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Letters to the Editor
July/August 2004 Atlantic Monthly
My Times
After reading Howell Raines's 21,000 word cover story about his final days at The New York Times ("My Times," May Atlantic) we felt, as members of a union that represents journalists, morally and ethically obligated not to allow Raines's indictment of the Times and the Guild to stand without comment. Raines places much of the blame for his personal demise, and what he views as the recent decline of the paper of record, on The Newspaper Guild and its sixty-four-year labor relationship with the Times. In Raines's view, the Guild serves as "rush chairman of the culture of complaint" at the Times; instills "dysfunctional traits" in new hires; forces senior editors to "testify" at endless grievance hearings; and strong-armed the company into accepting "mindless job guarantees." His categorical statement that "at The New York Times we never fired anyone" is absurd, especially since Raines goes on to say that he himself was fired. Employees can be, and have been, fired by the Times, but not without the due process provided under the contract between the Guild and the Times. In fact, the Guild-Times collective-bargaining agreement includes a "progressive discipline" procedure under which employees can face disciplinary action, "up to and including dismissal." It also provides for binding arbitration should we dispute the dismissal. The "grievance hearings" Raines refers to are actually sometimes "disciplinary hearings," meetings between Times management and the Guild to deal with work-related employee issues, ranging from lateness to job performance. Such meetings are called by the Times's labor-relations department, not by the Guild. Employees are entitled to Guild representation at these meetings. The meetings seldom go on for hours and are held, when possible, at a time and place convenient for the parties involved. Seldom are top editors involved in such meetings. Raines invented a hybrid of meetings routinely held between the Guild and the Times: the disciplinary meeting and the grievance meeting. Grievance meetings are monthly meetings, usually an hour or two in length, held between the Guild and representatives from the company's labor-relations department to discuss possible violations of the Guild contract and to resolve them, if possible, in a timely fashion in order to avert arbitration. Editors do not attend grievance meetings. Raines claims that staff members at the Times get "tenure for life" after a probationary period of fourteen weeks. The probationary periods for new employees are twelve, fifteen, or twenty-six weeks, depending on job title. Trial periods for reporters, photographers, and copy editors are twenty-six weeks. There are no fourteen-week trial periods. Times management has the right to fire an employee at any time during his or her probationary period, without explanation. The Guild cannot challenge such dismissals unless they are discriminatory. Raines's obvious contempt for the union is misplaced. Together, the Guild and the Times have built what even Raines begrudgingly acknowledges is "the world's greatest newspaper." Although Raines has a right to his opinion, the Guild and the 1,500 employees we represent at the Times are disappointed that the editors of The Atlantic Monthly did not offer their readers a more balanced story. Barry Lipton Howell Raines makes plenty of assertions that are easy to take issue with, but the fatal one was a misevaluation of the Times that, I think, was unavoidable for Howell, given that it was inextricably tied to the self-image that drove his narrative, in The Atlantic and at the paper. He needed a big wrong to right, and this more than anything real led him to conclude that until his arrival as boss, the Times was marching toward irrelevance. In fact, the day before he took over, the paper was the best it had ever been in its reporting, writing, range, and graphic display. That didn't leave much room for a dragon slayer, only for someone who could stand on others' shoulders and work day-to-day to improve something that was already quite excellent. Perhaps that would have led to a better paper, and one that probably would have stood behind its editor when a danger that honorable staff members had been trying to flag caused real damage. Martin Gottlieb The writer is currently a special-projects editor at The New York Times and was formerly its deputy culture editor. It strikes me as rather interesting that Howell Raines laments having found himself "assaulted in other publications with blind quotations attributed to 'senior Times employees,' who are usually not within a mile of knowing what's actually going on." Most newspapers, including the Times under Raines, have no problem with quoting unnamed "senior Administration officials," "well-placed government sources," and the like. If those anonymous sources are sufficiently credible to be quoted in the Times, it is rank hypocrisy for Raines to question other publications' use of similar sources from his own organization. Bradford Rutter Howell Raines endeavors to pull me into his orbit by invoking my desire to get "more, better, faster" from a newsroom. Having never worked for or with him, I can't speak from experience about his approach to managing a news staff. I imagine our styles differ quite a bit. My model (and mentor) is his predecessor, Joe Lelyveld, who is deplorably mistreated and inaccurately portrayed in Raines's assessment of The New York Times. Joe's affection for the Times and its staff is deep and genuine. There was no limit to his ambitions for the paper's journalism. He was the most demanding editor I have known. I spent slightly more than three years at the Times, and I am grateful for every minute that I could learn from a man of such talent, intellect, and integrity. I can only hope to do as much at The Boston Globe as Joe Lelyveld did for The New York Times. Martin Baron Howell Raines gives us a rare look into the workings of one of democracy's most important institutions. He underscores the universal need to change while holding on to fundamentals—clearly not an easy task. I, for one, would hate to lose The New York Times, which serves as a baseline for those purporting to reveal the facts and truths in our volatile world. I was left with a sense of the importance of that paper, of the difficulty of the work in progress at the Times, and of the need for courageous journalists like Raines. Tim Welch Howell Raines writes, "The reason we weren't increasing our base, I believed, was that we were ignoring the economic and social realities of many of our readers' lives." Maybe so. But the bigger problem is that the Times does not know how interesting news is—international news in particular. To use Raines's words, the Times considers world events "eat-your-peas journalism." News is interesting. The world is interesting. The Times, and the media in general, think they have to find exciting stories and puff them up. They write about sports and celebrities, thinking that these ephemera are more interesting than what is happening to the world. That is why newspapers are losing readers. George Jochnowitz Congratulations for having the courage to publish Howell Raines's account of his history at the Times. His story had the feeling of a Greek tragedy to me. Like Icarus, he seems to have flown too close to the sun. Much of Raines's story involved neither money nor violence but, rather, creative passion and ambition. I'm not sure how much the passion for excellence in journalism is valued these days. We have been "spun" so often by public figures, with the willing assent of the commercial media, that it is hard to believe anybody really cares about truth or quality. I'm glad that The Atlantic does, and that Howell Raines does. Robert L. Ross Howell Raines's essay was awfully long and densely detailed for breakfast-table reading, but I found it strangely uplifting. I couldn't put it down. Grayce Scholt Dean In Iowa
Howard Dean's pollster, Paul Maslin ("The Front-Runner's Fall," May Atlantic), reveals an interesting chronology of polling numbers, but fails to identify several crucial reasons for Dean's "implosion" in Iowa. As a native Iowan, a veteran of six caucuses, and a Dean county steering-committee member and precinct organizer, I can say with some confidence that the 2004 caucus campaign was quite different from previous ones, and not because Iowa was flooded with out-of-state staffers and volunteers—that ground was broken by Carter, Kennedy, Cranston, Gephardt, and Mondale, although on a smaller scale. The 2004 caucuses looked different because of the roughly $100 million in media advertising that saturated our eyes and ears for months. It dwarfed anything Iowa had seen before, and although an ability to organize at the precinct level remained important, this caucus, more than any other, resembled a primary, especially in its final few weeks. This should have helped a candidate like Dean, who had plenty of cash on hand, but it turned out to be his downfall—simply because Dean's TV ads during the final week were, well, horrendous. The ad Maslin refers to at the end of his article—a negative spot repeating Dean's antiwar stance—didn't fall short because it engaged Gephardt in a negative tit-for-tat, as Maslin suggests (Gephardt had been up with negative ads for months). It failed because it confirmed what John Kerry had been trying to plant in voters' minds: that Dean was a one-note candidate incapable of handling a broad range of presidential challenges. That ad had no chance of attracting a single "undecided" voter, which should have been the focus of the final week. It was trumped by possibly the worst closing-week TV ad ever produced for a candidate at any level, which featured a head-and-chest shot of Dean, alone against an antiseptic, artificial white backdrop, as he stared vacantly into the camera and read off the same old script heard thousands of times before. The Kerry and Edwards ads showed vibrant candidates surrounded by swelling, adoring crowds—a devastating contrast. As a local volunteer, I found it heartbreaking to see the twenty-hour days put in by Dean staffers being undermined on a daily basis by their own campaign. Maslin says the Dean campaign decided early on that it "could probably never win an outright battle of the bios," and late in his article he highlights how Dean's demeanor improved and lightened when his wife, Judy, accompanied him. Maslin doesn't tie the two together, but I see a key connection here that senior advisers in the Dean camp seemed to miss during the campaign. If Judy had been by her husband's side when he campaigned in Iowa, she might have made a difference. Midwesterners like couples who live simply, and great opportunities were lost by not sharing the softer "bio" side of their smallish home and old car. (Two unrelated people in my precinct who had been undecided until caucus day ended up supporting Dean that night because, by chance, they had stumbled across a national news show featuring the Deans' Vermont lifestyle.) In the end, of course, credit must be given to John Kerry's campaign, which was poised to track, harvest, and turn out new supporters as they moved toward Kerry that final week—as evidenced by the nightly electronic phone call to our home asking us to identify ourselves as new Kerry supporters. Dennis Harbaugh Paul Maslin's account of Dean's campaign mirrors the bitterness of the Iowa cold during the pre-caucus weekend. I agree that the volunteers (including me) spoke with campaign-weary Iowans. They participated in a very competitive election process. These volunteers cannot, however, be characterized as "a bunch of kids in orange hats." They were Vietnam veterans, students, retirees, employed and unemployed professionals, and at-home parents. I volunteered not as a "Deaniac" but because I wished to support a campaign that stated clear ways of addressing many of America's challenges. I only hope that future attempts at active, diverse participation in political processes will not be ridiculed. Laura Cochrane As someone who worked on Governor Howard Dean's presidential campaign, I read Paul Maslin's piece in your May issue with great interest. Having worked for Governor Dean for more than fourteen years, I can attest that Maslin was correct when he cited Dean's "loose tongue" and "overall stubbornness in refusing to be scripted, to be disciplined." However, unlike Maslin, I believe that it is acceptable—and refreshing—for a candidate to be guided by his own thoughts, words, and beliefs, rather than those dictated to him by a consultant. From the point of view of a political consultant, a candidate who thinks for himself must be frustrating. Maslin contends that Dean's unwillingness to be programmed by paid consultants contributed to the campaign's failure. I believe just the contrary: that Dean's desire to stay true to himself was the success of his campaign. I believe that the biggest failure of the Dean campaign was that some of the people involved lost sight of what the campaign was really all about. Kate O'Connor Paul Maslin replies: Dennis Harbaugh makes an important point about how Iowa had changed from the purely organizational test of a caucus to a more primary-like campaign dominated by paid media. I also concur that the final Dean ad didn't work, though I believe that the Iowa result was set in motion by the events I described, including our decision to engage the war with Gephardt and Co. earlier that week. Our advertising in Iowa, whether effective or not, describes anything but a "one-note candidate"—in fact, numerous ads dealt with the economy, health care, the role of the special interests, the budget deficit, tax cuts, and so forth. As to the Deans, I couldn't agree more about their effectiveness—but the decision to highlight the two of them was largely out of the campaign's top strategists' hands. I certainly didn't mean to ridicule the Stormers, nor did the governor. I described them as "mostly young," which I believe to be accurate, though Laura Cochrane correctly points out that they were a diverse group. I hope their impact on the 2004 election will not be forgotten or dismissed, and that most will continue their efforts to change America. I agree with Kate O'Connor that Governor Dean's unscriptedness was both acceptable and refreshing. Much of the success of his campaign stemmed from his desire to "stay true to himself." I knew from the beginning of my involvement with Howard Dean—when I first met him, in February of 2003—that he was always going to speak his mind. And that trait did also get him into trouble and did frustrate those of us in the campaign. To pretend otherwise by establishing a false dichotomy between paid consultants out to program him and others who presumably never "lost sight of what the campaign was really all about" is to describe a campaign and a campaign dynamic that didn't exist. Knifed
Scott Stossel ("Knifed," May Atlantic) asserts that Sargent Shriver would have been Vice President Hubert Humphrey's running mate on the 1968 Democratic ticket had Shriver's Kennedy in-laws, and specifically Senator Edward Kennedy, not warned Humphrey off selecting him. Stossel reveals conversations and initiatives involving a number of Democrats around the subject of Shriver's nomination. As Humphrey's assistant, I spent most of his waking hours with him during 1968, and was involved in almost all his activities and decisions. This is what happened regarding his running mate. Humphrey was approached dozens of times on the subject. Southern governors pressed hard for Texas Governor John Connally, whom Humphrey viewed with distaste. Senator Fred Harris, who with Senator Walter Mondale had co-chaired Humphrey's nominating campaign, launched a mini-campaign in his own behalf. New Jersey Governor Richard Hughes also campaigned actively. An intermediary suggested that New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, a Republican with well-known contempt for Richard Nixon, was interested. Shriver sent a handwritten letter from Paris asking Humphrey to consider him and pledging fundraising help for the campaign. Humphrey, as Stossel relates, spoke with Senator Kennedy about his own possible interest in the vice-presidential nomination. In discussing his conversation with Kennedy, Humphrey mentioned only Kennedy's pledge to support his candidacy. Late on the evening before he was to choose his running mate, Humphrey got a rubdown in his hotel room while conferring with his attorney and former legislative assistant, Max Kampelman; his longtime administrative assistant Bill Connell; and me. He asked each of us for our preference. Kampelman favored Shriver—who would later join Kampelman's law firm. Connell, surprisingly, favored Harris, with whom he had often been in conflict during Humphrey's nominating campaign. I favored Senator Ed Muskie. We knew Humphrey liked and respected all three men. He gave us no signal and went to bed. At seven the next morning Humphrey asked if I still favored Muskie. I said I did, although I counseled late consideration of Senator Eugene McCarthy as well. Humphrey quickly dismissed that option. "Frankly, I've wanted Muskie for quite some time," Humphrey said. "Go find him in the hotel and I'll make him the offer"—which he did. Four years later, as policy director of Senator George McGovern's campaign, I participated in that ill-starred vice-presidential selection process too. After McGovern's initial selection of Senator Tom Eagleton, and an embarrassingly long search to find a replacement when he dropped out, Shriver became McGovern's running mate. As in everything he did, Shriver soldiered on with enthusiasm, optimism, and good humor. No Kennedy cabal blocked his nomination in 1968, any more than one facilitated it in 1972. Ted Van Dyk "Knifed" contains the following paragraph: "In addition, by far the most pressing issue on most voters' minds was Vietnam. If Shriver had been on the ticket and had carried through with his plan to press for a negotiated peace—a plan concocted with the help of Harriman and Vance, the negotiators themselves—who knows how many additional votes might have gone Humphrey's way?" The suggestion that a Humphrey-Shriver ticket might have won the 1968 election leaves out one important fact: the President of the United States until noon on January 20, 1969, was Lyndon B. Johnson. President Johnson, who had been negotiating with the North Vietnamese in Paris, through his ambassadors W. Averell Harriman and Cyrus R. Vance, since May of 1968, kept close tabs on what Humphrey was saying in public about the Vietnam negotiations during the campaign. Transcripts in the LBJ Library, in Austin, Texas, of a number of telephone conversations between Johnson and Humphrey during this period show this. For example, when Humphrey, in a September 30 speech in Salt Lake City, pledged to halt the bombing in North Vietnam, Johnson telephoned Humphrey and closely questioned him about what conditions he would require for such a halt, to make sure they were compatible with his negotiating position. The conditions for a bombing halt were the key issue. North Vietnam demanded an unconditional halt. Johnson had instructed Harriman and Vance to get the North Vietnamese negotiators to accept a number of conditions, the details of which need not concern us here. Suffice it to say that by late October, Johnson was sufficiently satisfied with the negotiations to go ahead and order the bombing halt a few days before the election. The paragraph quoted above contains speculation of the worst kind—the kind that is not supported by facts. To suggest that Harriman and Vance would have disregarded their orders from the President and torpedoed Johnson's peace effort by urging a Humphrey-Shriver ticket to accept North Vietnam's demand for an unconditional bombing halt is to suggest that these two loyal public servants would have put partisan political advantage above the interests of the country. That is irresponsible. Arthur J. Dommen Scott Stossel suggests that Sargent Shriver's presence on the 1968 ticket might have thrown the presidential election into the House of Representatives. This is a long stretch at best. Senator Edmund Muskie was chosen over Shriver as a vice-presidential candidate because, as Christopher Beam, of the Muskie Archives at Bates College, said, "Vice President Humphrey felt that Senator Muskie had a broader appeal to Democrats, especially centrist Democrats, than Mr. Shriver. The Vice President liked the fact that Senator Muskie would come across as reassuring and steady—which he did." "Knifed" also fails to address a point that Stossel no doubt covers in other sections of his book. Sargent Shriver was the Democratic vice-presidential candidate in the 1972 election, to which many refer as Nixon 49-America 1. Larry O'Brien, the chair of the Democratic Party, and a genuine native son of the "1," once reluctantly acknowledged, "We probably would have taken Massachusetts no matter what." Finally, if Humphrey did not choose Shriver for fear of Kennedy-family dissent, he may have underestimated the unifying power of one of the most formidable of the Kennedys: Eunice Kennedy Shriver. Dan Doyle Scott Stossel's excellent insights into the life and career of Sargent Shriver are a long-overdue reminder about the effect of religion, ethnicity, and other cultural factors in the lives of the Kennedys and their extended family. In reviewing the secret papers of Joseph P. Kennedy now available at the JFK Library, I, too, was struck by the positive influence of Shriver on the Kennedys. He was that increasingly rare breed—a Catholic liberal. Not only was Shriver instrumental in the success of the Peace Corps, but he played a significant role in influencing JFK's views on race relations, the threat of communism, issues of social justice, and how to deal with the anti-Catholic bigotry of the 1960 campaign. Unfortunately, too many histories of this era are written by secular "melting-pot" assimilationists who tend to ignore or are disinclined to assess how these powerful forces affected the thinking of the Kennedys and their contemporaries. Part of the reason is also that JFK and his father wanted to project an "all-American" image to gain acceptance in a nation that still has yet to elect another person from a minority group. But the cultural influence of religion, ethnicity, and a sense of family within the Kennedys can be found in letters, diaries, and oral histories now available in our national archives, and Stossel's work performs a genuine service in this reappraisal of history. In the current election year, when the incumbent talks about his God in relation to invading Iraq, and the other party's candidate is being shunned by his own church hierarchy because of his views on abortion, isn't it about time that American historians more fully engaged these cultural factors in their assessment of presidential "character" and behavior? Thomas Maier E. Northport, N.Y. Scott Stossel replies: I am grateful to Ted Van Dyk for providing additional behind-the-scenes details about how Hubert Humphrey ended up selecting Edmund Muskie (rather than Sargent Shriver or another) as his running mate in 1968. And I agree that it was not a Kennedy "cabal" that blocked Shriver's nomination in 1968—the Kennedy family and its closest supporters were too much in disarray after Robert Kennedy's death to form anything as conspiratorial as a cabal. Nevertheless, many former RFK aides still felt embittered toward Shriver for having declined to campaign for Kennedy that spring, and they made no secret of that fact. That was a political reality Humphrey had to contend with when he made his vice-presidential selection—and a number of Humphrey and Shriver intimates remain convinced that the "Kennedy factor" influenced Humphrey's decision to select Muskie. I did not mean to say, as Arthur Dommen suggests, that Vance and Harriman—in cahoots with Shriver and Humphrey—would have freelanced an unconstitutional peace plan for partisan gain. Vance and Harriman's primary interest was in achieving a peace settlement in Vietnam; any partisan concern they had was only that a Nixon Administration would undo any progress toward that end. But if Humphrey had selected Shriver as his running mate, Shriver might have extended an olive branch to the anti-war protesters at the convention; Shriver's relationship with Vance and Harriman would have given this more dovish stance credibility, and it would have won the ticket many votes. Finally, Dan Doyle is certainly correct about one thing: Eunice Kennedy Shriver was (and remains) the most formidable of all the Kennedys. In fact, when George McGovern asked Humphrey for advice about whom he should select as a running mate in 1972, Humphrey told him he should choose Sarge—because he came with Eunice, the Democrats' secret weapon. Tony Blair's Character
Geoffrey Wheatcroft's denigration of Tony Blair's character ("The Tragedy of Tony Blair," June Atlantic) should not go unchallenged. I am a Liberal Democrat, not a member of Blair's party. I was opposed to the Iraq War mainly because I did not believe we were threatened by weapons of mass destruction and I feared chaos after Saddam was overthrown. I therefore share Wheatcroft's view that Blair made a tragic mistake. However, Wheatcroft's main charge, that Blair set out deliberately to mislead the people about his reasons for going to war, does not stand up. We all benefit from hindsight about weapons of mass destruction. But as Kenneth Pollack pointed out in "Spies, Lies, and Weapons: What Went Wrong" (January/February Atlantic), just about everyone believed the weapons existed before the inspectors went back into Iraq—not only the Americans and the British, but the French, the Germans, the Israelis, the Russians, and the Chinese. President Jacques Chirac referred to Iraq's probable possession of WMD as late as February of 2003. They all turned out to be wrong—but that did not make them liars. Had I been privy to the same intelligence information, my skepticism, too, might have been shaken. The Hutton inquiry into the circumstances of the suicide of a Ministry of Defence official, which also covered allegations of deception by the government, cleared Blair of duplicity. Wheatcroft dismisses its report. It was "greeted with derision," he writes, by public and journalists alike. So it was: it had a very bad press. But the judge, Lord Hutton, whose report was declared by the press to be a whitewash, and who was then derided as a government stooge, was regarded very differently before he declared his verdict. Previously everyone had said that he was respected, utterly independent, very careful to be guided by the evidence. Indeed, his record in Northern Ireland, where he had released IRA defendants (whom he abhorred) if evidence against them was inconclusive or illegally obtained, bore this out. He had never allowed prejudice or government pressure to interfere with his assessment of evidence. After the verdict of the inquiry, attitudes toward the judge changed. The verdict was not what the media expected or wanted: having carefully examined the evidence, the judge found in favor of Blair and the government and against allegations made by a BBC reporter. Wheatcroft refers to "minor inaccuracies" in the BBC story that led to the tragic death of the official, Dr. Kelly, and the Hutton inquiry. They were not "minor inaccuracies" but allegations that the government knew claims in a vital intelligence dossier were wrong and inserted them deliberately to mislead the public. What could have been a graver charge? Hutton unequivocally found that the allegations were untrue. Wheatcroft also writes that the BBC broadcast was "far too early in the morning for anyone to have heard it," and implies that it should have been ignored. He does not mention the fact that the allegation that the British government had lied went all around the world. So much for minor inaccuracies in an unimportant broadcast. Wheatcroft implies that Blair was responsible for Kelly's death, because Kelly was unable to withstand the pressure after Downing Street "smears." Hutton explicitly found that although the release of Kelly's name was handled clumsily, his name was bound to become public, and the government could not be blamed for his death. Wheatcroft's account of the Kelly affair reeks of anti-Blair prejudice and completely conflicts with the judge's findings. The fact is that Hutton robbed the media of their quarry. He committed the unpardonable crime of finding that the government and Blair did not lie and did not deliberately lead the country into war by making up claims they knew were false. How dare he go by the evidence and contradict a self-evident truth? Surely we all know that politicians (unlike our lily-white press) always lie. Public disillusionment with politics in Britain and low voter turnout in the most recent election are partly due, as Wheatcroft points out, to excessive spin by government that has proved deeply counterproductive. But this is not the first government to use spin. Nor is spin the same as lying. However, the media themselves have fostered much of the disillusionment. When Blair first became Prime Minister, the press hugely overpraised his strengths and virtues; now he is derided far beyond his weaknesses and vices. To criticize his policy does not require impugning his motives. Skeptical and critical journalism plays a vital role in democracy. Cynicism and wild accusations about lying in high places, made without justification, can only undermine it. Dick Taverne Geoffrey Wheatcroft replies: I am grateful to Lord Taverne for his lengthy letter, but I am also puzzled by it. He begins by apparently contradicting himself. He didn't believe in the threat from Iraq that Tony Blair alleged, but neither does he believe that Blair "deliberately" misled his country. Since most British people are now agreed that we were taken into war on false pretenses, the only argument here would seem to be about the Prime Minister's mens rea, as lawyers say—his conscious state of mind. Attributing motive is said to be bad manners, and is certainly dangerous; none of us can confidently reckon to understand the deepest workings of another mind (or perhaps even of our own). Hence the mistake of Andrew Gilligan in his BBC report, which was to say not only that the government's claims were false but that ministers knew they were false. That was rash and unprovable. But then the Prime Minister's conscious veracity or sincerity is unverifiable the other way as well. For what it's worth, I don't think of Blair as a "liar"—not like most of us, in the sense that we have from time to time knowingly uttered falsehoods. As I tried to suggest in my essay, he is something more dangerous: a man with a tenuous grasp on objective reality and an unusual capacity for believing what he wants to believe. I adduced some alarming examples to this effect. In the present matter it is obvious that Blair wanted to believe that Iraq possessed noxious weapons and posed a "serious and current" danger, because he was committed to war in any case. Nor did I allege that Blair was responsible for David Kelly's suicide, although I thought and think that the manner in which Downing Street forced Kelly's name into the open was disgusting. It was also a frightening example of the Blair government's obsession with presentation and process, and its absurd priorities. Even those sympathetic to Blair were startled to discover the degree to which, during a grave national crisis, the innermost circle at Downing Street was obsessed for weeks on end, and almost to the exclusion of anything else, by a footling vendetta with the BBC. Of course opponents of the Blair government were hoping that Lord Hutton would condemn the government, and were annoyed that he didn't. But that isn't the point at all. Over months in open court Hutton had heard many millions of words of evidence that were published daily and (for the first time in our backward little island) posted on the Internet. Thus it was that not only those who covered the hearings but also most of the public thought that Hutton's conclusions were weirdly at variance with what he had heard. Does Dick Taverne suppose that is inherently impossible? Or does he believe that every single judge in every court or inquiry in history has come to a correct verdict? Let me take one single example that illuminates a much wider theme. This May, and to widespread outrage, Blair appointed as head of the intelligence agency MI6 John Scarlett, formerly the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee. Thanks to the Hutton inquiry, we learned that Scarlett had worked inside Downing Street, hand-in-glove with Alastair Campbell (who called him "my mate"—about the most shocking words Hutton heard). In his own evidence to Hutton, Scarlett loyally defended the government's (and his own) conduct over the preparation of the WMD dossiers, and Hutton took him at his word, though adding, risibly, that Scarlett might have been "subconsciously" influenced by a desire to please the government. Even on the day Scarlett testified, the government gleefully insisted that he had exculpated it. That evening Sir Malcolm Rifkind appeared on television and grasped the nub of the matter, speaking with great forensic skill and also with the authority of a former Defence Secretary and Foreign Secretary. Far from exculpating Downing Street, he said, Scarlett's evidence was gravely incriminating, showing as it did the degree to which under this government the intelligence services have been politicized and even corrupted. The services used to take high professional pride in their detachment and honesty, garnering and assessing intelligence that was then furnished to ministers at arm's length and, in another favorite phrase, with "a health warning," emphasizing how incomplete any such material must be. As Rifkind perceived, what had happened in the case of Iraq and WMD was back to front: a political decision had been taken first, and then the intelligence services were recruited like an advertising agency to provide a persuasive case. It did not need the latest miserable developments in Iraq to disillusion the public, and no conspiracy theories are required to understand this story: as Aneurin Bevan used to say, why peer into the crystal ball when you can read the book? And Lord Taverne's haughty rebuke about impugning Tony Blair's motives is misplaced. As I write, several people who were once warmly admiring friends of the Prime Minister's have been saying that it's time for him to go, and the latest polls suggest that Blair, once his party's great asset, is now a liability, and that Labour would do much better at the next election under another leader. To attribute this to malevolent media is grossly to flatter our powers. Nothing I could ever write would create anything like as much public cynicism about our rulers as their own conduct has done. The Case Against Perfection
Michael J. Sandel's article "The Case Against Perfection" (April Atlantic) was quite interesting and well balanced with pros and cons. One thing, however, should be pointed out: the rare but distinct possibility of inadvertent incest through donated eggs and sperm. Let's say a brilliant, tall, talented woman in Illinois donates eggs to a couple in Massachusetts and a couple in Connecticut. The Massachusetts baby is a brilliant, tall, and talented boy who grows up and goes to Harvard. The Connecticut baby is a brilliant, tall, and talented girl who grows up and goes to Harvard. They meet in student government and find they have nearly everything in common, including participation in the same sports. They fall in love, they get married, and they get pregnant. Is this inbreeding? Aren't these two children siblings? And if it is inbreeding, couldn't the "bettering" of our children through sperm and egg donation from perfect specimens (the six-foot brown-eyed blond donor from the article comes to mind) perhaps lead to the ultimate dumbing down of our society? Dina Weiss Michael Sandel falls into the tradition of preachers who oppose material improvement in our lives for fear it will endanger our souls. His arguments are no better than those of his predecessors. Of course mastery over one's circumstances may give rise to arrogance and intolerance, just as lack of such mastery may give rise to bitterness and defeatism. Sandel gives no reason to suppose that the former scenario is more likely than the latter. And his fear that "perfect genetic control would erode ... solidarity" by making the genetically well-endowed consider the genetically poorly endowed responsible for their own shortcomings invites the following objection: in a society with perfect genetic control no one would have to be genetically poorly endowed, whereas in a (much more likely) society with increased but limited control we would still have, and be recognized as having, natural failings that were beyond our control. Felicia Ackerman Others have taken Professor Sandel to task for attempting to write religious views into national policy. I would argue that his theology, too, is flawed. Sandel is concerned with our remaining "open to the unbidden." His argument could just as easily be applied to humanity's quest to live in houses instead of caves, to live long healthy lives instead of short diseased ones, or to chart the courses of the heavens. The history of mankind is one of hostility to the unbidden. I find our series of victories in that battle morally uplifting. It seems to me that genetic engineering is essential to continuing the progress of humanity. We cannot get to the stars, for example, without the longer life-span that genetic engineering promises. What God would give us the means to explore the universe and then expect us not to use it? I'd like to suggest that our genetic makeup is not the Last Great Mystery, the solving of which will close us forever to the unbidden. It is simply the latest in a never-ending series of mysteries that humanity will face and conquer. The unbidden will always be with us. But I find the struggle against it ennobling and inspiring. Has Sandel considered the possibility that humanity's refusal to accept the uncontrolled as uncontrollable is in fact morally virtuous? Barry Fagin From a disabled-people's-rights perspective, "The Case Against Perfection" is problematic. Michael Sandel's line of ethical reasoning leads him to the popular but untenable and discriminatory approach of rejecting the use of human genetic engineering for social reasons (trait selection and enhancement) but allowing it for medical reasons (preventing and curing disease). This approach assumes that there is an objective way to define "disease," "defect," "illness," and "trait." But these concepts are social constructs. For example, being gay is viewed by some people as a genetic trait, by some as a lifestyle, and by some as a disease. Sandel's claim that spina bifida and Down syndrome are genetic abnormalities is contested by many people with these characteristics. Sandel's assumption is that genetic enhancements are social rather than medical in nature. This does not hold true. Many somatic as well as germline genetic enhancements can be medical in nature: adding an AIDS-resistance gene to a person's genetic makeup, if one were to become available, would certainly be considered a medical intervention, not a social enhancement. Sandel's reasoning also allows for the use of nongenetic medical enhancements. Amputees are sometimes seen as defective. If better-than-normal (bionic) artificial legs become available, we can't tell an amputee to be satisfied with conventional prosthetic legs, because all artificial legs, whether bionic or plastic, could be considered medical devices. If people with disabilities are allowed to enjoy—or, in many cases, are forced to enjoy—entirely new abilities or incremental improvements of normal abilities, others—such as the nondisabled transhumanists—will want to follow suit, augmenting their bodies to become the best that they can be. A two-tiered ethical reasoning that approves interventions on medical but not social grounds, which has so far increased disability discrimination, can't stop the quest for perfection and actually allows it to continue, because it perpetuates the alignment of nonperfection with ill health. The best way to stop the quest for perfection is to support the nonperfect by accepting diversity of ability and body structure in the framework of cultural diversity; by supporting those who choose not to be fixed to a norm or enhanced above a norm; and by promoting social structures that accept and support people as they are. Gregor Wolbring Michael Sandel argues that we should not use genetic engineering to make our children better because children are gifts from God. If we choose some of their traits, we lose that sense of gift. Any ethical argument uses criteria outside the basic facts of a case in order to judge those facts. Sandel uses religion to judge science. This is certainly a valid approach. However, his reasoning could be turned against itself to make a case against religion. Sandel's argument is as old as Adam: If you explore this area, you will threaten God's domain. If you eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, you will make God jealous and God will punish you. Prometheus must not bring down fire to men. Pandora must not open the box. Oedipus' crimes are patricide and incest, but his sin is hubris. The cry is "You may go this far and no further." But human beings bite the apple, they come to the fire, they open the box—this story, too, is as old as Adam. It's what makes us human. This is how we dominate the world without fangs or claws. We study, we learn, we apply. We already try to control who our children will become: prenatal music, the latest child-development theory, the right preschool, ballet, tennis, violin, soccer. Despite this, children become who they uniquely become. Parents who give a child a genetic talent for music may find that their child doesn't like band. Not even the most determined parents are now able to fit their children into molds. Sandel is guilty of scientific hubris if he thinks that tinkering around with a couple of elements of the human genome will keep children from becoming whoever they darn well please. But if genetic engineering tempts parents to deny the freedom of their children to develop their own identities, then genetic engineering is being used unethically. Like the rest of science, it is not inherently ethical or unethical; the ethics come in the application. Thomas M. Thurston "The Case Against Perfection" is an impressive attempt to find an unassailable objection to human "enhancement" through genetic engineering, drugs, and other forms of torturing nature. As a professor of political philosophy, I appreciate the way Sandel sorts through our various feelings in search of the real reason for our uneasiness. It is the potential death of the awareness of "giftedness," the idea that some things in life come to us unbidden and we must simply learn to live with them. I am persuaded by him that it is at least partly our given imperfections that enliven our sense of charity and forgiveness and make us human. As a mother, I was deeply moved by Sandel's treatment of "hyperparenting," attention-deficit disorder, and the increasing use of Ritalin and other drugs to enhance our children's performance. Sandel is absolutely right in identifying the attitude toward our children that aspires to turn them into perfect automatons. People want "designer children" with or without genetic engineering. When the United States consumes upwards of 90 percent of the world's Ritalin, there is much unnecessary drug use on normal children. More and more often children with behavior problems, learning problems, or even an excess of creativity or intelligence are seen as abnormal, defective, in need of heavy-handed "fixing." We can't just try to figure out a way to help Johnny (and his parents) cope better. We have to "evaluate" Johnny, label him with a brain disorder, give him therapy, and medicate him, not for Johnny's immediate or long-term happiness but for his academic performance, his test scores, his career prospects, and—unfortunately, it must be said—sometimes for the convenience of adults. Certainly it is not for Johnny's potential to give back to society, if some of the great artists, writers, and inventors of the past, many of them dysfunctional by today's standards, are to be consulted as evidence. Laurie M. Johnson Bagby Michael J. Sandel gives us all the right reasons for seeing eugenics and boutique genetic engineering as wrong. But to rely on our good nature or moral conscience to guide us through a future of mind-numbing scientific advances is, I fear, a little naive. With the prospect of birthing superchildren who will more than justify the tens of thousands of dollars some Manhattan parents already spend on preschool tuition, it will take more than moral or religious references to discourage genetic architecture. Similarly, for the elderly able to afford it, a proven modern Fountain of Youth will have greater appeal than a slow go into that good night. If there's a way to manipulate destiny on one side of an equation and to profit by it on the other, we can be sure it will take comprehensive legislation and a sharp lookout for violators to prevent it from happening. Michael E. Zuller Editors' Note: In "The Case Against Perfection," Michael J. Sandel devoted two paragraphs to a description of two sperm banks in California. Some of the information about the sperm banks was drawn from a series of articles by David Plotz, about the Repository for Germinal Choice, which appeared in the online magazine Slate. Plotz's work should have been cited, and we regret the oversight. Readers interested in Plotz's series can find it at http://slate.msn.com/id/100331. Israeli Outrage
Igreatly appreciate Benjamin Schwarz's extensive review of Benny Morris's exploration of the circumstances of the Palestinian exodus in The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (New & Noteworthy, April Atlantic). But I was surprised by Schwarz's assertion that Israelis "were shattered by, or furiously denied," Morris's earlier evidence of "Israeli atrocities and massacres" that had accompanied the birth of Israel. Such reaction was certainly nowhere in evidence in the 1970s and 1980s, when I covered Israel for Newsweek magazine. For example, Menachem Begin, the former leader of the Irgun Zvai Leumi, had publicly claimed that the massacre at Deir Yassin—where his gunmen killed more than a hundred Arab civilians—performed an important service for Israel by triggering the flight of thousands of others. After he was elected Israel's Prime Minister, in 1975, I asked him how he felt about his activities as the Irgun leader, which included the bombing of the King David Hotel, in Jerusalem. Begin answered that had he done anything less, he "would now be deeply ashamed." As far as I could tell, no Israeli eyebrows went up when the interview was published. In 1983 Israel's Comptroller General charged that 71 percent of the privately arranged acquisitions of land by Jewish settlers in the West Bank were marred by "irregularities." Among the alleged illegal practices of Israeli land dealers and lawyers was the hiring of thugs who forced Palestinian peasants at gunpoint to sign away their holdings; the use of forged powers of attorney to sell the assets of absentee Arab landowners to Jews; and the hiring of Arab straw men to buy Palestinian properties that were immediately resold to the government at ten times the purchase price. Outright land theft was so brazen that in one instance cited by the Comptroller, a West Bank settlement continued to sell lots for Jewish housing construction despite formal complaints by 109 Arabs that the land in question was registered as their property. When Israeli newspapers called for a police investigation, Yitzhak Shamir, Israel's Prime Minister, protested at a meeting of his Likud Party that the Israeli police "must consider national interests." Referring to the Labor Party's practices in the 1940s, he said, "Sometimes tricks and schemes were needed and unconventional methods were used to purchase land." It was "intolerable that a witch hunt should try to block this Zionist mission." A third incident that comes to mind was a 1975 report by Yisrael Koenig, the Interior Ministry's district commissioner in the predominantly Israeli Arab- populated Galilee, warning that the improving education and high birth rate of Arabs with Israeli citizenship posed "a threat to our control of the area." The measures that Koenig, a Labor Party appointee, recommended to thwart this threat included urging young Arabs (who had no Arabic-language university in Israel) to study abroad and then making it difficult for them to return, "thereby encouraging their emigration." Again, I saw no evidence of public outrage or even dismay, although Yigal Allon, who was then the Foreign Minister in Yitzhak Rabin's Cabinet, expressed great "regret" that the Koenig report was "ever written," and "even greater that it was published." This is not to suggest that there were not or are not many Israelis who, like Benny Morris, strongly disapprove of the way the Palestinians were treated. But they hardly needed Morris to tell them what had gone on. The "unconventional methods" defended by Shamir were no secret in Israel. Milan J. Kubic Benjamin Schwarz replies: That Israelis were angered and exercised by Morris's evidence and arguments is a matter of copious public record—see the coverage of Morris's book in the Israeli press. That some Israelis acknowledged wrongdoing before Morris's book was published in no way negates this fact. Mr. Kubic's cavil seems to be an excuse to rehearse occasions of Israeli injustice, of which there are many. I hope and assume that Mr. Kubic would as readily recount the equal—perhaps greater—number of Palestinian and Arab atrocities and injustices perpetrated against Israelis. Gore And The Internet
Joshua Green ("Playing Dirty," June Atlantic) focuses on politicians' use of factual material or innuendo, but begins his story by repeating something that very simply and unarguably is false: he refers to what he calls "[Al] Gore's many exaggerations," including one "that he had somehow invented the Internet." Gore never said or implied that. Stan Kurzban Joshua Green replies: Nonsense. Gore's saying that he "took the initiative in creating the Internet" is akin to my suggesting that because I paid my taxes I took the initiative in balancing the federal budget—a considerable exaggeration. Quixote Caged
In your April issue Terry Castle, responding to a letter writer's comment, wrote that she had committed a "Sancho-like gaffe" in her review of Edith Grossman's new English translation of Don Quixote ("High Plains Drifter," January/February Atlantic). I wonder if there is another "Sancho-like gaffe" in her reply to the letter writer. Castle refers to certain narrative moments in the book, such as "the heartbreaking sequence in which Quixote is returned to his village in a cage at the end of Part 1." I have read the book many times, in both English and Spanish, and can find no such scene. At the end of Part 1 Quixote, beaten and with a fractured shoulder, is carried back to his village in an oxcart lying on a bed of hay. Nowhere is there mention of his being in a cage. In his delusional state he refers to the cart as an enchanted chariot (carro encantado), is willingly helped into it, and lies down. In the Spanish: "El boyero unció sus bueyes y acomodó a don Quijote sobre un haz de heno ..." ("The oxcart driver yoked his oxen and settled Don Quixote on a bundle of hay"). I agree that there is indeed heartbreak in this scene. But it is the heartbreak of fantasy colliding with reality, Cervantes at his sardonic, ironic best. That is why so many years ago my college professor of Spanish literature described the book as "El Quijote—la primera novela, y la mejor" ("Quixote—the first novel, and the best"). Milton Weiss Terry Castle replies: To get him safely home, Quixote's friends arrange for him to be put into "something like a cage with criss-crossed bars," which is placed on an ox driver's cart (Part 1, Chapter 46). Quixote is released for a pee in Chapter 49, but after a crazed fight with a goatherd (Chapter 52) he is put back in the cage on the cart, "just as he had been before," and arrives home in this ignominious fashion. Gustave Doré depicts cage and cart in one of his famous Cervantes engravings (1863). Foaling Season
Aryn Kyle's story "Foaling Season" (May Atlantic) included this: "Along the driveway the geldings were stomping at the ground and ramming the gates of their pens with their chests. Their heads were wildly high, and the whites of their eyes caught the moonlight." Although all horses' eyes have sclera (the area of the eye around the iris), only the appaloosa's sclera is white. Mercille Wells Ienjoyed "Foaling Season," by Aryn Kyle. But allow me one cavil from my days as a copy editor: When the father says to Alice, "You've been a trooper, kid," that should read "trouper." Actors are the ones who strive so that the show goes on, not the state police. David Galef Advice & Consent
Ryan Lizza, in his excellent piece "Kerry's Consigliere" (May Atlantic), is right in referring to Bob Shrum as "the most sought-after consultant in Democratic politics" and (quoting a "Clinton veteran") "the dean of Democratic speechwriters." The ancient Roman Quintilian defined an orator as "a good man speaking well." Bob Shrum is a good man consulting and writing well. For me he is also a treasured friend of three decades. One complaint: Lizza describes my 1972 acceptance speech, "Come Home, America," which Bob helped to craft, as "an excellent isolationist appeal." That certainly was not our intent. I was calling the nation to revisit the ideals that gave us birth at home and abroad. I have always been an internationalist. That is why I volunteered for service in World War II; supported the United Nations and the Marshall Plan; advocated the recognition of Israel, China, Cuba, and Palestine; and supported a liberal trade policy. Internationalism also led to my opposition to the American war in Vietnam. We were never more isolated from the international community than when we were deepest in the Vietnam jungle. The same can be said of our current embroilment in Iraq against the wishes of the UN and nearly all the people of the world. Add to this the Administration's rejection of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, its spurning of the international crimes court and the ban on land mines, and its walkout from the 1972 ABM Treaty to replace it by putting nuclear arms in outer space. All this adds up to isolationism with a vengeance. I prefer Jefferson's dictum: "A decent respect to the opinions of mankind." George McGovern As an attorney with an interest in the regulatory aspects of organic food production, I was struck by an apparent omission in Corby Kummer's "Going With the Grain" (May Atlantic). In considering solutions to the problem faced by producers of "really wild wild rice," why was no mention made of organic certification under the USDA's National Organic Program? Section 205.207 of the NOP's regulatory text provides a special "wild-crop harvesting practice standard." Certification under this standard would enable producers of "true wild rice" to label their undeniably superior product as "wild-crop organic." This would solve at least two problems: first, it would alert consumers to the difference between "really wild wild rice" and paddy-grown wild rice; second, many of these consumers would be willing to pay a premium for the "organic" label, compensating producers for the added expense of harvesting natural stands of wild rice. The organic-certification approach would seem preferable to the one suggested in Kummer's article: amending state labeling laws in California and elsewhere. Blake F. Wilson Iread P. J. O'Rourke's article on Iwo Jima ("Sulfur Island," June Atlantic) with a great deal of interest, because if Iwo had not been in American hands after March of 1945, I would most likely not be writing you. A flight from the B-29 bases on Guam, Saipan, and Tinian to the Japanese homeland was a very long round trip; depending on the target, it could exceed 3,000 miles. The B-29 was a fine plane, but its engines were quirky and unpredictable. If you had trouble going to or from Japan, the only alternate landing place was the Pacific Ocean. If the huge, war-ending B-29 raids were to be successful, the capture of Iwo was essential. O'Rourke wrote that the main thrust of the Iwo campaign was to provide an operational area for P-51s to escort the B-29s. This was not the case. The vast majority of B-29 raids were conducted at night. No formation flying was involved. The B-29s flew to the targets individually in order to preserve fuel. Iwo was captured in order to provide an alternate emergency landing area for B-29s with combat damage, mechanical troubles, or a shortage of fuel. The American Heritage History of World War II states on page 588: "The price of Iwo came high, but at war's end 24,761 B-29 crewmen had used its airfield for emergency landings." I made three of those landings—twice with disabled engines and once for much-needed fuel. James T. Murphy Imust respond to Gail T. Lambert's letter ("Letters to the Editor," June Atlantic) regarding Jonathan Rauch's essay on gay marriage ("A More Perfect Union," April Atlantic) and her reference to comments by Stanley Kurtz linking respect for gay marriage to the dissolution of heterosexual unions in Scandinavia. The state of Oklahoma has a divorce rate greater than 50 percent. Not surprisingly, the number of children being raised in single-parent homes has skyrocketed. The situation is so bleak that the federal government is spending my tax dollars to educate the citizens of Oklahoma about what it takes to stay committed to their marriages. The state of Oklahoma is also a conservative place where gay Americans live—uneasily—by keeping a low profile. So tell me, Ms. Lambert and Mr. Kurtz, who is responsible for the state of matrimony in the state of Oklahoma? Susan Messenheimer Douglas McGray, in his article on Philip Mangano and homelessness ("The Abolitionist," June Atlantic) writes, "In the late 1970s ... state hospitals, prodded by patient's-rights activists, released hundreds of thousands of the mentally ill into communities unprepared to receive them." What happened in the state of Maine (and, I assume, other states) was that the legislature passed laws closing the hospitals and mandating the establishment of outpatient clinics and group homes for the mentally ill. The state kept the great savings from the closures, but never adequately funded the clinics and support services, relying instead on federal programs to take care of the ex-patients. The activists who documented the problems are not to blame for the result. Del Cain "John Ashcroft's Permanent Campaign," by Jeffrey Rosen (April Atlantic), demonstrates clearly the ability of many religiously conservative people to comfortably hold contradictory beliefs. Early in the article Ashcroft is described as excoriating gambling and homosexuality as sins. Later he is quoted as saying, "I don't believe we're here by accident. I'm a religious person. I believe we are created by God, and I don't believe that God created any inferior people"—unless they are gay or lesbian, that is. Donald L. Weston
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