Air leaks from WikiLeaks balloon

Jul 28, 2010 — Washington Post

Howard Kurtz

Boy, that was quick.

One day, the WikiLeaks uproar was sparking a once-in-a-generation debate about the disclosure of classified information, the audacious role of a stateless organization beyond the reach of sovereign nations, and the old media's complicity in packing the 91,000 pages of Afghanistan war documents.

The next day, the media establishment seemed to yawn: Old news. Recycled stuff. Kinda knew that. See ya. Hey, is Lindsay Lohan still in jail?

Now this happens to match the administration's line. (Obama: "These documents don't reveal any issues that haven't already informed our public debate on Afghanstan.") Some of this may be the tendency of publications not named the New York Times, the Guardian or Der Spiegel to play down a rival's scoop. Some may be the considered judgment of journos on the military beat.

I still believe some of the revelations are significant, but more as a mosaic of a faltering war effort. Many critics initially dismissed the Pentagon Papers as old material too -- it was a historical study of the Vietnam debacle -- but at least it had a narrative. The Wiki stew has lots of small ingredients, such as raw battlefield reports, that require journalistic chefs to distill into a meaningful dish. That's why WikiLeaks recruited its media partners, almost to put a stamp of approval on what otherwise would have been the posting of a bunch of disconnected documents.

But the CW does find one explosive aspect to the story: the political impact.

There were "few bombshells in the reports," says the L.A. Times, but "the leaking of a trove of U.S. documents has put the Obama administration on the defensive about its Afghanistan policy and may deepen doubts in Congress about prospects for turning around the faltering war effort."

The WP says that "the disclosure of what are mostly battlefield updates does not appear to represent a major threat to national security or troops' safety, according to military officials" -- adding that the leaking "seems unlikely to undermine fragile congressional support or force the Obama administration to shift strategy."

The NYT also goes with a political lead: "The disclosure of a six-year archive of classified military documents increased pressure on President Obama to defend his military strategy as Congress prepares to deliberate financing of the Afghanistan war."

Ditto for Politico: "The White House is dismissing the 92,000 Afghan war reports posted by WikiLeaks as old news -- but the document dump poses a potent new threat to President Barack Obama's delicately balanced Afghanistan policy. . . . The reports are prompting a new wave of scrutiny of the war among Obama's allies on Capitol Hill."

So which is it? Poses a potent new threat or unlikely to undermine Hill support for the war? The CW is. . . . confused.

An interesting note in the Times story concerns WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange: "White House officials e-mailed reporters select transcripts of an interview Mr. Assange conducted with Der Spiegel, underlining the quotations the White House apparently found most offensive. Among them was Mr. Assange's assertion, 'I enjoy crushing bastards.' " Assange told reporters he wanted the material to lead to "new policies, if not prosecutions." His agenda is clear.

Atlantic's James Fallows is impatient with the argument that " 'Everyone' knows this already. People who have been very close to this story say that little of the information is 'new,' in a fundamental sense. . . . But not everyone actually did. . . . Information that may be old news to insiders may seem a revelation to the broader public.

"Whether from George W. Bush or Barack Obama, presidential speeches about Afghanistan have not emphasized the mixed loyalties of the Pakistani security services, the frustrations of dealing with tribal leaders and corrupt officials, the extent of civilian casualties, and other items that, according to insiders, 'everyone' already knows. At this stage it's impossible to say whether a vast, somewhat hard-to-digest compilation of raw reports, released in the middle of summer, will mean that 'everyone' in a broader sense comes to share this insider perspective. . . . And that's the possible similarity to the Pentagon Papers."

Former Pentagon correspondent Jamie McIntyre is no Wiki fan:

"I bristled a bit Sunday night when the story first broke and I heard several news organizations shorthand WikiLeaks as a 'whistleblower' group. A whistleblower is someone who exposes wrongdoing. . . . Let's be clear: WikiLeaks is an anti-privacy, anti-secrecy group, whose primary tenet is that nothing should be kept from the world, not military secrets, not sources or methods of intelligence gathering, not even the secret rituals of fraternities and sororities. Governments, corporations, private citizens all have some right, even responsibility to keep some secrets. WikiLeaks only allegiance seems to be to the source of its leaks. By remaining agnostic on the consequences of its actions, WikiLeaks seems to me to to be functioning less in the tradition of good old-fashioned muckrakers, and more like anti-privacy terrorists."

Here's a bit of new news from the documents, via Yahoo's John Cook:

"The U.S. military in Afghanistan has adopted a PR strategy that got it into trouble in Iraq: paying local media outlets to run friendly stories.

"Several reports from Army psychological operations units and provincial reconstruction teams (also known as PRTs, civilian-military hybrids tasked with rebuilding Afghanistan) show that local Afghan radio stations were under contract to air content produced by the United States. Other reports show U.S. military personnel apparently referring to Afghan reporters as 'our journalists' and directing them in how to do their jobs."

Bush tax cuts, con't.

As crunch time approaches, a good debate is brewing: The New Republic's Jonathan Chait:

"Here's the underlying dynamic. Raising taxes on the middle class is unpopular. But raising taxes on the rich is wildly popular. The truth is that neither party cares very much about the portion of the Bush tax cuts that benefit the middle class. Republicans just threw that in to sell the upper-bracket tax cuts, which is what they care about. Democrats might prefer a more progressive tax code with lower middle-class taxes, but most of them would rather have the revenue instead. But Democrats promised not to raise taxes on people earning less than $250,000 a year -- a promise they felt they had to make in order to win. And they can't break that promise without suffering political consequences. . . .

"So we're down to a game of chicken. Here's why the Democrats hold the whip hand. They can pass an extension of the middle-class Bush tax cuts through the House. If Republicans let the bill pass, then they've lost their leverage to extend the unpopular Bush upper-income tax cuts. If they filibuster it, then Democrats can blame them for raising taxes on middle-class Americans. It would let Democrats out of their pledge."

National Review Editor Rich Lowry argues that many Dems want to "punish the rich" (and Rich?):

"The Democrats figure they can tag Republicans who oppose the expiration of the tax cuts as deficit-hypocrites, even after running up $1.47 trillion in red ink this year. In the recent fight over extending unemployment benefits, the GOP wanted to pay for them, while Democrats insisted on adding another $35 billion to the deficit, and prevailed. Despite the scorn they heap on the 'Bush tax cuts,' Democrats want to extend the vast majority of them on the middle class, at a ten-year cost of $1.5 trillion.

"Where to look for spending cuts to offset maintaining the Bush upper-end tax cuts? Unspent stimulus dollars and the other new spending that has hiked federal expenditures to 25 percent of GDP, the highest level since World War II. Thanks to President Barack Obama's exemplary profligacy, we have been reminded that government spending is not a durable basis of growth."

Yes, but Jon Kyl and other GOPers say you shouldn't offset tax cuts with spending reductions -- only actual outlays on, say, the unemployed.

Obama and Breitbart

Enough already, says Tina Brown:

"Obama can't keep doing catch-up outrage two media cycles after the fact. On the campaign trail, he was the chief executive of a laser-guided, on-message apparatus, the candidate who seemed to lead from a head that was always the most level of the people round him. . . . There is something loose and jittery about the atmosphere round Obama at the moment of which Vilsack's clumsy over-reaction gives us a whiff.

"It's as if inside the White House the belief in Obama's inspirational charisma is still such that every time the ugliness of brute politics intrudes, it's a startling revelation. The president's cerebral goals aren't supposed to be jostled by the coarse irrelevance of media bandits and ideological saboteurs. Except they are. . . .

"That's why this teachable moment is for the teacher himself. The professor-in-chief is in danger of being remembered for being not only the first black president but also the second Woodrow Wilson. When Obama heralds another 'teachable moment,' it means he has already made an egregious rookie mistake--like when we held a silly Beer Summit right in the middle of a serious health-care debate. We have arrived at another damaging distraction through the administration's sloppiness of execution. Even the once-vaunted White House operators could not put the president on the phone with Shirley Sherrod quick enough to short-circuit the chaos. It's time for this gang to start shooting straight and hitting their targets. There is no post-racial or post-partisan way to clean up Andrew Breitbart's garbage."

And, as with the Skip Gates incident, the White House steps on its own message -- which last week was the president signing the banking reform bill.

Journolist Heroes

After pummeling the liberal members of that off-the-record discussion group for more than a week, the Daily Caller finds some e-mails it likes. Among the "heroes":

Dan Froomkin (HuffPost), on a story about a White House deal with the drug industry: " 'I'm awfully sorry this makes Obama look bad. Not my problem,' said Froomkin. Not my problem!"

WP blogger and list founder Ezra Klein: "A force for moderation. He stopped others from organizing a weekly message, stopped people from organizing open letters on Journolist (after they did so on one occasion), wouldn't let those currently working in the government on the list, and seemed more reasonable than many in his remarks."

Jeffrey Toobin (CNN, the New Yorker): "When Sarah Spitz, a producer for NPR affiliate KCRW, fantasized aloud about watching Rush Limbaugh's 'eyes bug out' if he had a heart attack in front of her (Spitz apologized following TheDC's reporting on the incident), Toobin defended Limbaugh. 'Rush cannot be replaced. What people miss about Rush is that he is just astonishingly good as a broadcaster. He is compelling, funny, entertaining. I haven't heard Thompson often, but he's probably pretty lame. Ingraham is ok. I never listen to Hannity on the radio. But Rush is the man,' he said."

The Guardian's Michael Tomasky, on that MoveOn "BetrayUs" ad: "Tomasky remarked that calling Petraeus a traitor was wrong in itself. 'Also: A conservative would have a field day with this thread noting that no one has yet plainly called the ad objectionable on the merits, or on moral grounds,' he said."

So the correspondence was more varied and textured than initially portrayed.

Tim in '12?

One breakfast yields much coverage. Slate's John Dickerson:

"Presidential candidates generally try to sell themselves as the opposite of the current occupant. So Pawlenty said the next GOP nominee needed to offer an antidote to Obama's cool detachment. 'When you walk into a VFW and talk to somebody wearing a Carhartt jacket, drinking a Miller High Life beer, you can explain to them your seven-point plan for health care reform,' he said. 'But what they mostly want to know is: do your values generally line up with theirs, does your life story generally line up with theirs, do you have some life experiences that would indicate that you understand their circumstances, their challenge, and their worries and they connect to you on a heart and a gut level?'

"Pawlenty made his gut pitch at his first Christian Science Monitor breakfast. Even in an age when prospective candidates are jockeying on Facebook and Twitter, the breakfast remains a required stop for presidential candidates (particularly for less well-known ones like Pawlenty). The 44-year tradition allows political candidates to test out ideas in front of national political reporters and get wide exposure for their views. It was at a Monitor breakfast in January 1968 that Robert Kennedy first hinted that he might run for president. In 1991, Bill Clinton hinted at the rumors in his personal life--with his wife also at the breakfast (the idea was to inoculate himself against future disclosures)."

The Weekly Standard's John McCormack also dined there:

"In the end, Pawlenty said, there won't be much difference between GOP presidential candidates on the issues. He said it's important to have a presidential candidate who doesn't live up to the stereotype that Republicans are 'all CEOs' who 'play polo on the weekends.' Pawlenty made the case that his background as the son of a truck driver who worked his way through college helps him reach out to working class voters, who are turned off by 'country club elitists.' "

But Pawlenty had other plans for lunch:

"Minnesota GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty made a stop for cash in Washington on Monday, holding a fundraiser at a downtown law firm with a handful of insiders and lobbyists."

Tribune trickery

The Chicago Tribune reports on its own bankrupt parent company:

"The court-appointed examiner in Tribune Co.'s Chapter 11 bankruptcy case determined that the company's 2007 leveraged buyout was 'marred' by the 'dishonesty and lack of candor' of its then-senior management and that the deal rendered the media conglomerate insolvent from the moment the two-step transaction closed. . . .

"Examiner Kenneth Klee concluded that it was 'somewhat likely' that a court would find the second part of Chicago-based Tribune Co.'s controversial $8.2 billion buyout to be an example of 'fraudulent conveyance,' meaning that the debt associated with that part of the deal overwhelmed the company's ability to pay its bills. Junior creditors in the case have argued for more than a year that the entire transaction, led by real estate magnate Sam Zell, was a 'fraudulent transfer.' "

Why people don't trust the media, Reason 10,023.

Ode to an ex

Is this column by Politics Daily's Andrew Cohen--"The great love of my life marries today and I am not the groom. . . . I showered her with as much love as I could muster when we were together. I still love her and always will"--the "creepiest wedding gift in human history?" Amanda Hess thinks so.

Cohen responds to one critic at Jezebel: "To spend so much time and energy and apparent relish being so bitter and judgmental about someone you don't know and a relationship you know nothing about: How sad for you."

Howard Kurtz also works for CNN and hosts its weekly media program, "Reliable Sources."