The Story
Page 36
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After Scooter Libby’s conviction, some media critics called the testimony of a parade of reporters, including mine, a catastrophe for journalism. Several predicted that sources would dry up, that there would be a permanent chill between reporters and officials. Confidentiality pledges would be disregarded; waivers would routinely be required. Prosecutors like Fitzgerald would have little reason not to subpoena reporters with impunity.
Some concerns proved warranted. Under President Obama, who had promised to run the most open and “transparent” government possible, access to senior officials declined sharply and the number of leak investigations soared. As of June 2014, six government employees, plus two government contractors, had been the subjects of felony criminal prosecutions under the 1917 Espionage Act for alleged leaks of classified information to the press—compared with a total of three such prosecutions in previous administrations. In two of these cases, the Justice Department had secretly subpoenaed and seized reporters’ phone logs and emails.
Many officials became more fearful of even talking to the press, much less leaking to us, according to a forty-page report by the Committee to Protect Journalists in 2013.15 Those suspected of doing so were given lie detector tests and had their telephone and email records scrutinized. An “Insider Threat Program” throughout agencies instructed federal workers to help prevent unauthorized disclosures by monitoring their colleagues’ behavior. By June 2012, the report notes, the director of intelligence’s inspector general was reviewing 375 unresolved investigations of employees of the nation’s sixteen intelligence agencies. Moreover, President Obama’s political advisers increasingly used social media—their own videos, sophisticated websites, even their own official photographer—to give Americans the information they wanted them to know.
Though many reporters at mainstream news outlets initially voiced little protest, criticism of the administration’s secretive style and policies increased in Obama’s second term. David Sanger, my former colleague and a veteran Washington correspondent, called Obama’s White House the “most closed, control freak administration I’ve ever covered.” Jill Abramson, before Arthur Sulzberger unceremoniously fired her in May 2014 for having lost the newsroom’s “confidence,” called Obama’s White House the “most secretive” she had covered in twenty-two years of political reporting.16
Despite the administration’s passion for secrecy, however, reporters continued getting world-class scoops. While the internet and cybertechnology made it simpler for the government to spy on its citizens without warrants or cause, they also made it easier for a Private Manning to download over 750,000 classified documents from a workstation in Iraq and post them on WikiLeaks or an Edward J. Snowden to steal tens of thousands of sensitive documents outlining the NSA’s secret surveillance methods. But leaks involving discussions of what those documents mean, and how policies are made—information citizens need to evaluate government decisions and the damage of a leak—have become rarer.
Since my stint in jail, although the number of leak investigations has increased sharply, subpoenas to reporters have declined. The surveillance technology that enables Washington to collect, store, and access trillions of telephone calls and emails a day means that the government no longer needs to force reporters to divulge our sources, or in most cases, to testify at criminal proceedings. It was enough for prosecutors to see that the Times’s Jim Risen had contacted former CIA official Jeffrey Sterling over a dozen times in less than a year to identify him as the probable source for a book chapter that Risen wrote in 2004 about a failed CIA effort to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. It was sufficient for a prosecutor to know that James Rosen, of Fox News, had sent numerous emails and made numerous calls to a nuclear expert at the State Department to charge and eventually convict him of leaking a story on North Korea’s nuclear program. For months, some of the warrants judges issued authorizing the transfer of such records to the government were themselves secret.
Lucy Dalglish, the former head of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, who defended me when I went to jail, says that the government now uses technology instead of subpoenas to identify the sources of leaks. “Prosecutors have figured out how to build cases simply by seeing whom we have been talking to,” she said. As one government prosecutor told her at a meeting in 2011: “We don’t need you anymore.” George Freeman recently worried that given the government’s surveillance capabilities, journalists might well have to resort once more to meeting sources “in parks and garages so that their emails and phone numbers can’t be traced.”
In 2014 Congress moved to restore some balance by taking up a version of the federal shield legislation that I lobbied for after leaving jail nine years ago. The earlier effort to protect reporters from being forced to reveal sources in federal cases was doomed by several factors—WikiLeaks, for one. But Bob Bennett, among others, argued that the Times’s abandonment of me and some of its own core principles undermined the credibility of the reporter who was, for better or for worse, then the campaign’s most visible spokesperson.
“Your case was a political nightmare,” Lucy Dalglish said. “Media people were eating one another alive.” Journalists were as polarized by the war and Bush as the nation itself. “The lack of professional solidarity—our inability to convince even some journalists that there were broader principles called source protection and press freedom at stake here—was crippling.” The passions may have subsided, but the polarization within American journalism and politics has intensified. I try to ignore it and focus on doing my job: asking questions, seeking answers, knowing that, like most journalists who cover the secretive intelligence and national security agencies, I will continue getting some stories right and others wrong.
I have continued covering First Amendment issues, militant Islam and its terrorism, WMD and other unconventional weapons, and the Middle East, where the “tide of war” has not receded, despite President Obama’s desire that it be so. In 2014 the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), a pernicious offshoot of Al Qaeda too radical even for that extremist group, declared itself a caliphate and the hub of a new Islamic state encompassing land seized from Iraq and Syria. The spread of Al Qaeda branches and like-minded Islamic extremist groups throughout the Middle East, Africa, and even Asia means that America and its allies will remain targets for years to come, notwithstanding Washington’s wars on terror, Bin Laden’s killing, and the decimation of Al Qaeda’s original leadership. The extremists’ search for unconventional weapons with which to strike America and its allies also continues.
The bloodshed, sectarian strife, and terror in Iraq and Syria are the result of decisions by two presidents. George Bush, whose invasion of Iraq was justified by bad intelligence, ran the war badly. After six years, his shift in strategy and troop surge, a move opposed by most of his close advisers, stabilized Iraq militarily, if not politically. But by then, America’s patience with the war in Iraq was exhausted. Barack Obama, having vowed to withdraw American forces, did so in late 2011 according to the schedule and on terms negotiated by his predecessor. But in honoring his campaign pledge, disregarding advice from his military, and downplaying Prime Minister Maliki’s ruinous suppression of the Sunnis, Obama sacrificed Iraq’s stability and other gains of the surge secured at a cost of over 4,400 American soldiers’ lives. This president, too, blamed his actions on bad intelligence. But his decision to downplay the danger of the civil war in neighboring Syria enabled ISIS and other groups with similar convictions to sink roots.
The war in Iraq undermined the public’s faith in the press and government and strengthened long-standing isolationist impulses.17 Only after ISIS’s beheading of two American journalists in August 2014 did the percentage of Americans who said the government was doing too little to counter global threats double, from 17 percent to 31 percent, according to a Pew Research Center poll that summer.18 A majority continued opposing sending US forces to the region.
I remain
a reporter in New York, where terrorism has struck three times in twenty years: twice at the World Trade Center near my apartment where the Freedom Tower now stands, and once invisibly, in the form of a powdered germ in our mail. Having witnessed the first bombing and 9/11, I saw the price of ignoring or underestimating such threats, our intelligence community’s most consistent failing. After 9/11, I became increasingly convinced that the United States must reserve the right to use force, in concert with others but unilaterally if necessary, to prevent the worst people from acquiring the worst weapons. In a world in which ISIS and the like-minded seek unconventional weapons, as a former president said, “If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long.”
The WMD failures in Iraq, however, taught me that overestimating a threat can also be costly—for individuals, families, communities, and the nation. Relying on the conclusions of American and foreign intelligence analysts and other experts I trusted, I, too, got WMD in Iraq wrong. But not because I lacked skepticism or because senior officials spoon-fed me a line. Having covered Iraq and the region for decades, I simply could not imagine that Saddam would give up such devastating weapons or the ability to make them again quickly once international pressure subsided. The first half of that assumption was wrong: the second all too accurate but forgotten in the bitter recriminations about how and why America went to war.
I remain committed to journalism’s missions: exposing both wrongdoing and all-too-quiet successes, debating the delicate balance between preserving security and freedom, and disclosing what government is doing, or failing to do, to keep us both safe and true to the nation’s laws and values. I have tried to review my mistakes, to correct errors, add new facts, and update them in the fullness of time. I continue trying to tell the story.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Journalists are magpies. We steal, reinterpret, and regurgitate the insights and assessments of others. Occasionally we have an original idea or formulation. But mostly our job is publicizing the thoughts of others. At our most scrupulous, we identify and acknowledge those whose best lines we steal. That is why I found writing a memoir about reporting so difficult. The words I, we, and me do not come naturally to most journalists; they run counter to a lifetime of training and habit.
Some of the stories in this book are drawn from accounts of experiences initially reported in the Times or my earlier books. Still, this book, too, has been shaped by the ideas and insights of others. The mistakes are all mine, to be sure. But many friends, sources, and experts kept me from making more of them.
Some of those who helped shape my views about foreign policy, national security, and journalism never realized their impact. Norman Mailer, whom my husband, Jason Epstein, edited for many years, was among them. Happily, I met him after he had finally found the perfect soul mate, Norris Church, who died in 2010 three years after his death, and long after he had tamed his more aggressive impulses. When I began questioning my skepticism about the democratic experiments under way in several Arab countries and the conviction of my leftist and neoconservative friends that democracy was the “solution” to ending centuries of mostly authoritarian oppression in that unhappy region, Norman supported my skepticism. Over dinner one night at his home in Provincetown, he asserted that democracy was likely to flourish only in countries in which its institutional pillars and cultural requisites were firmly in place—namely, an independent judiciary to guarantee the rule of law; traditions of respect for different ethnic, religious, and ideological minorities and minority views; equal rights and opportunities for all citizens, regardless of race, creed, religion, or gender; political transparency; and accountable power. Democratic experiments in countries lacking such traditions were likely to end in tears—or as I once argued in print, “one man, one vote, one time.” Democracy, Mailer concluded, was truly a “grace note.”
Bill Safire was crucial to this book. Until shortly before his death from cancer in September 2009, he often badgered me about my obligation as a journalist to tell my version of this story. I deeply regret that he did not live to see the result. After Bill died, Doug Schoen, Bill Clinton’s former pollster, an author, and fellow commentator at Fox, took his place. Doug can be very persistent. I’m deeply grateful for his encouragement, advice, and, above all, friendship.
Jail was an unusual ordeal. So, too, was leaving the Times. I was fortunate to have the support of friends and sometime anonymous fans who called, wrote, and helped me through both. Among the staunchest were members of my legal team: Bob Bennett, Saul Pilchen, Nathan Dimmock, and Jackie Pearo. At Cahill Gordon, I want to thank Susan Buckley, in addition to Floyd Abrams, for support and legal guidance. George Freeman, my lawyer at the Times, was calm and steadfast through several lengthy legal and professional battles.
Friends from Sag Harbor visited me in jail or called repeatedly to boost my spirits after I left the paper—among them, Steve Byers and Robert Sam Anson, fellow writers who share my passion for inhospitable places and stories; and Susan Penzner, my neighbor as a well as a friend. Thanks, too, to the friends who read portions of the manuscript and challenged my assertions and memory—the incomparable journalists David Samuels and Alana Newhouse, who edit Tablet magazine. Both of them, as well as Tunku Varadarajan, a talented writer and editor, give me faith that journalism has a future.
I owe more than I can say to Matt Mallow, then of Skadden, Arps and now general counsel of Blackrock, and Ellen Chesler, whose own biography of Margaret Sanger remains a model of the genre. They not only made invaluable suggestions about the manuscript but provided other vital support and guidance. So, too, did Carolyn Seeley Wiener and Karin Lissakers, my close friends since our days in Washington; Karin’s husband, Martin Mayer, a prolific writer and fellow opera fan; Marilyn Melkonian; Janice O’Connell; Frances Cook; Walter Shapiro (whose best line got deleted); Meryl Gordon; and Larry and Susan Grant Maisel, friends since Paris and the parents of my amazing godson Nicholas. Shirley Lord Rosenthal has remained dear to me, before and after the death of her husband, Abe Rosenthal, to whom I will always be indebted. An Israeli journalist, Smadar Perry, who covers Arab affairs for Yedioth Ahronoth, has been among my closest friends for many years. She traveled to Virginia to see me in jail and has kept me grounded in Middle Eastern realities. She has never abandoned the vision of a world in which Jews and Arabs can coexist in peace, if not harmony. Tammy Bruce, a newer friend whom I met through our on-air debates on Fox, bucked me up during periods of doubt and reinforced my view that friendship almost always trumps political differences. My aunt, Eileen Connolly, read an early version of the book and told me that she would buy a copy if it were published. Jacob and Helen Epstein kept asking tough questions.
Since 2007, Larry Mone, president of the Manhattan Institute, has given me an office, title, and talented colleagues who take pride in challenging conventional wisdom. I am especially indebted to Brian Anderson, a fellow author and the inspired editor of MI’s quarterly, City Journal, not only for reading the manuscript but for his patience at my prolonged absence from his pages. Howard Husock, another MI colleague who is on the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, told me I needed a prologue. I did.
Military veterans of the ill-fated hunt for WMD in Iraq and other soldiers whom I met during my embeds in Iraq and Afghanistan have been among my most steadfast supporters. I owe special thanks to retired Generals Richard McPhee and David Petraeus, Ret. Chief Warrant Officer Richard Gonzales, Major Ryan Cutchin, David Temby, Tewfik Boulenouar, Drew Pache, and Rich Corner. Col. Michael Endres died too soon of a heart attack after leaving the army; he loved to help veterans at George W. Bush’s foundation. No one made me laugh harder or taught me more about the army and its traditions than Mike. Hooah.
Roger Ailes offered me a job as a commentator at Fox News in 2008, opening a new world of broadcast journalism. I cannot thank him enough—along with Bill Shine and John Moody—for taking a chance on a print journalist, a brunette with little prior TV experien
ce, and allowing me to learn from Fox’s talented news professionals. When Jason and many of my liberal friends who consider the network the Antichrist wonder why I joined Fox, I tell them that I enjoy the challenge of a contrary point of view and that there is a greater diversity of opinion at Fox than there was at the Times. I’m a reporter and therefore allergic to ideology. Before and after joining Fox, I’ve steadfastly been inspired by curiosity about the world in all its manifestations. There are too many colleagues to thank at Fox. But Lynne Jordal Martin, the editor of Fox’s opinion pages, published some of my first columns for the network’s website and became an early friend. Her husband, Terry Martin, coached me on the strange new medium of TV, where less is often more. Gwen Marder encouraged me to wear colors. Jim Pinkerton challenged many of my views and helped me master articulating them in sound bites. Through Fox, I have benefited from great medical assistance. Dr. Mark Siegel, a fellow commentator, became my doctor after the incomparable Stanley Mirsky died. I have marveled at Dianne Brandi’s wise counsel not only on legal matters but also on ethical issues in journalism. I’m proud to be associated with a network that has so staunchly defended its journalists in clashes with the government on First Amendment and other transparency challenges.
I am indebted to several former colleagues at the Times—Jeff Gerth, Geri Fabrikant, Claudia Payne, Richard Bernstein, Steve Engelberg, Dave Jones, Bill Broad, Craig Whitney, Marty Arnold, and David Barstow. Only Broad and Barstow remain at the paper. Others took buyouts or pursued other options. Thanks, too, to those who asked not to be named for keeping me abreast of developments at the paper.
For research on WMD and other topics at the heart of this book and for so much more, I am grateful to Pratik Chougule, a former speechwriter at the State Department in the Office of the Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security, who has helped several former officials write memoirs. Once day he will write his own superb book.