Drudge: The Beauchamp transcripts; Foer to Beauchamp:

Drudge: The Beauchamp transcripts; Foer to Beauchamp: “Let us control the way this story proceeds;” Foer exploits Beauchamp’s wife: “Ellie sent me an e-mail to tell you that it’s the most important thing in the world for her that you say that you didn’t recant;” Update: Foer whines, attacks the military again By Michelle Malkin • October 24, 2007 01:30 PM Update 6:50pm Eastern. Franklin Foer comes out from under his desk to whine to the NY Observer about the transcripts being leaked. All of this damning transcript evidence of TNR’s attempts to cover up, and what does Foer do? He attacks the military again:

“It’s maddening to see the Army selectively leak to the Drudge Report things that we’ve been trying to obtain from them through Freedom of Information Act requests,” Mr. Foer said. “This fits a pattern in this case where the army has leaked a lot of stuff to right wing blogs.”

Mr. Foer said TNR had been trying since July to get access to some of the documents Mr. Drudge posted, but that the Army had not cooperated. A reader e-mails: “Pathetic…he was waiting for access to his own conversation?”

Moreover, what is Foer’s evidence that it was the military that leaked the transcripts to Drudge?

Update 5:30pm Eastern. My friend Kathryn Lopez misses the point entirely, I’m afraid.

I repeat Ace’s distillation for those who have only superficial knowledge of this scandal: Remember: TNR Hid The Existence Of This Phone Call From The World.

And TNR’s pathetic attempts to wrest control of the story from Beauchamp as he attempted to tell other media outlets that he was not being gagged, use Beauchamp’s wife as a wedge, and refusal to acknowledge the truth of their journalistic malpractice.

Update 4:15pm Eastern. I saved the transcripts. You can access them and read them in their entirety for yourselves here, here, and here.

Meanwhile, Bryan Preston put in a call to Franklin Foer. He’s in a meeting at the moment. He’s a very, very busy man, you know.

Update 3:50pm Eastern. The Weekly Standard’s Michael Goldfarb, who got the ball rolling over the summer on this story, speaks:

It is now clear that somewhere along the way, TNR stopped acting in good faith and started doing damage control. They cited a Bradley expert who purportedly confirmed that the vehicle could be operated as Beauchamp described. But when Bob Owens tracked down said expert, BAE spokesmen Doug Coffey, he denied making any such statement, saying that TNR had mischaracterized his comments and that the editors had never shown him Beauchamp’s stories. He added that having read the stories, they were indeed “suspicious,” and that he did not believe the Bradley could be operated as described. TNR never acknowledged Coffey’s later statements or its apparent misrepresentation of his earlier statement.

And then came our report that Scott Beauchamp was no longer standing by his stories. The editors at TNR responded to this report by insinuating that THE WEEKLY STANDARD was not a credible source. They also accused the Army of “stonewalling” and preventing them from speaking with their author. That was on August 10. Bob Owens subsequently reported that TNR spoke to Beauchamp on September 7–the transcript now posted on Drudge–but TNR never returned to the subject, despite their claims of a “commitment to the truth” in that August 10 statement.

The documents posted by Drudge reveal that the New Republic’s editors have known for several weeks that the central anecdote of the story was untrue, that the other anecdotes were deeply suspect, and that the author was no longer standing by his work. And yet they remained publicly silent even though they had long ago promised to be open and forthcoming on the matter. Worse still, they asked Beauchamp to cancel pending interviews with the Washington Post and Newsweek, lest their complicity in Beauchamp’s slanders come to light.

Foer attacked his magazine’s critics as “reckless” and “ideologically motivated,” at one point even demanding an apology from the bloggers who did so much to advance this story and find out the truth of the matter. He now has more than a little ’splaining to do. Meanwhile, the Drudge link is now gone and NRO’s The Corner is oddly downplaying the transcripts and waiting for TNR’s talking points. From Peter Beinart, perhaps?

I’m not sure how you make “Let us control the way this story proceeds” and “Ellie sent me an e-mail to tell you that it’s the most important thing in the world for her that you say that you didn’t recant” sound less damning than they are. Good luck.

Update 2:51pm Eastern. After apologizing to its readers and advertisers, TNR editor Franklin Foer needs to apologize to the Army and our troops for continuing to suggest that the military stonewalled while the magazine obstructed the truth. Then, it seems to me, he will need to apologize to Beauchamp’s wife for cravenly exploiting her to try to save his sorry ass.

I didn’t think there could be a bigger crapweasel than Scott Thomas Beauchamp in this mess.

Bob Owens weighs in: “Now that they have been posted on the public record, these disclosures should end careers at The New Republic.”

Ace of Spades, who was vilified for doing digging no one else would do, boils it down:

Remember: TNR Hid The Existence Of This Phone Call From The World. We only even knew previously that this phone call had taken place because a source of Confederate Yankee’s told him about it. TNR did not mention it. Even after it was disclosed, TNR did not comment on it, nor explain their reasons for withholding information about a fiction they had printed as truth. Reading the transcript, I can see why someone whose reputation and career depended on the story being true could convince himself the story had not been fully recanted. Foer could tell himself, “The guy is evasive, there are officers listening, he can’t say anything. So I can’t take this as a retraction.” I can see how he could tell himself that.

However, I cannot see where he convinced himself he could hide the existence of the call from the world, nor report to TNR’s readers his reasons for doubting the phone call proved anything. TNR could have said: “A recent phone call with Scott Beauchamp leaves us in a no man’s land where Beauchamp will neither re-affirm nor recant the stories to us. We suspect he is worried about his career in the military and possible punishment. He will not say he is, however. Under these circumstances, we must provisionally retract the stories, though we have no firm evidence they are false. But with a compromised writer also unable to affirm they’re true, neither can we stand by these stories.”

That would have been a (mostly) honest appraisal of the situation, at least from their own need-to-believe point of view.

Instead, however, rather than accurately and honestly describing Beauchamp’s complete refusal to affirm the stories as true, and offering their reasons for doubting this refusal to affirm to be conclusive, they instead simply withheld facts in their possession from the world and pretended the call never happened at all. Update 2:45pm Eastern. Another snort-worthy moment from the phone conference transcript–watch Franklin Foer take umbrage at being lumped in with the rest of “the media:”

Part III of Drudge’s posting of the leaked transcripts is the official Army investigative report dated July 31, 2007. It is thorough, detailed, and damning. The findings are no surprise to anyone who has followed the story in the blogosphere:

Update 2:18pm Eastern. Glenn Reynolds searches for reaction from the TNR. Silence so far. It’s the sound of heads getting ready to roll. Also: I find it curious how TNR’s Peter Beinart never brought this up in his videoblog show with Jonah Goldberg. Must have just slipped his mind over the last month. Meanwhile, what apt timing: Commenter Capitano notes that the Independent Film Channel will be airing “Shattered Glass,” the saga of TNR’s first journalistic internal combustion, twice on Friday. Grab the popcorn.

Speaking of that movie, here’s Allahpundit’s reaction to the first part of the phone conference transcript: “It reads, I kid you not, like a scene from ‘Shattered Glass.’ All that’s missing is, ‘Are you mad at me, Frank?’”

Update: Okay. The transcripts are posted in three parts. Here are the participants in the September 7, 2007 phone conference between Scott Thomas Beauchamp and TNR…

At the very start of the call, Foer asks if Beauchamp has any restrictions. Beauchamp replies: “Other than OPSEC violations, I can talk about anything I want.” In direction contradiction to the “Army is gagging Beauchamp” propaganda from TNR, the transcript makes clear that it is Beauchamp’s choice not to talk to the media:

The conversation turns to Beauchamp’s wife, Ellie, then a reporter-researcher for the magazine, and Beauchamp’s foot-dragging on providing statements backing up his stories:

Now, here is a truly disgusting moment. Beauchamp lets TNR know he wants to talk to other news outlets to tell them he is NOT being censored. And what does TNR do? It attempts to censor him. Franklin Foer, and I quote, leans on Beauchamp to “let us control the way this story proceeds.”

Oh, and here’s more of crapweasel Foer using Beauchamp’s wife to try and extract corroborating statements from Beauchamp:

Wow. Someone leaked the Scott Thomas Beauchamp transcripts to Drudge. I’m reading through them now. Stand by.

Bob Owens, who has been on this story like white on the rice from the get-go and broken ground the MSM refused to all along the way, summed up the sorry state of TNR two days ago:

Far from intellectual honesty, the senior editor staff of The New Republic have proven their intractable corruption. Editor Franklin Foer, Executive Editor J. Peter Scoblic, and Senior Editor Jason Zengerle failed to do their jobs as editors, published a false story (though there are indications that all three of the author’s stories were fabricated, in whole or in part), more than likely lied when they claimed the allegations made had been fact-checked prior to publication, and then ran a false investigation that involved misrepresenting the claims of at least one expert, while attempting to bury the story and exerting influence over the author to cancel interviews with other interested publications…

…Details will continue to trickle out revealing just how deceptive the editorial staff at The New Republic has been to its readership and critics alike, and once those details are made public, I very much doubt that Franklin Foer, Peter Scoblic, and Jason Zengerle will be able to survive the coming purge. As Scott Johnson has observed repeatedly, “It’s the cover-up that kills you.”

Michael Goldfarb and the Weekly Standard first launched the salvos that may sink TNR entirely here.

Note Michelle's latest update. TNR responds!!!!

"Update 6:50pm Eastern. Franklin Foer comes out from under his desk to whine to the NY Observer about the transcripts being leaked. All of this damning transcript evidence of TNR’s attempts to cover up, and what does Foer do? He attacks the military again:

Moreover, what is Foer’s evidence that it was the military that leaked the transcripts to Drudge?

What is it? Inquiring minds want to know.

The ship sinks and sinks and sinks."

And TNR’s false allegations that the military was censoring Beauchamp.

If the Democrats want to talk about real wartime censorship, they should talk about the full wartime censorship which was imposed 6 months into the Korean War.

Full Wartime Censorship Placed on Korean War News, Waterloo Daily Courier, front page | January 9, 1951

Veteran war correspondents agreed the regulations were the most inclusive they had ever received from any army headquarters. The rules placed correspondents under the complete jusrisdiction of the army and forbade any criticism of the Allied conduct of the war
The regulations, succeeding the present security censorship, provide that all dispatches filed to publications throughout the world will be screened for military information which might injure the morale of UN troops or their government.
Mention of the following matters was specifically forbidden:
1. Identity of organizations in the combat and communications zones, unless anounced in communiques. When announced, no place names will be used.
2. Quoting officers in any way, except as specifically authorized
3. Stating that any sector in Korea is occupied by American troops until the enemy has established it as a fact.
4. Stating that any town or village in the combat zone is accupied [sic] by American or Allied forces unless it is essential to a news story.
5. The mention of any base port, communications center or other point on a communications line. [newspaper's emphasis]
6. Ship or rail movements, unless authorized
7. Any discussion of Allied air power
8. The mention of number of troops, unless authorized.
9. The effect of enemy fire or bombarment, unless authorized.

Also listed as unauthorized was information on the strength, efficiency, morale, or organization of Allied forces.
Under this rule, no mention may be made of reinforcements, equipment, arms, plans and forecasts of future operations, or positions or descriptions of camps.
Casualties may not be revealed before official publication. [Paper's emphasis]
The Eighth Army ruled that any violator of the code will be suspended from all privileges. "He may be subject to disciplinary action because of an intentional violation of these and other revelations, either in letter or in spirit, and in extreme cases of offense where investigation proves the circumstances warrant the correspondent may be placed in arrest to await deportation or trial by courtmaritial,' the announcement said.

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