perceptions and the like...
...Are you tired of articles on why free-market garbage collection is better than government-run garbage collection...
...They always want second opinions," he told Devroy...
...Reduction of the budget deficit would drive down interest rates, lowering industry's cost of capital...
...And if you've got a nominee like Tower, around whom rumor swirls like a hurricane, you can imagine what the raw report might look like...
...We must love one another or die...
...insistence on discipline in schools and on high educational and English language skills would raise the productivity of new immigrants...
...restructuring of Social Security would encourage productive, experienced workers to remain in the work force, rather than retire...
...consumption taxes and savings incentives would increase the savings rate...
...But there is also a time to reap and a time to sow, and yes, a time in the affairs of men which leads on to fortune...
...The point to understand is that the bureau is out to learn what lots of people feel, think, and know about all those things it now feels compelled to ask...
...In the past year, Liberty has published more than 450 pages of the best individualist writing: articles by Erika Holzer, Nathaniel Branden, Karl Hess, Sheldon Richman, Tibor Machan, Stephen Cox, Jerome Tuccille, Walter Block, Leland Yeager, Michael Krauss, Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw...
...I was told that if interviewees wished to say something derogatory, they usually did so anonymously...
...That is why Liberty has achieved such an avid and enthusiastic readership so quickly...
...and only then financial writers like me...
...You usually have a lot to say for yourself, so how about writing something about Rushdie for us...
...David Ramsey Steele, Editorial Director of Open Court Publishing...
...Norman Mailer...
...Any instances of alcohol abuse or illegal drug use...
...The agents then pressed House for any rumors she might have heard...
...So don't hesitate: subscribe today...
...I know...
...There was also the matter of his consulting with defense contractors on arms control matters right after he had served as an arms control negotiator...
...Do you suffer from Tired Ideology...
...Noting that the press would have trouble living up to this "most elastic of standards," Cohen then asked his profession to consider "whether the standards it has set for others are unreasonable...
...The White House felt it would be politically difficult to refuse, so the new questions were forwarded to the FBI, whose agents in turn asked them as part of the background investigation...
...interviewees aren't under oath...
...The White House was deeply—perhaps too deeply— committed to the Tower nomination and couldn't say no...
...For the sake of domestic tranquility, I finally agreed to refrain from offering aid and comfort to the embattled author...
...I do not take pride in this dilatory moral pace...
...If you answered "Yes" to any of these questions, you may suffer from tired ideology...
...Things simply can't go on like this...
...then the editors of major newsweeldies...
...This was a story of constitutional significance, and while some reporters stabbed at it, no one really got it...
...L •( b ert 'A bean in Liberty is better than a taw fit it prison' —qeetrye '&4.1 ) Man, Nature, and State: Free market slogans are not enough by Karl Hess, Jr Anti-Imperialism on the Right by Bobby Taylor The Fires of Yellowstone by lane S. Shaw Ayn Rand: The Voice of Bitterness by Justin Raimondo Existentialism and Liberty by David Gordon Plus: Murray Rothbard on Public Choice, Stephen Cox on Teddy at Chappaquiddick, Philip Salin on Novels of Achievement, and a new short story by Jeffrey Olson...
...But these programs arouse noisy opposition, before which politicians quail...
Vol. 22 • May 1989 • No. 5
