Madsen Responds (Poorly)

Wayne Madsen responds publicly to the thoroughly debunked 6 am Thanksgiving dinner story with an article at Counterpunch titled Wagging the Media. Does Madsen admit he made a gross error in judgment? Does Madsen say he should have investigated a spurious 5 am landing typo before ranting about it? Does Madsen aver to do better in the future? Is the Pope Jewish?

Madsen's article is difficult to read. But I think I grasped his main points. The article is a mish-mash of buck-passing, doubt-raising, and red herring-throwing. Let's take a look at each in turn, shall we?

Buck-Passing
Instead of admitting that he is at fault for his own error, Madsen seeks to place the blame elsewhere.

The consequence of the Bush White House's cutting a secret deal with cherry picked reporters in the White House press pool was predictable. By cutting out editors and bureau chiefs from the reporting process, one of the first news reports about President Bush's secret trip to Baghdad, by Mike Allen of The Washington Post, one of the few reporters invited to fly on board Air Force One and with the strict provision he could not tell his editor or bureau chief in Washington, muddied the waters for people anxious for details about the trip.

We don't know whether the 5 am typo which appeared in the Washington Post on Friday, November 28 was a result of Mike Allen's inability to inform his editor about the trip beforehand. In fact, the raw reportage which appeared at Drudge's site on Thursday, November 27 includes no such typo. It may well be that it's an editor who is responsible for the typo.

But besides that, how can Madsen blame a typo on Bush's insisting that reporters not inform their editors of the trip, when Counterpunch's alleged editors, who Bush did not separate in any way from Madsen, allowed such a ridiculously sourced diatribe to appear in the pages of Counterpunch?

He also says:

Outrageously, by Sunday, November 30, the Post still had not corrected its error.

Well, at least he admits someone made an error. Not him, but there is an error somewhere in this sorry episode. 'Course, as an "investigative journalist", Madsen might have done some investigating before publishing a rant based on a typo, which is itself contradicted elsewhere in the Washington Post piece. In any case, this is the closest Madsen comes to admitting that his earlier article is wrong, so I guess we should be thankful.

Doubt-Raising
In order for the 'controversy' over facts to seem legitimate, Madsen brings up various minutiae. Here's something:

Then there is the very odd time line for the visit that CNN, which was not included on the press pool manifest, filed on Wednesday, November 26, the day before the actual landing in Baghdad. The time line, retrieved from Nexis, with a load date of November 28, contains the departure times from Waco, Texas and Andrews Air Force Base. Fair enough. That could have been filed on the 26th, although it would have been rather late, 11:06 pm EST. But the CNN report also contains the landing time in Baghdad (5:31 pm Baghdad time) and the departure time (8:00 pm Baghdad time). Was the White House visit so carefully scripted, the arrival and departure times in Baghdad were known a day in advance?

While it's good to see that Madsen has been scouring Nexis for any kind of ambiguity to save his skin, does he really think that CNN reporters filed exact arrival and departure times of the Baghdad visit on the 26th? I don't subscribe to Nexis, but doesn't a 'load date' of the 28th mean anything to him? Also, he can't complain that CNN's reporters and editors were locked out of the story and simultaneously complain that CNN is filing stories about the event before the events took place.

Madsen writes at length about which route Air Force One took, as if that had anything to do with whether Bush arrived in early morning or early evening. There is ambiguity in the reporting. Why the reporting in this case is different from any other nebulous soon-after-the-fact reporting isn't mentioned. Witnesses and reporters were speaking extemporaneously on TV all day. Madsen would have us believe that all of this is some kind of evidence:

Allen later told CNN that none of the on-board pool reporters were able to file their stories until Air Force One got above 10,000 feet. In the same interview, he stated that the reporters were not permitted to file until Air Force One had cleared "airspace." If he meant Iraqi airspace, it is doubtful that the aircraft would have been flying in Iraqi airspace at 10,000 feet and then ascended over Syria or Turkey. More inconsistencies in a story so full of holes it could pass for a piece of Swiss cheese.

I don't believe that Madsen thinks that this really demonstrates a cover-up of a morning dinner.

In the most desperate part of his response, Madsen writes:

Agence France Presse also reported from Crawford that hours after Air Force One landed in Texas, a local tourist shop was selling pins depicting the encounter between Air Force One and a British Airways plane. Ironically, the image of Air Force One, according to the French wire service, is shown flying into the sunset, something that only happened if it flew west, not east. Unless it was flying into sunrise. Did Allen make a typo in his report of a morning landing? Not if the crack souvenir makers in Crawford are to be believed.

Madsen recruits "crack" Crawford souvenir-makers to help build the case for an a.m. landing, just in case. Yes, you read that correctly.

Red Herring-Throwing
No surprises here. Madsen brings up Nigerian yellowcake, the Lincoln landing, and Jessica Lynch. None of which has anything to do with the time of day Bush was in Baghdad. The purpose of this is to rally his own troops to his side, reminding them that even if the Bush administration wasn't deceitful in this instance, they have been plenty of other times, so let's not dwell on who was right or wrong in this instance. Overall, Madsen's on the right side, so an apology for factual errors isn't required.

Not once do the words apology, sorry, or retraction appear anywhere in this article. That's the bottom line, and that's what makes Madsen a pretty poor journalist. The only credible response he could have made after his erroneous article was published would have been to write, yes, I based this article on faulty evidence, the claims I made were untrue, and I regret the error. By not responding that way, he's only made a bad situation worse.

Update: The WSJ's Best of the Web Today takes note of this.

Update: Mark Steyn writes about the Madsen affair (if I may) in The Telegraph, UK. Now that I'm internationally famous, you must all call me Mr. O'Connell. And avert your eyes.

Update: John Podhoretz has an op-ed piece in the NY Post. And there was much rejoicing.

Update: The Washington Post has issued the correction. It's posted with the article itself and reads, "A Nov. 28 article about President Bush's trip to Baghdad misstated his arrival time. It was about 5:30 p.m. Baghdad time." Looks like it's the blue pill this time.