The Final Word on Beauchamp
Franklin Foer’s painstaking reconstruction of the entire saga, including TNR’s incredibly thorough investigation of the entire proceedings, is a model in how a magazine should respond to controversy. Way too many people — people who claimed to only want “truth” — were furious that the magazine would actually take the responsible course of action and thoroughly check and recheck its sources to figure out what actually happened. These same men and women — again, all in the name of truth — are now falsely reporting vindication: they claim that TNR has “admitted” Beauchamp’s stories are “bunk,” when the magazine has done nothing of the sort. But they also seem furious that Foer engaged in the type of serious, cohesive investigation they claimed to have wanted in the first place. The reason appears clear: the investigation uncovers a mountain of evidence supporting Beauchamp’s articles, from a variety of independent sources — more than enough to render TNR’s original publication decision reasonable. They didn’t want the truth. They wanted blood.
Foer has forthrightly admitted error when appropriate (such as keeping Elspeth Reeves — originally just a friend of Beauchamp — as his chief fact-checker after they got married), and agreed that they cannot back Beauchamp’s pieces with the “essential confidence” necessary to stand by them. But the standards he used would be nearly impossible to meet for a first-person war story. As Foer also relates, Beauchamp’s stories were corroborated by nearly an entire company of fellow US Army soldiers — independently and credibly. Perhaps this means TNR shouldn’t publish first person war stories. But it does not mean Beauchamp is a fabricator. Nobody knows the truth behind the fog of war — but the many, many soldiers who backed up Mr. Beauchamp, relenting only under an incredibly heavy and coercive army hand, are strong indicators in his favor.
The shrill right-wingers calling for his head are embarrassing themselves in front of the whole world. There credibility has been damaged far more than TNR’s has or could have been.
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15 Responses to “The Final Word on Beauchamp”
Whoa, did I just stumble onto the Daily Kos?
Are you kidding?
The final word? On what? Beachamp? TNR’s approach? Franklin Foer’s choices in writing this article? Etc.?
You’ve gotta be kidding.
It strikes me that if you really stand by that post title, you might wish to consider whether, in the long run, you might come to be embarrassed yourself.
(And I’m not a right-winger, by the way. Good luck making that argument.)
I feel like you might be reading a bit too much into a post title.
I also think that TNR did a reasonble, good job in the mop-up phase of revelations.
Initially, they seem to have been naive or negligent, a la the NYT and the Iraq war. That’s a serious lapse in judgment, and they have eat crow just the NYT has had to.
By now, this has become fodder for the usual political games, and few of the commenters are seriously interested in what happened and how it happened. It’s purely a question of how this can be used in the political wars.
TNR has done a mediocre job of CYA, IMO. They cannot bring themselves to admit that Beauchamp made up most of his stories despite the fact the evidence is overwhelming that he did.
Maybe Kay-lo and her boy in Lebanon will get into the story.
Entropy: I’m confused by that assertion. If anything, there seems to be a preponderance of evidence that Beauchamp was telling the truth (with the exception of the Forward Base/Kuwait mistake, which looks to have been made in good faith).
David,
First is exhibit A, the official Army investigation. Part of that investigation includes sworn statements by many soldiers, including Beauchamp, that show his claims were false.
Second is the leaked phone transcript (part 1 & part 2) between Foer and Beauchamp himself where Beauchamp refuses to affirm that his stories were accurate.
So what evidence is there the stories were accurate when an official investigation finds them false and the author refuses to stand by them?
Entropy: If you read Foer’s report, you’d note two significant problems (“context and caveats”, as a different magazine might put it), with those two “exhibits”.
On exhibit A, Foer details the tremendous amount of pressure the soldiers were under to repudiate Beauchamp. Prior to this duress, a great many of his fellow men in uniform were backing him up. More importantly, a close read of many of the statements shows the soldiers took pains to try not to contradict their previous statements, while still satisfying their superior officers. Put simply, the official army investigation was done under significant coercion and lacks credibility compared to TNR’s independent reporting.
On exhibit B, Beauchamp gave the words in that transcript while being watched by his commanding officers — not exactly a good environment for candor, particularly since they had already made their displeasure with Beauchamp’s stories quite clear by rendering him incommunicado for weeks after he revealed his name. And even there, Beauchamp refused to repudiate the stories, he just expressed a desire to let the whole thing drop — quite reasonable, given what he was being put through.
This is why Foer’s investigation and context was so important. It is far and away the most complete accounting of the whole ordeal that we have, and it really colors the witch-hunt that groups like the NRO were conducting here. While the evidence in Beauchamp’s favor may not be strong enough to have warranted publication, I still think on balance it weighs more heavily in favor of his truthfulness than against.
Independent – Ha! As if TNR doesn’t have a dog in this fight or its own reputation to protect in its investigation of itself. How can anyone reasonably call an organization investigating itself “independent?”
And, of course, the allegations of coercion by the military are just that -allegations. And such allegations are quite far-fetch when one considers the number of sworn statements and the degree to which they agree in character and content. Additionally, Foer is doing quite a bit of coercion himself in that phone conversation….
It seems to me you give a very large benefit-of-doubt to TNR and almost none to anything that contradicts their story….
At the very least, TNR should retract the story until it can be verified, unless journalistic standards have changed in recent years of course.
Hmm, while surfing I just came across the fact that there is new info on this subject. David, why didn’t you link it in your post?
After reading the entire piece, I agree with the last paragraphs:
In light me actually reading discovering and reading TNR’s latest on the subject, my previous comments are a bit unfair to them. Although there is clearly a bit of self-serving CYA in the piece, I don’t see it as a completely unfair account based on what’s known.
Okay Entropy — you know my posts well enough to know they are generally pointers to my TDL work. The Foer piece is linked to quite prominently at the top of that post, and is the primary basis for everything I’ve said here.
It’s ALWAYS a bad idea to read my pointers without reading the underlying post in question (even if I was linking to someone else, they deserve to be read in their own words, and unless it’s a pure cross-post the TDL post will be far more fleshed out and expansive).
David,
Yeah, I didn’t click over to your site – I didn’t realize it was yours (dsadevil?).
“David Schraub’s a devil” — I’m a big New Jersey Devils fan.
In retrospect, I’d change the url, but hindsight….