The first known departure related to the Scott Thomas Beauchamp scandal was assistant to the publisher Robert McGhee, who was let go by the New Republic when he leaked TNR's dirty laundry.

A screen capture posted on mediabistro.com's FishbowlDC seems to indicate that TNR fact-checker and Beauchamp's wife Elspeth Reeve is also no longer with the beleaguered magazine.

Update: Patrick Gavin, who posted the Facebook entry noting that Reeve was no longer at The New Republic, has followed up on his original post, noting that Reeve has indeed left the magazine, but:

...not for any sinister reasons. Her year-long internship had expired and she is currently working as a research assistant for Mike Grunwald.

Reeve's first published story for TNR, "Patriot Act," was published May 3, 2006. Reeve was still on the Masthead in July of 2007, and according to Robert McGee, she was still employed at The New Republic when he was fired July 26 for revealing her marriage to Beauchamp, more than 14 months later.

The New Republic is apparently no better at keeping time than they are checking facts.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:25 AM | Comments (18) | Add Comment
Post contains 196 words, total size 2 kb.

Today is the two-month anniversary of Franklin Foer claiming that he and The New Republic would run an honest investigation into the claims made in a story written by Scott Thomas Beauchamp:

Several conservative blogs have raised questions about the Diarist "Shock Troops," written by a soldier in Iraq using the pseudonym Scott Thomas. Whenever anybody levels serious accusations against a piece published in our magazine, we take those charges seriously. Indeed, we're in the process of investigating them. I've spoken extensively with the author of the piece and have communicated with other soldiers who witnessed the events described in the diarist. Thus far, these conversations have done nothing to undermine--and much to corroborate--the author's descriptions. I will let you know more after we complete our investigation.

--Franklin Foer

Editor Foer has also argued on July 26 that the article "was rigorously edited and fact-checked before it was published."

Since that time, a few things have happened:

• It has been conclusively proven that The New Republic did not fact-check a claim made in a previous "Scott Thomas" story, even though that claim was an allegation of murder. A simple Google Search would have proven the basis for the claim categorically false on the first two pages of results. It was 30 seconds they didn't take.
• The first claim made in "Shock Troops," was that "Thomas" and a fellow soldier verbally abused a burn victim at Forward Operating Base (FOB) Falcon because combat left them desensitized to basic human decency and dignity. After it was noted that no such woman has ever been at FOB Falcon, the story was changed to another base, in another country, at a time before the unit saw combat. This of course, completely undermines the premise of the claim, and FoerÂ’s claim that the article had been "rigorously edited and fact-checked." As it turns out, both military personnel and civilian contractors at the Kuwaiti base also dispute the story having occurred there, either. They state on the record that no soldier or civilian contractor matching this description has ever been at this base, and that the story is an urban legend or myth. This was told to TNR editor Jason Zengerle. Zengerle never relayed that to the readers of The New Republic. No such woman has ever been found, and yet TNR has yet to have the decency to retract this claim.
• A second claim made in "Shock Troops" by Thomas was that while his unit excavated ground for the creation of a new combat outpost, that the remains of children were uncovered, and one soldier in his unit wore part of a rotting child's skull on his head for amusement. Neither Foer nor any other editor at TNR have been able to substantiate this claim. An official U.S Army investigation that was launched primarily because of this specific claim found no credible evidence for this or the other claims made by "Thomas." Two months later, TNR has not issued a retraction for this claim.
• A third claim made by "Thomas" in "Shock Troops" was that a Bradley armored vehicle driver used the 25-ton tracked vehicle to crush "curbs, concrete barriers, corners of buildings, stands in the market, and his favorite target: dogs." Since this time, every Bradley IFV commander and driver in Alpha Company has refuted this story as part of the military investigation, and Bradley IFV experts, including active duty and retired drivers and commanders, and even the company's spokesman, have stated that the vehicle could not perform the actions described in the story. Once again, Franklin Foer and The New Republic has had two months to substantiate this claim. They have failed, and yet still lack the decency to print a retraction.

The honorable thing to do when a publication cannot substantiate the claims made by one of their writers is to retract the claims made in the disputed article, and all previous articles by the same author where questionable facts cannot be corroborated. There is a simple reason for this: credibility is a publication's only real currency, and if they tarnish their credibility, then the unreliable publication becomes worthless as a news source.

The New York Times realized this when Jayson Blair was caught plagiarizing and fabricating elements of many of his stories. Blair, executive editor Howell Raines, and managing editor Gerald M. Boyd eventually resigned as a result of the fallout of scandal. When Jack Kelly was caught fabricating stories at USA Today, publisher Craig Moon ran an investigation and issued a front-page apology. Editor Karen Jurgensen and News section managing editor Hal Ritter resigned as a result.

But what is occurring at The New Republic seems to far exceed the actions of a single rogue journalist, and instead seem to point to an editorial staff as corrupted as the fabulist they seek to protect.

Unlike the Blair and Kelly scandals, editors from The New Republic seem to be involved in deliberately covering up, shutting down, and stonewalling possible avenues of approach, and are clearly more interested in stifling an investigation that conducting one.

On August 2, The New Republic released "A Statement on Scott Thomas Beauchamp" (Beauchamp had "outed" himself on July 26).

In that statement, the editors of The New Republic had claimed to have interviewed a number of experts that corroborated the claims made in "Shock Troops."

All of Beauchamp's essays were fact-checked before publication. We checked the plausibility of details with experts, contacted a corroborating witness, and pressed the author for further details. But publishing a first-person essay from a war zone requires a measure of faith in the writer. Given what we knew of Beauchamp, personally and professionally, we credited his report. After questions were raised about the veracity of his essay, TNR extensively re-reported Beauchamp's account.

In this process, TNR contacted dozens of people. Editors and staffers spoke numerous times with Beauchamp. We also spoke with current and former soldiers, forensic experts, and other journalists who have covered the war extensively. And we sought assistance from Army Public Affairs officers. Most important, we spoke with five other members of Beauchamp's company, and all corroborated Beauchamp's anecdotes, which they witnessed or, in the case of one solider, heard about contemporaneously. (All of the soldiers we interviewed who had first-hand knowledge of the episodes requested anonymity.)

Tellingly, The New Republic would not divulge the names of the experts they vaguely claimed supported the claims made in "Shock Troops."

One of them was credited by TNR thusly:

TNR contacted the manufacturer of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle System, where a spokesman confirmed that the vehicle is as maneuverable as Beauchamp described.

One week later, that unnamed spokesman was found. After being identified, Doug Coffey of BAE systems revealed that as it related to him, TNR's investigation was a whitewash:

To answer your last question first, yes, I did talk to a young researcher with TNR who only asked general questions about "whether a Bradley could drive through a wall" and "if it was possible for a dog to get caught in the tracks" and general questions about vehicle specifications.

The New Republic had not asked Coffey about the claims made by Beauchamp at all.

Once provided with the claims made in "Shock Troops," Coffey found the claims relating to his companyÂ’s vehicle very hard to believe.

By August 11, unable to corroborate any element of a story they claimed to have "rigorously edited and fact-checked before it was published," the editors of The New Republic went on the offensive, claiming:

...we continue to investigate the anecdotes recounted in the Baghdad Diarist. Unfortunately, our efforts have been severely hampered by the U.S. Army. Although the Army says it has investigated Beauchamp's article and has found it to be false, it has refused our--and others'--requests to share any information or evidence from its investigation. What's more, the Army has rejected our requests to speak to Beauchamp himself, on the grounds that it wants "to protect his privacy."

Like the August 2 story using hidden experts, this claim by the editors of The New Republic was also deceptive.

The Army has a legal obligation not to release the investigation's findings, with confidentiality being Beauchamp's right. Further, it was Beauchamp himself that declined to be interviewed by The New Republic. The Army did not reject TNR, Private Beauchamp rejected The New Republic... and obviously still does today.

By being deceptive and argumentative since the beginning (a tragic flaw of hubris that the magazine also had preceding the Stephen Glass scandal almost a decade prior) of their investigation, The New Republic editorial staff have destroyed their credibility.

They attempted to cover up the fact that they did not fact check BeuchampÂ’s articles prior to publication, and even attempted to cover up the fact that the author was married to a TNR fact-checker. Faced with legitimate questions about the veracity of claims made by their author, the editors instead attacked those raising these questions, while at the same time running a whitewash of an investigation designed to give them rhetorical cover instead of uncovering the facts.

Ultimately, it seems that even the author won't support the articles, and The New Republic is left twisting in the wind, hoping that noone will notice just how naked, exposed, and yes, corrupt they have been over the course of this sordid story.

The editorial staff of The New Republic, led for the last time by Franklin Foer, should retract all three stories penned by Scott Thomas Beauchamp, apologize profusely to the readership of The New Republic for deceiving them for over two months, and resign.

It remains to be seen if they retain that much integrity.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:08 AM | Comments (16) | Add Comment
Post contains 1611 words, total size 11 kb.

According to his web page, Scott Thomas Beauchamp and his wife, The New Republic fact checker Elspeth Reeve, are apparently expecting a child.

The TNR fabulist/Army private has the following posted on his MySpace page:

""SCOTT BEAUCHAMP CLAIMS TO DESIRE THE BABIES OF ELSPETH, HIS SUPPOSED WIFE!""

He includes as his interests "raptors having babies." His wife, TNR fact-checker Elspeth Reeve uses a raptor (a kind of dinosaur) as the avatar for her MySpace page.

Beauchamp first came to light when a story he wrote entitled "Shock Troops," alleging the barbarity of his fellow soldiers, was challenged on July 18 by The Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb.

Since that time, the U.S Army has denounced the claims made in "Shock Troops" as fiction, and Franklin Foer, the editor of The New Republic, has failed to release the findings of the magazine's internal investigation into the veracity of the stories.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:21 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
Post contains 152 words, total size 1 kb.

Two months ago today, Michael Goldfarb challenged the Scott Thomas story "Shock Troops" posted in the New Republic, igniting a firestorm of criticism by military personnel and bloggers who found the published claims to be less than credible.

In response to growing doubts from critics and his own readers, Franklin Foer, editor of The New Republic, stated on July 20:

I've spoken extensively with the author of the piece and have communicated with other soldiers who witnessed the events described in the diarist. Thus far, these conversations have done nothing to undermine--and much to corroborate--the author's descriptions. I will let you know more after we complete our investigation."

Now, almost two months after making that promise and precisely two months after the story was first questioned, Foer has yet to announce the findings of that investigation.

We know that Scott Thomas Beauchamp, the author of the three stories Foer ran in The New Republic, had a chance to speak with The New Republic 12 days ago. We also know that Beauchamp has refused to discuss his original claims with any other media organization, and gave a blanket statement to the PAO to relay to media organizations that he will not discuss the incidents in his stories, period. It appears that Beauchamp will not speak to Franklin Foer any more about these articles, and that he may have frozen him out, perhaps upon the direction of a lawyer.

Foer now knows, or should know, whether or not Beauchamp will stand by his earlier claims.

If he can provide further support for Shock Troops and the two previous articles, Foer needs to produce it. If he cannot, Franklin Foer owes it to his readers to retract all three of Scott Beauchamp's stories, which a military investigation revealed to be completely uncorroborated, and portions of which one of the magazine's own experts found "highly unlikely."

To date, Franklin Foer, Jason Zengerle, and the rest of The New Republic have been unable to provide so much as a single named expert, a single named witness, or a single concrete fact to support the claims made in "Shock Troops."

I call upon Franklin Foer to honor his word: present the findings of TNR's investigation.

If you will not, resign.

Update: Lessons unlearned:

The High and Mighty
Just after Baghdad fell in early 2003, CNN ran an astonishing confession on the New York Times’s op-ed page admitting that it had known, but kept secret, some “awful things” about the regime of Saddam Hussein over the years. “Each time I visited, I became more distressed by what I saw and heard—awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff,” wrote Eason Jordan, CNN’s chief news executive. “I came to know several Iraqi officials well enough that they confided in me that Saddam Hussein was a maniac who had to be removed.” The piece went into some gruesome detail of atrocities CNN “could not report,” for fear of reprisal from the dictator. “I felt awful having these stories bottled up inside me,” he confessed.

Then why didn’t CNN leave Iraq and alert the rest of the world about these “gut-wrenching tales” and atrocities?

For a couple of weeks, other mainstream media reported moral outrage. The New Republic's Franklin Foer shot back that this couldn't even be called a belated outbreak of honesty. "If it were, Mr. Jordan would be portraying CNN as Saddam's victim. He'd be apologizing for its cooperation with Iraq's erstwhile information ministry—and admitting that CNN policy hinders truthful coverage of dictatorships." CNN was, Foer stated, the network of record. "It makes rich reading to return to transcripts and compare the CNN version of Iraq with the reality that has emerged."

The lesson never quite sank in.

Obviously.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:59 AM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
Post contains 656 words, total size 5 kb.

The New Republic has a writer named James Kirchick who got righteously indignant when a HuffPo writer plagiarized his original work.

Says Kirchick:

There is no worse offense in the journalistic profession than stealing someone else's work and those who do should be named, shamed, and driven out of the profession altogether, never to write again.

Oh James... I think we can come up with just a few journalistic offenses more damning than mere plagiarism.

Here's a few for starters.

Unquestioningly run fake stories of American atrocities, where you can't even correctly pin down even the country in which one of them takes place.

Allow a police force to be accused of murder based upon a claim that was disproven with a simple Google search.

Blatantly lie to your readers and your fellow journalists about fact-checking said stories beforehand.

Hide the marital relationship between the dishonest author and your staff fact-checker for as long as possible, and then fire the person who discloses it.

When you try to justify the fact you didn't do basic fact-checking before you ran these stories by citing experts in your "re-reporting", keep them anonymous and in the dark, asking them only vague, almost meaninglessly general questions. That way, they don't know how they are being used, and they can't be given the whole story (because if they knew all the facts, they'd tell a quite different story).

Refuse to acknowledge or print the testimony of authorities and witnesses that directly contradict your claims, and refuse to answer any of the substantive criticism leveled against you, while alleging that others aren't allowing the truth the come out, so that you can avoid resigning in disgrace for another day.

These things might be just a bit worse than putting your name on someone's else's story, but I think we all agree with your preferred punishment.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:02 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 347 words, total size 3 kb.

At this point in the Scott Beauchamp/The New Republic scandal, only two questions really matter:

1. Have the editors of The New Republic spoken with Scott Beauchamp since his July 26 statement outing himself?
   
   
2. If so, does Beauchamp still stand by his stories as he then claimed?

There are several reasons to ask this question now, starting with the fact that we know Scott Beauchamp has very recently been available for interviews.

It was quite easy to verify this: I sent in a request for an interview with Private Beauchamp several weeks ago. When he turned it down this past week, it verified that he had returned from COP Ellis to FOB Falcon. His log-in to his MySpace page on September 6 also corroborates his return.

Under intense pressure to provide support for the stories that have tarnished the magazine's image, Franklin Foer was no doubt first in line to try to speak with Private Beauchamp once he returned to FOB Falcon. It would also be reasonable to assume that because of their previous relationship, Beauchamp would choose to speak to Foer or other editors of The New Republic if he chose to speak with anyone at all. Could we interpret the magazine's continuing silence to mean that Beauchamp himself has backed away from his previous claims?

If Franklin Foer cannot get Scott Beauchamp to provide supporting evidence for the claims he posted, then Foer has an obligation and a duty to retract all three of Beauchamp's stories.

The problem with doing so, however, is that the retractions would also show that "the Editors" previous claim that "the article was rigorously edited and fact-checked before it was published" to also be a dishonest fabrication, and that deception would demand editorial resignations at TNR as well.

Update: I made a few minor tweaks o the text above, but nothing substantial.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:00 AM | Comments (27) | Add Comment
Post contains 332 words, total size 8 kb.

I'll ask all of my readers to please check out Pajamas Media after noon (Eastern U.S.) today [update: it's up now], and see what you think of my exclusive interview which should be coming online right about then.

In the meantime, Michelle Malkin and her team at Hot Air released a crushing "Vent" today, interviewing Michael Goldfarb, the writer for The Weekly Standard that broke the story with his post, "Fact or Fiction?" on July 18, and also paying a surprise visit to the offices of The New Republic to try to get in to see Franklin Foer.

Watch the whole thing.

All in all, this is going to be a very bad day for Franklin Foer and The New Republic, who by now, just wish this story would go away. What they don't seem to grasp is that at this point, they are the story.

We know that the events Beauchamp wrote about in "Shock Troops" were fabrications, and that has become something of a non-story at this point.

Now, what has become a far more important story is the devious means by which the editorial staff of The New Republic has sought to cover-up their own inadequacies. If they had simply admitted in the beginning that they did not adequately check Beauchamp's stories because they never thought that the husband of a staffer would so boldly and blatantly lie to them, then this would have blown over weeks ago, with minor consequences.

Instead, The New Republic launched an investigation "re-reporting" the story, and tried to justify the unjustifiable with a combination of willful deception and obfuscation. They've attempted to deceive or hide information their readers, fellow journalists, at least one of the experts they claimed supported the veracity of the story, the blogosphere, and the United States Army, in a pathetic attempt to justify a minor incompetence, and in the process, created a significant scandal.

In the end, if TNR owners CanWest Mediaworks hopes to retain any corporate credibility at all, a purge of the defective detectives that make up the editorial staff The New Republic is certainly warranted.

They've run out of second chances.

Update: Read all of my Beauchamp/TNR related coverage here. For those of you who have the means, please consider supporting citizen-journalism (specifically, mine).

Thanks.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 08:52 AM | Comments (17) | Add Comment
Post contains 386 words, total size 3 kb.