GMontag's Journal: TNR & Franklin Foer should eat some Humble Pie

Or at least be forced to listen to the first few tracks of Smokin'.

Note: At the time of this writing, the TNR search feature was not returning any Beauchamp articles and appears to be related to the revamping of their website.

"The Editors" of TNR posted this statement on 10 August 2007. Besides calling a major location error in "Shock Troops" one key detail (the detail being that "the war" turned their writer into a "monster" but he was in Kuwait, before arriving in Iraq, at odds with the published story), they also give us this tidbit:

 

Scott Beauchamp is currently a 23-year-old soldier in Iraq who, for the past 15 days, has been prevented by the military from communicating with the outside world, aside from three brief and closely monitored phone calls to family members.

Note that it was only 15 days. The thing is, nobody was keeping Private Beauchamp from contacting TNR or his family (his wife was working for TNR at the time) before his Operational Security (OPSEC) investigation began and nobody was keeping him from contacting anybody after the investigation concluded. The Private was not prevented from contacting anybody at all when this story was being investigated by The Weekly Standard and the gaping holes and Fairbanksings were being revealed. Nor was he prevented from contacting others after his most recent investigation was concluded.

Additionally, they did speak to a BAE Systems employee, as they claimed and as verified by Bob Owens. Problem is, TNR did not reveal the name of Mr. Doug Coffee, the name of the firm where he is employeed, nor their sloppy "fact checking" process. That process lacks a few basics, like giving the expert a copy of what you are verifying. Yes, if you did not know, the verifier at TNR just asked Mr. Coffee some general, leading questions and proclaimed the Shock Troops dog killing Bradley driver story complete and factual. When Mr. Bob Owens presented Mr. Coffee with the actual story, he changed his take on the possibility of Bradleys being dog and concrete smashers. TNR does not reveal any other experts questioned, but then again they did not reveal any experts at all to start with.

Enough old news, the transcript of a 6 September 2007 confrence call has surfaced. It appears to be authentic and part one can be found here, part two here. Whomever released this stuff outside of the regular Public Affairs process is in for trouble. Contrary to what Mr. Foer would like you to believe, this is NOT Army policy and PAO Major Kirk Luedeke, assigned to this issue, even told Mr. Foer so. TNR and Mr. Foer, who have had no problem at all with an publishing insider's fabrications about the antics of himself and his fellow troops, suddenly has a problem with some no-name leaking an official investigation that involves TNR. Go figure.

It really does not sound like Mr. Foer needs to be commenting on anything military, nor does he need to have any supervisory control over any articles related to the military. Actually, perhaps TNR should stay away from military articles completly and just stick with Beltway Babbling about big lofty policy.

In the transcripts we have this:

Transcript of Conversation
            Scott Thomas Beauchamp and The New Republic, 061945SEP07
Attendees: Pvt Scott Thomas Beauchamp, A/1-18 IN; Frank Foer, Editor The New Republic, Peter Scoblic, Executive Editor, The New Republic, SSG Preiszler, squad leader, Spc. Ben Washburn, 4th IBCT Public Affairs and "Gene" Lawyer for Scott Beauchamp, provided by The New Republic

(double check my typing accuracy, the .pdf I was reading was a picture not a text document)

See any commissioned officers in that header? I don't either, but Franklin Foer imagines one intimidating Private Beauchamp during the conversation, as he told Howard Kurtz shortly after the transcript and investigation were improperly released. It seems like Mr. Foer was not banking on the transcript getting out, as he never said a word about this conversation happening before it was unexpectedly released.

Of course, Mr. Foer is making a big fuss about the Army not giving TNR all sorts of documents, so that TNR can spin this story however they wish. Check the transcripts if you don't believe me. What is puzzling is how TNR had a confrence call with the Army and now expects the Army to be the only ones to provide a transcript. They could not record and transcribe this themselves? Granted, they would have missed the detail of Private Beauchamp sipping some water, but they could have included the full name of the lawyer that they retained for Private Beauchamp.

More about the transcript and Mr. Foers comments about it in a bit. Let's check something else that is important to this story.

Mr. Foer has tossed out the idea that the Army interviewed the wrong people in the Article 15-6 investigation and demands their sworn statements. He is pretty cagy about who TNR interviewed to investigate/re-report the Baghdad Diarist stories. Actually, he never has released the names of anybody interviewed other than Privat Beauchamp and Elspeth Reeve. The Diarist stories are full of military violations, even serious crimes, but he does not turn over the evidence to complete an investigation into these crimes. He does not even bother to tell anybody if any of the soldiers listed in the AR 15-6 report are the ones his magazine interviewed:

CPT Eric Pribyla
SSG Skyler Preszler
PFC Tracy King
SSG Jonathan Duncan
SSG Kevin Reinhardt
PFC Brian Long
SPC Gregory Franz
PFC Randy Moon
SSG Scott Cunningham
SFC Martin Guiterrez
1LT Jamil Brown
SSG Robert Bauer
SSG Clifford Gabriel
CPT Lee Showman
SSG Jessee Martin
SSG Francis Hancock
SGT Craig McLaughlin
SPC William Whitmore
PV2 Jarrid Ilgenfriz

Every one of them signed a DA 2823. Did Mr. Foer send "Gene" the lawyer to Iraq and get sworn statements from his 'witnesses'? Not that I know of.

One portion of Shock Troops, that is somewhat refuted in the AR 15-6 report, is the inference that 'Scott Thomas' saw a Bradley running over dogs. Actually, he (or his editor) wrote that he did not see the third dog killing by the Bradley driver, implying that he saw the previous two. The 15-6 says he never saw a Bradley run over a dog. Also in Shock Troops, Private Beauchamp (or his editor) wrote that he saw his friends desecrate the remains of a child. The 15-6 says that he witnessed no such thing.

As you can see, squaring what Mr. Foer says with what is in the sworn record is going to be pretty difficult, unless you use imagenary English. So, let's try that.

Mr. Foer keeps telling anybody who will listen that Private Beauchamp has not "recanted" his stories. He tells all that Elspeth Reeve told him that PV1 Beauchamp told her that he never "recanted" and he says that the Private himself called Mr. Foer at home in a private, unrecorded, untranscribed conversation that he did not "recant". Fine, so Private Beauchamp never used the word "recant" or any of its variants in his sworn statements. He only made sworn statements that completly shreded what was printed under his name. There, happy Mr. Foer? I solved the puzzle without buying a vowel.

Back to the transcript. When (softball) interviewed by Mr. Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post, Mr. Foer claims that PV1 Beauchamp was under duress from the Army during the call. He fails to mention that he and his Executive Editor were bringing up the future of PV1 Beauchamp's wife at the magazine in an attempt to prevent the Private from "recanting" his stories.

Something else that was odd in the transcript, they told PV1 Beauchamp that he was not going to be able to write again after this was all over. Why would they tell him that if the Private was telling the truth the whole time? They still let Eve Fairbanks make up stories over there as an editor (the Examiner prints her fiction too). Lee Seigel is still writing and plenty of other fabricators are fully employed making up stuff more often thatn PV1 Beauchamp. Pure speculation: Perhaps they were trying to warn him to keep quiet about how his articles were edited after he submitted them?

The call happened on 6 September 2007. A couple of weeks later, on 24 September 2007 it was reported that she PV1 Beauchamp's wife was gone from TNR and had moved on to Time.

As they say, stay tuned for more!