The Buried, Unquotable Exoneration (NY Times hides story on Rudy's Travel Expenses)

The New York Times exonerates Rudy Giuliani from charges that he moved travel expenses around through subsidiary agencies in order to hide his affair with his now-wife, Judith. People looking for that exoneration on their feedreaders will find themselves frustrated. Not only did the Times bury the story on one of its blogs, it put it in a graphic format that doesn't allow for copy-and-paste. In fact, it isn't even shown as an entry on the blog itself:

In fact, the amount of money transferred through those agencies represent an insignificant percentage of the total cost of those travel expenses. Furthermore, the Times found that Giuliani had started spreading the costs of travel through subsidiary agencies two years before his affair with Judith, which makes it rather obvious that the motive was not to hide his infidelity. Russ Buettner ends by concluding that Giuliani's accounting had nothing to do with his relationship to Judith.

One might believe that these conclusions might make a few headlines, given all of the attention paid to these allegations. Anderson Cooper asked Giuliani about this pseudoscandal during the nationally-televised CNN/YouTube debate, after all, and Giuliani's record as mayor might be of particular interest to a New York City newspaper. Instead, the Times seemed to go out of its way to hide this report and its exoneration of Giuliani on accusations of manipulating public records for his own personal motivations.

Of course, even a front-page report on this wouldn't unring the bell; the damage has been done, and it has been considerable. It looks like the Times wanted to make sure none of it got undone. (via Power Line)

This from NR today, talking about Pat Buchanan’s smear of RG on his cover.

I, Rudy?

The American Conservative magazine has a cover illustration on Rudy Giuliani that depicts him in fascist pose and costume: black shirt, bandolier, jutting Mussolini jaw.

In the past, garb like that shown on the mayor would have made the hearts of the editors of the American Conservative go pit-a-pit. “She is not a bad girl at all ...” co-founder Taki Thedoropoulos wrote of a society acquaintance in 2003, “but her problem is she loves publicity about as much as I love the Wehrmacht.”

And yet oddly enough, this time the fascist posture is not offered by the American Conservative as an endorsement. Instead, author Michael Desch - a professor at Texas A&M best known till now for his work publicizing and defending the “Israel lobby” writings of Profs. Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, wants the world to know ... well, let’s let the man speak for himself.

Like most Americans, I knew little about Rudolph Giuliani, save that he had been the very successful mayor of New York City catapulted to iconic status for his cool-headed demeanor after the Sept. 11 attacks. I was curious about where he stood as a presidential candidate, so in April 2007, I joined nearly 3,000 other Texas A&M faculty and students to hear him speak. ... I was so appalled by the mayor’s simplistic message that terrorists were attacking us because they “oppose our freedom and ... want to impose their ideology on us” that I ignored protocol and challenged him during the Q&A. To the accompaniment of hisses from the rabidly pro-Rudy students, I reminded the mayor that Islamic fundamentalists in Saudi Arabia, Iran, and elsewhere in the Middle East have taken our side against al-Qaeda at various times.

So there’s indictment number one: the mayor does not sufficiently appreciate the contributions to American security of Islamic fundamentalists.

Next, Desch complains that Giuliani has shown undue hostility to Yasser Arafat.

I had forgotten that while U.S. attorney in New York, Giuliani tried to close the PLO’s New York office. As mayor, he made headlines in 1995, when he had Arafat ejected from a concert at Lincoln Center.

Desch worries that Giuliani’s distaste for the PLO chieftain lends credence to disturbing reports

that Giuliani is “the clear favorite of the party’s top Jewish activists.”

Desch acknowledges that many non-Jews also think the mayor would make a fine president.

In one sense, his campaign is a big tent: it has by some estimates between 60 and 70 advisors.

However,

Some—British Soviet expert Robert Conquest and Reagan campaign defense advisor William Van Cleave—are clearly window-dressing.

In fact, the strings of the campaign are pulled by a

core of senior advisors includ[ing] former Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz, Martin Kramer (Middle East), Stephen Rosen (defense), S. Enders Wimbush (diplomacy), Peter Berkowitz (statecraft, human rights, and freedom), Kim Holmes (foreign policy), and perhaps Daniel Pipes. Giuliani’s chief foreign-policy advisor is retired diplomat and Yale instructor Charles Hill.

Desch then offers a series of shocked-and-appalled pen sketches of these advisers, culminating in an accusation that chief adviser Charles Hill was seduced into a pro-Israel perspective by the experience of ... learning more about Israel.

Hill’s assignment to the Israel desk at Foggy Bottom and then to the embassy in Tel Aviv edged him closer to the neoconservative camp. According to [Hill’s biographer Molly] Worthen, Hill “was very informed by his experience in Israel and has deep, deep sympathy for the Israelis, not based on their political situation, but a very existential empathy for their national philosophy and their culture, which he perceives as honest and manly, really standing for something that is good and true about the human race.” Hill found the Israelis he met to be “intrepid,” in contrast to the effete Americans he encountered in Cambridge. During his posting in Israel, Hill was introduced to Menachem Begin and was so taken that he asked the Likud prime minister for an autographed picture. Later, when he was Secretary of State George Schultz’s executive assistant, Hill would develop a close relationship with Israel’s United Nations representative Benyamin Netanyahu.

Deep sympathy for the Israelis? Hill’s slide into iniquity only accelerates from there. Hill

explained to The American Spectator that the United States “has to stand for democracy. We can’t turn away from that, but we have to do it in a way that’s realistic and Rudy Giuliani has talked about the realistic piece.”

Otherwise, Hill is squarely in the neoconservative camp. He maintains, “If we pull out of Iraq now, it’s just going to break the dam and there will be flood waters of chaos and murder across the region.”

But of course the real villain of the piece is the boss, the mayor himself, of whom Desch offers this scathing assessment.

Rudolph Giuliani, in contrast, is no empty vessel. He knows exactly where he stands.

Yes, well obviously we cannot have that.

Have we really reached the point where a magazine that masquerades under the label of “conservative” thinks that the very worst possible allegation to throw against a president is that he has advisers who admire Israel and support democracy, that he knows his own mind, and that he is ready to defend the country against his enemies? If this is the American Conservative’s idea of criticism, God save the Republican party from ever deserving its praise.

12/21 12:23 PM

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